Dr. Ajay Verma is a neurologist, neuroscientist, biopharma executive, and venture builder working at the intersection of neurodegeneration, therapeutics, artificial intelligence, and brain drug delivery. A proud University of Maryland alumnus and graduate of both the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, he has built his career around translating difficult biomedical problems into practical technologies, therapeutic programs, and companies.

Dr. Verma began his clinical and academic career as a neurologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, ultimately serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. He was also Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, Pathology, and Anesthesiology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he led translational research in brain injury, hypoxia, mitochondrial biology, glioma, and neuroinflammation while mentoring physician-scientists, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and clinical trainees.

Across senior leadership roles at Merck, Novartis, Biogen, United Neuroscience, Codiak Biosciences, and Yumanity Therapeutics, Dr. Verma has led experimental medicine, biomarker, clinical-development, and R&D organizations focused on neurodegenerative disease and CNS therapeutics. His work has included Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS/FTD-related biology, CNS immunotherapies, chronic pain, biomarkers, precision clinical development, and drug-delivery technologies. He is an inventor on multiple issued U.S. patents spanning neuroimaging, neurologic biomarker technologies, CNS drug delivery, and novel therapeutic devices.

Today, Dr. Verma is Founding Scientist and CEO of Twilight Bioscience, General Partner of Formation Venture Engineering and FVE Foundry, and Founding Scientist at Lotus Neuro. He is building a distributed Collaboratory that connects AI-enabled discovery, protein engineering, biomarker development, preclinical research, and clinical translation across the United States, Romania, Canada, England, and Kuwait. Over his career, he has led or co-led more than $40 million in competitive grant-supported initiatives, creating scientific infrastructure and partnerships that move ambitious neuroscience ideas toward practical therapies.

Dr. Verma served for nearly a decade on the XPRIZE Innovation Board. He is committed to helping the next generation of interdisciplinary founders bring ambitious ideas out of the laboratory and into real-world solutions for patients, communities, and society.