Mona S. Jhaveri, Ph.D.

As seen in TIME, Health, and Healthline, as well as on NBC 4 Washington and ABC 7 News DC, Dr. Mona S. Jhaveri is the founder and executive director of Music Beats Cancer, a nonprofit that addresses the funding gaps in cancer research often referred to as the “Valley of Death.” Before founding Music Beats Cancer, she established Foligo Therapeutics, Inc. in 2005 to develop a DNA-based therapeutic compound for ovarian cancer. Although Foligo initially attracted funding, it ultimately succumbed to the Valley of Death. Dr. Jhaveri emphasizes that many promising cancer research projects fail not due to flawed science but because they lack the necessary funding to succeed. She earned her doctorate in biochemistry from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute. She has also received the SPORE Fellowship Award for Breast Cancer Research at the Lombardi Cancer Center of Georgetown University and specialized in intellectual property and technology transfer at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.