Alexis Yongmei Ji is a partner at Illumina Ventures, the strategic venture capital firm formed by genomics technology provider Illumina. Selected as a Rising Star last year, she joined the firm in 2016 when it was founded. She brought with her over a decade of experience in research and venture investment in the genomics and pharmaceutical industries.
Illumina Ventures invests mainly in early-stage companies that focus on genomics and precision medicine innovations, including life sciences tools, clinical diagnostics and therapeutic platforms.
The firm’s limited partners include Illumina and other global corporate, institutional, sovereign and individual investors. What the team have in common is their expertise in genomics innovation and a passion for improving human health. Since its launch, it has invested in eight companies – Kallyope, Encoded Genomics, Twist Bioscience, Serimmune, Biota, DNA Script, Genome Medical and NanoCollect.
Ji has been involved in venture capital since 2012. Before joining Illumina Ventures, she was a principal at WuXi Apptec Corporate Venture Fund and WuXi Healthcare Ventures, a US-China life sciences VC firm, where she focused on investments in therapeutics and medtech companies in the US. Before taking her appointment at WuXi, she was a venture investment consultant at Arch Venture Partners for two years where she evaluated early-stage life sciences opportunities while pursuing her MBA at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Ji started her career in R&D as a senior scientist in biotech companies. At Merck she focused on early drug discovery, at Roche on virology translational research and clinical trial development, and at Life Technologies on molecular diagnostics and next-generation sequencing.
