Michael Graziano is Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Valo Health. In this role he is accountable for strategy and activities to support the progression of Valo’s research platform and drug discovery pipeline. Prior to joining Valo, Michael was the initial Chief Science Officer at TARA Biosystems, a New York City-based biotech company developing human stem cell derived tissues models to support cardiometabolic drug discovery. TARA was acquired by Valo in 2022.

Prior to TARA, Michael was Vice President of Research Biology at MyoKardia, a clinical stage biotechnology company acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2020, and sat on the executive committee. He participated in strategy development and led efforts to develop and operationalize platforms to empower drug discovery and development in cardiomyopathies and heart failure.

Prior to moving into biotechnology, Michael worked in pharma for more than 20 years. He began his industry career at Merck Research Laboratories, initiating and leading several drug discovery programs in the cardiometabolic and neuroscience arenas. He moved to Schering-Plough where he was the Executive Director and Head of Cardiometabolic Drug Discovery and a member of the R&D leadership team. His team identified several drug candidates that entered clinical development including the marketed cholesterol absorption inhibitor ezetimibe (Zetia®) and the antiplatelet agent vorapaxar.

He received a BA in biology from New York University, a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the School of Basic Health Sciences at The State University of New York at Stony Brook and was a fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He is the author of more than sixty scientific publications.