Rodney L. Rietze BSc, MSc, PhD

Dr. Rodney Rietze is a Senior Investigator in the Exploratory Immuno-Oncology group at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, MA) developing novel bioprocesses and enabling technologies for the manufacture of next generation CAR-T therapeutics. This role is a continuation of his work at Novartis’s Cell and Gene Therapy Unit, where he lead the Automation Network supporting the manufacturing process and analytics for Kymriah, the first FDA-approved personalized CAR-T cell therapy.

Before joining Novartis, Dr. Rietze was a Senior Director of Process Development for Ovasave at TxCell S.A. (France), and led teams in the discovery and early clinical development of both small molecule and cell-based therapeutics at Pfizer Regenerative Medicine (Cambridge, UK). Preceding his transition to Industry, Dr. Rietze was a co-founder and faculty member of the Queensland Brain Institute (Brisbane, Australia). Dr. Rietze has nearly two decades of technical, operational and strategic leadership experience in the development of cell-based therapies and is passionate about delivering innovative technologies and medicines to transform the treatment of disease. He holds a BSc and MSc from the University of Calgary, and a PhD from The University of Melbourne (Australia).