Riley Ennis

He grew up in Northern VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry. Dartmouth News wrote in 2013 that family trips to the beach first drew him to marine biology; a WCVE story likewise says that his interest began with marine biology as a child and later shifted to the biomedical sciences.⁠[1][2]

In interview-based profiles by Dartmouth News (2013) and The Dartmouth (2017), he described his younger sister’s heart condition as what turned him toward biomedical science and toward helping patients. He said in 2017 that he had long wanted to help patients and that “Finding the solution for me was in a startup.”⁠[1][3]

He said that an episode of the PBS program NOVA about horseshoe crabs taught him that a protein in the crab’s immune system acts as a tag; Dartmouth News wrote that this led him to conceive of a cancer immunotherapy based on a human homolog of that protein, as an alternative to chemotherapy and its severe side effects. The WCVE story names a second influence: an article on cancer immunology that he read during a summer internship at the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2]

He recalled that in high school he took an honors biology course, which he loved, and that in his second year he joined a biomedical research program at the University of Pennsylvania.⁠[1]

The WCVE story recounts that he was asked to speak at his local Relay for Life cancer fundraising event; he said the experience “kept me late in the lab after school.”⁠[2]

He competed at the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) and received a second-place award in cellular and molecular biology.⁠[4]

In his senior year of high school he secured laboratory space and funding to pursue immunology research at Georgetown University and at the Sheikh Zayed Institute of Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. His own profile states that in high school he worked for three years on a cancer vaccine.⁠[1][5]

He described the technology as a novel, cost-effective and patient-specific cancer vaccine that teaches immune cells to recognize and destroy cancer; a later Biotechnology Institute release says the vaccine was based on recruiting dendritic cells.⁠[6][2][7]

He obtained patents for the human protein homolog and for the technology platform used to produce it, and then formed Immudicon to attract corporate partnerships and capital. The WCVE story says that after the research and development he worked with industry experts to start the company, file patent applications and pursue licensing of the technology to larger biotechnology companies.⁠[1][2]

A speaker biography on the Amherst College website states that he worked to obtain more than $10,000 in initial funding to start Immudicon and that the research drew the attention of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Sheikh Zayed Institute, the INOVA research foundation and a former senior vice president of Pfizer.⁠[8]

His cancer vaccine research won the Virginia BioGENEius Challenge and made him a finalist in the U.S. National BioGENEius Challenge; the Biotechnology Institute states that he was a 2011 finalist while a high school senior.⁠[6][2][7]

During the national events he presented on stage before biotechnology industry leaders, heard Tony BlairTony BlairTony Blair is a British politician who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2007 and Labour leader from 1994 to 2007. His government pursued devolution, a national minimum wage and the Northern Ireland peace process, while its Iraq War decisions drew sustained scrutiny. After leaving office, he worked in Middle East diplomacy and policy advisory services, founding the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where he is executive chairman. He became an advisor to the Skydance board in October 2026.Open the full entry speak and was inducted into the National Young Inventors Gallery together with another BioGENEius winner.⁠[2]

He entered Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry as a member of the Class of 2015; he said in 2012 that as a first-year student he was investing a lot of time in Immudicon. His own profile states that he planned a double major in economics and biomedical engineering, sat on the executive board of the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Society and was a fellow of the Kairos Society.⁠[6][5]

At Dartmouth he co-founded Mitosis with Matt Ross; the speaker biography on the Amherst College website describes it as a student-run venture accelerator and seed fund for Dartmouth ventures, and states that he was an Executive Fellow of the Kairos Society and worked on a cancer nanotechnology research project at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.⁠[9][1][8][10]

On April 4, 2012 the Idea Stations site of the Virginia public broadcaster WCVE featured his research and company under the title “The BioGENEius Challenge: One Young Man’s Story that Could Save Your Life”; Dartmouth News highlighted the story on April 10, describing him as CEO of Immudicon.⁠[6][2]

On July 23, 2012 the FOX NewsFOX NewsFOX News is a U.S. television and digital news media brand centered on FOX News Channel and owned by Fox Corporation, with operations spanning news reporting, political commentary and digital content.Open the full entry program “Solution America” featured his award-winning research and biotechnology startup in an episode on young scientists and entrepreneurs. He credited Dartmouth as a strong incubator for his ideas and the vaccine’s development, saying “It starts with making a discovery in the research lab,” and added: “The weapon you do have at college at least is creativity and a fresh perspective.” Dartmouth News wrote that he had founded Immudicon to attract major biotechnology firms that could make the vaccine available to people as soon as possible.⁠[11]

Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry’s list of the new class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, published on May 9, 2013, includes Riley Ennis. The list states that Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry was giving 20 teenagers $100,000 each to leave college on condition that they start a company, in a two-year program during which they receive mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, futurists and innovators. It gives him as 19 and from McLean, Virginia, and says that he founded the early-stage biotechnology company Immudicon, which grew out of his high school research at Georgetown University and the Sheikh Zayed Institute of Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and had developed a novel cancer vaccine platform and a telemedicine sweat-monitoring device to improve how diseases are treated and diagnosed; it gives his ultimate goal as to “exercise empathy within health care to revolutionize and personalize the future of treating patients.”⁠[12][12]

Dartmouth News wrote that he was one of the third class of “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellows, chosen from more than 500 applicants, and that the two-year program provided $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of technology entrepreneurs, investors, scientists and innovators; his Dartmouth classmates Gary Le and Christopher Walker, both of the Class of 2015, were also selected. The Dartmouth wrote that the class had 22 fellows, that applicants came from 49 countries and nearly every state, and that fellows had to leave college for at least two years.⁠[1][9]

He said he planned to use the grant to strengthen Immudicon, collaborate with hospitals, continue clinical development and pursue other projects, explaining that “The vaccine targets the immune pathways in cancer.” He found leaving difficult—“I could never imagine myself taking so much time off from Dartmouth”—and was unsure whether he would return after the fellowship, but said “I’m not going to stop reading or learning.”⁠[9]

Dartmouth News wrote that he planned to leave Dartmouth, most likely for the San Francisco area, where the Thiel Foundation is based; he said, “I see this as being an extension of my Dartmouth experience.”⁠[1]

The registration statement filed in 2026 for the combination of Freenome and Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp states that he was a Thiel Fellow from 2013 to 2015, during which he pursued scientific research related to the development of early detection technologies and early intervention immunotherapies.⁠[13][10][14]

In 2014 he co-founded Freenome, which develops blood tests for the early detection of cancer, with Gabe OtteGabe OtteGabe Otte (Gabriel Otte) is a co-founder of Freenome, a company developing blood tests for early cancer detection, and served as its chief executive officer until 2021.Open the full entry and Charlie Roberts, and served as its chief operating officer from January 2014. He said in a BioSpace article that the three started the company “after seeing our friends and family struggle with diseases like cancer.”⁠[13][15]

Recounting the company’s beginnings on its blog, Gabe Otte wrote that Riley “had deep knowledge of the cancer space with work on his own cancer immunotherapy company,” that Charlie Roberts had founded a non-invasive prenatal testing company based on cell-free DNA, and that he himself brought genomics and machine learning; their shared vision won a $700,000 Verizon Powerful Answers Award, which funded early development. Without his two co-founders, Otte wrote, Freenome “simply wouldn’t exist.”⁠[16]

A 2016 profile of Gabe Otte by Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry’s College of Arts & Sciences names his co-founders as Charles Roberts, a medically trained serial entrepreneur in health technology, and Riley Ennis, a Thiel Fellow who had created a cancer vaccine with his previous company.⁠[17]

The 2026 registration statement states that he held positions at Novartis as a visiting scientist in 2014, at Bridgewater Associates in 2014 and at Foundation Medicine in 2015.⁠[13]

Freenome’s executive biography states that while at Dartmouth he was a visiting scientist with Novartis, that he worked as an analyst at Morgan StanleyMorgan StanleyMorgan Stanley is an American global financial services firm that grew from an investment banking partnership into a publicly traded financial group spanning investment banking, securities trading, wealth management, and investment management.Open the full entry and as an associate at Bridgewater Associates, and that his biotechnology experience includes Foundation Medicine, Syros Pharmaceuticals, Adimab and Emergent BioSolutions. The Biotechnology Institute’s 2017 release instead says that he worked at Foundation Medicine, Syros Pharmaceuticals and Emergent BioSolutions, interned at Morgan Stanley and Bridgewater Associates, and worked under a visiting scientist agreement with Novartis.⁠[14][7]

On May 23, 2016 Freenome, Inc. entered into an offer letter with him providing for an annual base salary, an annual target bonus and eligibility for the company’s employee benefit plans. In its Form 8-K of July 2026 Freenome filed Exhibit 10.18, “Employment Agreement by and between Freenome Holdings, Inc. and Riley Ennis, dated May 23, 2016.”⁠[13][18]

