Noubar Afeyan to deliver Boston University Commencement address

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian-American entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist Noubar Afeyan will receive an honorary degree from the Boston University and deliver the 2021 Commencement address to advanced degree recipients on May 16, the Boston University website has revealed.

Afeyan has cofounded more than 35 successful life sciences and technology start-ups, but likely none more impactful than Moderna, Inc., which came up with the first mRNA-1273 Covid-19 vaccine, now protecting millions around the world from the pandemic virus.

The Cambridge, Mass.–based pharmaceutical and biotechnology company focuses on drug discovery, drug development, and vaccine technologies based on messenger RNA. Afeyan is chair of Moderna’s board of directors.

The holder of more than 100 patients, Afeyan is also founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, one of Boston’s largest capital firms specializing in biotech and life sciences.

As an inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO, he has pursued innovation that improves the human condition. Moderna began experimenting with the underlying mRNA technology in 2010, almost a decade before the onset of Covid-19. Typically, vaccines insert a weakened or inactivated germ into the human body to trigger an immune response and generate antibodies that will protect it from the real virus, but mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines direct human cells to create a protein that will trigger the same response.

The grandson of an Armenian Genocide survivor, Afeyan cofounded the 100 LIVES Initiative in 2015 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915-1917 Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by locating and preserving the stories of survivors and rescuers.

Last month, under the Biden administration, the United States for the first time recognized those killings by the Ottoman Empire as a Genocide.

Afeyan holds a BS in chemical engineering from McGill University and a PhD in biochemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is now a trustee. He is also an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

A native of Lebanon, Afeyan moved to Canada as a teenager and later to the United States. He received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2008—the same year he became a US citizen—and was a Great Immigrant honoree of the Carnegie Corporation in 2016.