Our Team

The award-winning Engimata team has experience in all stages of drug development. 

Founding Team

Mitra Mosharraf, PhD, MBA

Chief Executive Officer

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Mitra has over 20 years of experience in all stages of drug development and life cycle management of biotechnology drug products from companies such as Pfizer (Principal Scientist), HTD Biosystems (CSO) and Santen (Director, Product Development, Biologics). She received her MSc (Pharmacy) and PhD (Pharm Sci) from Uppsala University (Sweden) and executive MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an inventor on 4 patents, and author of 14 peer reviewed papers and 50 conference proceedings on importance of solid-state structure and molecular interactions for stability and efficacy of pharmaceutical drug products.

Rajiv Nayar, PhD 

Chief Scientific Officer


Rajiv has over 35 years of experience in biotechnology drug development from Bayer (Head of Protein Formulation Development), Canadian Liposome Company and HTD Biosystems (Founder & President) where he led development of a botulinum vaccine and several liposomal vaccines. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia and was a Medical Research Council Fellow at M.D Anderson Tumor Institute. He is an inventor on 26 patents and author of 70 publications on liposomal drug delivery, proteins, and vaccines. He has been involved in the development of a pentavalent botulinum vaccine, liposomal vaccines, DNA vaccines, and a QS-21 based Alzheimer's vaccine

Aryo Sorayya, BSc, MD’ 22

Chief Medical Officer


Aryo graduated from Stanford University and is currently a 3rd year medical student at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Aryo has conducted research at institutions such as NASA Ames (as a member of the Stanford iGEM team), at the Stanford VA hospital, at the Stanford School of Medicine (Wu and Attardi labs), and at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. He is co-inventor of Engimata’s adjuvant technology and has won more than 20 scientific awards for his vaccine research and placed as a finalist at Stanford business competitions. He is author of 3 publications and inventor of two patents.

Additional Members and Collaborators

Sedat Gunes, PhD, MBA

Chief Commercialization Officer


Sedat has over a decade of experience in leading commercialization and product development at various 3M Business Units, including 3M Corporate R&D. The annual sales of the products that Sedat developed and commercialized well exceeds $100M. An engineer by training, he is in the process of completing his MBA at MIT Sloan, with cross training at Harvard Business School. Sedat is the inventor of 21 US patent applications and their foreign equivalents.  

Susan Rivas, MBA

Head of Digital Marketing & Creative Design


Susan Rivas is a Digital Creative Director who has worked for various lifestyle retail brands in New York City. For the past 13 years, Susan has helped transform brands through visual storytelling and digital innovation. She has primarily specialized in marketing concepts and digital rebranding. Companies include Kate Spade New York, Victoria’s Secret, Ann Inc, Juicy Couture, John Hardy, Equinox, C. Wonder, West Elm, Madewell, and Giovanni Bianco Studio 65. She also recently received an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management as well as studied at the Harvard Business School.