Shalaka Wahane, Ph.D.

Shalaka provides technology expertise and scientific direction to incoming genomic startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to joining Illumina Ventures in 2023, she was a staff scientist for Seed Investments and Technology at Illumina, where she oversaw the development and operations for the Illumina Accelerator program, which was the foundation for Illumina Ventures Labs. This program for seed stage companies helped launch 74 companies and attracted more than $1.2B in third party investments over 15 funding cycles. Previously, Shalaka worked as an assistant project scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles in the labs of Drs. Michael Sofroniew and Daniel C. Lu, where she led preclinical studies in ALS, utilizing her deep expertise in neurodevelopment, central nervous system inflammation and neurodegeneration.

Shalaka earned her PhD in Developmental Neurobiology from the University of Freiburg, Germany and continued her scientific career with postdoctoral work at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.