Dr. Sonia Setayesh is a Partner at Civilization Ventures where she focuses on identifying and supporting breakthrough biotechnology companies across therapeutics, diagnostics, and enabling platforms. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where she developed single-cell diagnostic tools for early cancer detection by integrating multiplexed molecular profiling with machine learning. Her work led to the invention of a patented liquid biopsy for early breast cancer detection that has advanced to clinical trials. Prior to her work in diagnostics, she worked on immunotherapy discovery at City of Hope, helping develop cell therapies for leukemia and lymphoma that moved into human trials. Sonia has co-authored more than a dozen publications in scientific journals and focuses on helping founders translate technologies into the clinic.