About Us

a member of the board of directors since 2009 and as Chairman, President and CEO from 2012 to 2020. Under his leadership, Vertex delivered the first and only precision medicines to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF). It is his mission and the basis of the company’s research priorities to bring transformative medicines to people with CF and other serious diseases. Dr. Leiden also cares deeply about inspiring and equipping under-resourced students and young women to become the next generation of scientific leaders. He established a signature program at Vertex to enhance science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education among students in Vertex’s local communities, including an on-site Learning Lab, mentorship programs, internships and college scholarships. In 2017, Vertex announced a sustained corporate giving commitment of $500 million over the next 10 years, of which $50 million is focused on STEAM education.

In addition to his responsibilities at Vertex, Dr. Leiden is currently Chairman of Casana, a home health monitoring company, and Chairman of Tmunity Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing novel T-cell immunotherapies to treat solid tumors. He is Vice Chairman of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and a director of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. Dr. Leiden also serves on the board of fellows of Harvard Medical School and as co-chair of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s STEM Advisory Council and Digital Health Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians. He received his B.A., M.D. and Ph.D. degrees with honors from the University of Chicago.

chairman of Akamai Technologies, which he joined as Chief Operating Officer and employee #15 in 1998 when the company launched out of MIT.

A three-time Emmy Award winner for broadcast journalism, Paul serves as chairman of the board of ProPublica, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In all of his roles, Paul leverages his broad leadership capabilities, investment experience, and skills as an operator to advise and support CEOs and founding teams, with a particular focus on internet infrastructure, software and services.

He is also the founder and former Chief Medical and Chief Technology Officer at higi, where he led the development of the company’s products and technologies, focusing on patient engagement and positively impacting health outcomes through behavior change principles.

Dr. Siddiqui holds multiple patents for technology in areas of deep learning, AI, image processing, data visualization, as well as securing patient information handling and health records. His recent research includes large scale studies on the impact of ubiquitous access to health in combination with artificial intelligence and persuasive technologies to improve healthcare outcomes. Dr. Siddiqui particularly focuses on how to secure and protect data while enabling development of deep learning models to accelerate practical applications of AI in healthcare.

Prior to founding higi in 2012, Dr. Siddiqui was a Physician Executive and Principal Program Manager at Microsoft where he was responsible for platform engineering and machine learning for the health solutions group. His Microsoft legacy includes stimulating computer vision and machine learning research that led to the development of the regression forest algorithms, which became the foundation technology in the Xbox Kinect. Dr. Siddiqui was also responsible for developing Microsoft’s cloud (Azure) based medical imaging products and infrastructure.

Prior to Microsoft, Dr. Siddiqui was Director of Center for Biomedical Imaging and Informatics at Johns Hopkins University, Program Director of Imaging Informatics and MRI Fellowship Programs at University of Maryland and also the founding chair of American College of Radiology’s Imaging Informatics and IT Commission. He is a graduate of the Aga Khan University Medical College in Pakistan, completed his training in Medicine at New York University, Radiology training at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, along with his fellowship in the Imaging Informatics at University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Siddiqui has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers and has given 100s of invited talks. Dr. Siddiqui is member of board of directors as well as advisory boards of various startups around the world and sits on various national committees on health care and medical imaging.

In his spare time, Dr. Siddiqui loves spending time with his family. He and his two sons can often be found exploring Chicago on bikes in between painting and SCUBA diving.