Mark Ellis, Co-founder and CEO of CapsulateBio, is an experienced entrepreneur and operator who has built, commercialized and scaled disruptive technology solutions across several industries. Prior to CapsulateBio, Mark co-founded and was CEO of Liftoff Mobile, an industry-leading mobile advertising software platform that was acquired by Blackstone in 2021 and went public (LFTO) in June of 2026. Liftoff represented a >70x return for early investors.


Under Mark's leadership, Liftoff was recognized as one of the "Fastest Growing Private Companies" by Inc. Magazine for 5 years and one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America on Deloitte's "Technology Fast 500" list for 4 years. Liftoff was also recognized as "America's Best Startup Employers" (Forbes), a "Top Company Culture" (Entrepreneur), and "Best Workplaces" (Inc. Mag.). Mark has been recognized as one of the "100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs" by Goldman Sachs and a "Marketing Tech Trailblazer" by Ad Age.


Prior to Liftoff, Mark was VP of Corporate and Business Development at Ooyala (acquired by Telstra in 2014) and has also held various strategic planning and CorpDev and BusDev roles at Google and The Walt Disney Company. Mark has also served as a political appointee at the Department of Defense working on a range of national defense policy issues and is a recipient of the Secretary of Defense's Medal for Exceptional Public Service.


Mark holds a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard University. Mark's Master's thesis, "Impact of Acquisitions on Innovation: Remedy, Not Poison Pill," was published in the Journal of Marketing (Jan., 2005).

Dr. Robert Langer, Co-founder and Scientific Advisor of CapsulateBio, is one of eight Institute Professors at MIT, which is the highest honor awarded to a faculty member. He has written over 1,500 articles that have been cited over 422,000 times, and his h-index of 321 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 3rd highest of any individual in any field. Dr. Langer has co-founded several other companies, including Moderna, and his patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies.


Previously, Dr. Langer served as Chairman of the FDA's Science Board (the Agency's highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include the U.S. National Medal of Science and the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, making him one of only three living individuals to have received both honors. Other honors include the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Hoover Medal, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, Balzan Prize, and the Dr. Paul Janssen Award.


Dr. Langer has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. He holds a Sc.D. in chemical engineering from MIT and completed his undergraduate studies in the same specialty at Cornell University.

Dr. Giovanni Traverso, Co-founder and Scientific Advisor of CapsulateBio, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and in the Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

His earlier work focused on developing novel molecular tests for the early detection of colon cancer, and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. This work was licensed to Exact Sciences and led to the development of the FDA-approved non-invasive test Cologuard® for colon cancer screening. For Dr. Traverso's post-doctoral research, he worked in Dr. Robert Langer's laboratory at MIT, where he developed novel technologies for drug delivery and physiological sensing via the gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Traverso is the recipient of several honors, including the Grand Prize of the Collegiate Inventors Competition, a Research Fellowship from Trinity College, being named on the MIT Tech Review's TR 35 list, and receiving the 2023 Acta Biomaterials Silver Medal. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the NAM Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholars program, the College of Fellows of the Controlled Release Society, and the National Academy of Inventors.

He received his B.A. from Trinity College, University of Cambridge and earned his medical degree from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Traverso holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked in the lab of Professor Bert Vogelstein. He completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and gastroenterology fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, both at Harvard Medical School.