On June 9, 2016 TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote that Freenome had raised a $5.5 million seed round led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, with Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry, Data CollectiveDCVCDCVC (Data Collective) is an American deep tech venture capital firm founded in 2010 by Matt Ocko and Zachary Bogue, with offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California. It invests in companies that use computing and AI to solve real-world problems in fields such as energy, climate, biomedicine, defense, space, and industry; as of October 2026 it had more than $4 billion in assets under management across 13 funds.Open the full entry and Third Kind Venture Capital taking part; the company then had a five-person team. Gabe Otte’s post on the company blog gives the amount as $5.55 million.⁠[19][16]

He was named to the Healthcare category of the Forbes “30 Under 30” list for 2017, one of four Dartmouth alumni on that year’s lists.⁠[4][3]

He said in The Dartmouth that it “took some time to get there, but it’s always been focused on the end goal of making a difference,” and advised students that “people should spend more time listening to the problems that are out there.” Natasha Grotz, who taught him as an undergraduate, said she admired how unintimidated he was in tackling even the largest problems.⁠[3]

In February 2017 BioSpace’s “Future Biotech Giants” list gave him as 23 and, with Gabe Otte, 29, as a co-founder of Freenome, which it placed in Palo Alto.⁠[20]

On March 1, 2017 TechCrunch wrote that Freenome had raised a $65 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with GV, Polaris Partners, Innovation Endeavors, Spectrum 28, Asset Management Ventures, Charles River Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and Allen and Company, as well as earlier backers Data Collective and Founders Fund; the company then had 25 employees.⁠[21]

The Biotechnology Institute announced that he had won the BioGENEius Challenge 2017 Hall of Fame Award, to be recognized at the 2017 BIO International Convention in San Diego. The release says that he led Immudicon’s partnerships with more than 14 pharmaceutical companies, that the company hoped to enter clinical trials in 2017, and that his research at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Georgetown University and Children’s National Medical Center had produced two publications and a book chapter.⁠[7]

The release describes the Thiel Fellowship as providing $100,000 over two years to people under 23 with an acceptance rate below 1%, and gives him as co-founder and chief operating officer of Freenome, which had recently closed a $65 million Series A.⁠[7]

On December 7, 2017 BioSpace, profiling Freenome, described him as its co-founder and chief operating officer and also as co-founder and chair of Immudicon and a co-founder of Oncolinx. He described Freenome as “an AI biotech company focused on creating tools that empower people to prevent, diagnose, and treat their diseases.”⁠[15]

He said the company had raised more than $77 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Verily, GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry Ventures, Polaris Partners, Founders Fund, Section 32 and Anne Wojcicki. The article says that Freenome, headquartered in South San Francisco, was then developing screening tests for breast, prostate, colon and lung cancer, had more than 25 research partners and partnerships with seven pharmaceutical companies, and aimed to launch an early cancer screening test available to millions of Americans within three to five years.⁠[15]

He served as Freenome’s chief operating officer until September 2021 and has been its chief product officer since then.⁠[13]

On June 21, 2022 The Gradience, a podcast of Build Talent, released the episode “Prioritizing Culture with Riley Ennis, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Freenome,” hosted by Nigel Robinson. The episode page’s introduction says that in a field like oncology, where there is “no magic bullet,” a team’s expertise, passion, resilience, shared values, common culture and faith in the project are the major determinants of a project’s or company’s success; the topics included building the founding team in line with Freenome’s direction, his approach to hiring industry experts, designing a culture through culture ownership and shared values, culture interviews for executives and leadership, cultural assessment in selecting recruiters, search firms and talent partners, the advice he would give his younger self as a founder, advice to young founders, health equity in biotechnology, the future of Freenome, and developing an evolving legacy and an enduring culture.⁠[22]

From September 2024 through March 31, 2025 he served as Freenome’s principal executive officer while also serving as chief product officer; Aaron Elliott has been Freenome’s chief executive officer since April 2025.⁠[13]

The 2026 registration statement shows that his annual base salary for fiscal year 2025 was $546,000, with a target annual bonus of 50% of base salary; his individual performance goals were achieved at 120% of target, for a non-equity incentive bonus of $327,600; the stock awards and option awards granted that year, at grant-date accounting value, were $1,549,999 and $2,014,890, for total compensation of $4,438,489.⁠[13]

