Leadership Team
Founder & CEO
Jim is an Australian-trained physician, with eight years in commercial diagnostics. He previously served as Chief Business Development Officer at a regional CLIA laboratory, where he scaled commercial revenue eightfold, built a diagnostics-as-a-service line to $2M ARR in its first year, and oversaw a $100M+ COVID portfolio during the pandemic. He founded Calaris in 2025 to address a structural gap he had observed firsthand: the inability of today’s chronic disease screening pathways to reach the patients who need them most.
Director, Assay Development
Nodar leads assay development at Calaris. He holds a PhD in biochemistry from Saint Louis University and has over a decade of experience across translational science and IVD development, with a track record of takingdiagnostic assays from research to FDA-ready stage. He is named on four granted IVD patents and specializes in multiplexed immunoassay optimization, sample-matrix work, and analytical validation.
Founding Advisors
Founding Advisor, Strategy
Brandon brings deep operational expertise across hospitals, virtual health, and diagnostics. As a former multi-site CEO and health system executive, he has led launches, turnarounds, and performance improvement initiativesexceeding $100M in annual revenue. He is currently Co-Founder & CEO of LiverRight, the first virtual hepatology clinic operating across all 50 US states. At Calaris, Brandon advises on translating strategy into operational reality: organizational design, milestone planning, partnership structuring, and aligning clinical excellence with commercial opportunity.
Founding Advisor, BD
Pete’s career has been a through-line of making diagnostics easier to access at scale. He co-founded BeClose, one of the earliest remote patient monitoring companies (acquired), spent eight years at MedStar Healthtranslating research concepts into deployed hospital- and home-based programs, and served as SVP of Business Development at Heartbeat Health, where he built distribution partnerships with smartwatches and iRhythm. He is also Co-Founder of LiverRight. Pete brings payer fluency, BD architecture, and a track record of turning pilots into platforms.
Advisory Board
Senior Clinical Advisor
Richard is one of the most recognized figures in non-invasive liver fibrosis assessment. He is the inventor of the FIB-4 index - the most widely used first-line non-invasive fibrosis screening tool in clinical practice today, recommended by every major hepatology society and embedded in every published MASLD screening algorithm. He serves as Professor of Medicine; Chief, Section of Hepatology; and Chief Clinical Officer of the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. He advises Calaris on clinical strategy, biomarker validation design, and KOL engagement.
Senior Pharma Strategy Advisor
Paola is a physician-scientist and biotech executive with medical and scientific leadership experience across Regeneron, Eli Lilly, Aurinia, Roche, and Immunovant. She brings a pharma-facing lens to scientific and diagnostic strategy, helping translate biomarker science into clinical value, evidence generation priorities, and partnership narratives that resonate with pharma, clinicians, payers, and investors. At Calaris, she advises on scientific and strategic direction, pharma engagement, companion diagnostic positioning, and evidence strategy to support differentiation, adoption, and long-term growth.
Strategic Advisor
Colin is a senior international executive with 25 years of experience in in vitro diagnostics and life sciences. He has held P&L leadership roles at LGC Group, BioMerieux, MARS Science and Diagnostics, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He advises Calaris on commercial architecture, point-of-care GTM strategy, and international market access.
Senior Scientific Advisor
Aras is a physician-scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, where he serves as Director of the UCSF Liver Center Biobank. He is the principal investigator of the Mattis Lab, focused on liver disease pathogenesis, biomarker discovery, and AI-driven analytics for MASLD and MASH biology. He advises Calaris on biomarker science, biospecimen strategy, and clinical study design.
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