Director
Katherine A. High, M.D.
Katherine (Kathy) A. High, M.D. has served on our Board of Directors since June 2019. Since December 2024, Dr. High has served as Chief Executive Officer and a board member of RhyGaze AG, a private biotech start-up. From January 2023 to December 2024, she was a Visiting Professor at Rockefeller University in New York. Prior to that, from January 2021 to December 2022, she served as President, Therapeutics of Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a subsidiary of Bayer AG (BAYRY), and also served on AskBio’s board of directors.
Before her role at AskBio, Dr. High co-founded Spark Therapeutics, Inc., where she served as President and board member from September 2014 to December 2019. She also served as Head of Research & Development from September 2017 to February 2020, and has served as a director of Incyte Corporation (INCY) since March 2020.
From 2004 to 2014, Dr. High was a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also completed a five-year term from 2000 to 2005 on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee on Cell, Tissue, and Gene Therapies and is a past president of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy.
Dr. High holds an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard University, an M.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a business certification from the University of North Carolina Business School Management Institute for Hospital Administrators, and an honorary M.A. from The University of Pennsylvania.