The registration statement’s table “Outstanding Equity Awards at 2025 Fiscal Year-End” lists his options at fiscal year-end 2025: 1,099,202 options granted on June 22, 2020, all exercisable, at an exercise price of $1.37, expiring June 22, 2030; options granted on June 22, 2022, 849,562 exercisable and 145,048 unexercisable, at $4.50, expiring June 22, 2032; options granted on February 18, 2023, 187,999 exercisable and 77,412 unexercisable, at $3.36, expiring February 18, 2033; options granted on February 16, 2024, 244,290 exercisable and 174,494 unexercisable, at $5.16, expiring February 16, 2034; and 782,828 options granted on March 11, 2025, not yet exercisable, at $3.96, expiring March 11, 2035.⁠[13]

The same table lists his unearned restricted stock units: 1,091,451 granted on December 13, 2019 (subject to a performance-based vesting condition), 1,657,150 granted on February 5, 2021, 556,980 granted on June 22, 2022, 132,819 granted on February 18, 2023, 209,392 granted on February 16, 2024 and 391,414 granted on March 11, 2025, with market values, at an assumed business combination price of $2.957 per share, of $3,227,421, $4,900,193, $1,646,990, $392,746, $619,172 and $1,157,411 respectively.⁠[13]

On December 5, 2025 Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp, Freenome Holdings, Inc. and other parties entered into a business combination agreement. He was one of the Freenome supporting shareholders who entered into transaction support agreements with Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp, under which they agreed to vote at Freenome’s shareholder meetings in favor of the business combination agreement and not to transfer the covered securities.⁠[13]

Amendment No. 2 to the Form S-4 registration statement, filed on June 10, 2026, lists him at age 32 as chief product officer among the executive officers after the combination. Its beneficial ownership table gives him 13,351,057 shares of Freenome, or 5.6% of the shares outstanding on June 1, 2026, before the combination; the footnote lists 4,764,271 shares held directly, 1,321,739 shares held by the “Riley Ennis Irrevocable Trust dated 1/14/21,” 7,265,047 shares underlying vested options and 7,352,711 shares underlying options to be vested and exercisable within 60 days of June 1, 2026. The table projects that after the combination he would hold 5,134,349 shares of the new Freenome, all underlying vested options, or 4.5% assuming no redemptions and 4.8% assuming maximum redemptions.⁠[13]

The statement also says that at the closing he, together with the sponsor and other former Freenome shareholders including RA Capital, Roche and Andreessen Horowitz, would enter into lock-up agreements with Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp, agreeing not to transfer any shares of the new Freenome’s common stock, except for certain permitted transfers, from the domestication until six months after the closing date.⁠[13]

On July 20, 2026 the business combination closed and Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp became Freenome, Inc., whose common stock was listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “FRNM”; the Form 8-K states that on July 21 the former PCSC Class A shares were reclassified into the new Freenome common stock, which began trading. Immediately after the merger took effect he was appointed chief product officer of the new Freenome. The Form 8-K lists him as the beneficial owner of 3,629,862 shares, or 3.4% of the shares outstanding on the closing date, comprising 1,347,787 shares held directly, 373,913 shares held by the trust, 1,058,894 shares underlying restricted stock units vesting within 60 days of July 20, 2026 and 849,268 shares underlying options vesting and exercisable within that period.⁠[18]

As of November 2026, Freenome’s website lists him as co-founder and chief product officer, leading the clinical and commercial development of the company’s noninvasive tests for early cancer detection and treatment selection.⁠[14]

He holds a B.A. in molecular biology from Dartmouth College. Accounts of his studies differ: Xconomy wrote that he graduated from Dartmouth College with a double major in economics and molecular biology; The Dartmouth wrote in 2017 that he studied biology and finance there; the Biotechnology Institute’s release says that he studied cell biology at Dartmouth. Freenome’s executive biography states that he co-authored publications while at Dartmouth.⁠[13][10][3][7][14]

The speaker biography on the Amherst College website states that his cancer vaccine was recognized by the Intel International Science Fair, the BioGENEius Challenge of the BIO International Convention, the AXA Equitable Achievement Award, the National Young Inventors Gallery and the Virginia Academy of Science.⁠[8]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rileyennis/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/rcennis13 (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

Freenome: Official website: https://www.freenome.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

Novartis: Official website: https://www.novartis.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Bridgewater Associates: Official website: https://www.bridgewater.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

Foundation Medicine: Official website: https://www.foundationmedicine.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]