Life Illustrated: Lovisa Afzelius
An Adventurous Leader Exploring the World
Click through to learn about Lovisa's journey growing up in Sweden, captaining sailboats, backpacking all over the world, scuba diving, and her career spanning startups, pharma, and Flagship.
These images were inspired by Swedish artist Carl Larsson and generated by an artist specializing in the use of AI.
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I was born in Sweden in the town of Mölndal, a suburb of Gothenburg, perhaps best known to those in biotech as the location of one of AstraZeneca’s R&D centers. From a young age, my father fostered my interest in science, by helping me to build the things I wanted instead of buying them. Once in preparation for a costume party, my dad and I constructed a fantastic contraption inspired by a character in a children’s book that would fly using a propeller attached to his back. As I sat down, I stuffed the device's wiring and battery into my pocket, causing it to short circuit and briefly lighting myself on fire. Learning by trying has followed me in life.
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I was always involved in a lot of activities as a child, from dancing and ballet to horseback riding, skiing, and sailing. I would captain our sailboat with a crew of my girlfriends each summer for weeks at a time, earning us renown along the cost for our ambitious goals to visit every harbor. From a young age, I would captain boats for corporate sailing events, leading teams of executives three times my age. This early exposure to leadership, though nerve-wracking at the time, continues to serve me today.
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I had the privilege to travel quite a bit growing up, even staying alone in London for a language program at just eleven years old. After high school, a friend and I embarked on a year-long backpacking journey, visiting China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Bali, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and the U.S. In addition to exposing me to diverse cultures and perspectives, this trip ultimately influenced my career path, inadvertently causing me to miss the medical school application deadline, shifting my focus to biomedicine.
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Scuba diving was a huge passion of mine throughout university. I completed more than 500 dives, driving me to explore the technical extremes of the sport, including ice diving, wreck diving, and deep dives to 250 feet that require complex problem-solving and careful safety calculations. Around this time, I began to think I would pursue hyperbaric physiology and dive medicine as a career.
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During my master’s degree, I got an internship at AstraZeneca in Mölndal that ignited my interest in computation. This opportunity evolved into an industrial PhD, where I honed my programming skills and delved into the world of computational chemistry. During my PhD, I developed an algorithm for predicting the site of metabolism, contributing to the commercially available software Metasite.
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After my time at AstraZeneca, I accepted a role as CEO of a small biotech startup in Stockholm. This was a challenging but educational opportunity as I learned to adjust to the new demands, particularly the differences between a small company and a large one with established protocols, methods, and resources.
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I received an offer from Pfizer to join their inflammation and immunology research unit in the U.S., uprooting my young family to accept the opportunity. While at Pfizer, I completed an executive MBA at MIT that included a seminar led by Flagship CEO and Founder Noubar Afeyan. I was immediately impressed by Flagship’s novel approach to innovation.
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I joined Flagship as an Origination Partner, applying my scientific, leadership, and business expertise to build companies rooted in groundbreaking science. My team uses an objective, evidence-driven approach that is guided by evolutionary principles to launch explorations, harnessing computational tools to sift through immense datasets. As a 5’3” blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who has faced bias, I am committed to fostering a culture that defies conventional assumptions — both about what the confluence of biology and computation can achieve and who embodies leadership.
Lovisa Afzelius
General Partner
Lovisa Afzelius is a general partner at Flagship Pioneering and leads one of Flagship’s Business Units. A computational scientist by training, she brings to Flagship two decades of leadership experience and a passion for data-driven drug discovery. Lovisa has served as CEO, co-founder, president, board chairman, and executive director, in emerging biotech and large pharma companies. She joined Flagship as an origination partner in early 2020, leading innovation as founding CEO of Alltrna, founding CEO and board chair of World Economic Forum 2023 Technology Pioneer Apriori Bio, co-founder and founding CEO of Metaphore Biotechnologies, and co-founder and CEO of Prologue Medicines.