Three new scientific leaders and the appointment of former White House Chief Healthcare Economist Jonathan Ketcham, PhD, to the advisory board deepen Radicle’s ability to turn rigorous evidence into precision insights, better health outcomes and measurable economic value

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Radicle Science, an AI-native healthtech company powering the evidence and innovation infrastructure for proven, precision wellness, today announced that three scientific leaders have joined its executive team, alongside the appointment of former White House Chief Healthcare Economist Jonathan Ketcham, PhD, to its advisory board.

Valerie Starratt, PhD, joins as Vice President of Science and Data; Sham Dholakia, MD, DPhil, as Vice President of Science and Innovation; and Jaime Tartar, PhD, as Vice President of Clinical Science. Together with Ketcham, the expanded team brings additional expertise spanning clinical research, biostatistics and data science, product innovation, biopharma, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, health economics and healthcare policy.

These additions deepen Radicle’s ability not only to generate rigorous evidence at scale, but to amplify its value and impact—revealing what works, for whom, and under what conditions, and demonstrating how better health outcomes can translate into measurable economic value.

“Radicle was built on the belief that the future of wellness must be both proven and precise,” said Radicle Science co-founders Pelin Thorogood and Jeff Chen, MD/MBA. “As the scale and sophistication of our research continue to grow, so does our opportunity to turn rigorous evidence into deeper precision insights and better health outcomes. Adding these exceptional leaders across science, data, healthcare and economics allows us to connect evidence more directly to health and economic impact—and demonstrate that improving health can create value not only for individuals and healthcare systems, but also for employers and the economy as a whole.”

Valerie Starratt, PhD, Vice President of Science and Data, leads Radicle’s scientific strategy, biostatistics and data science initiatives, and oversees the design and analytical strategy for its decentralized clinical trials. She brings more than two decades of academic and scientific research experience spanning biological and behavioral science, quantitative methods and clinical research design, most recently as a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Nova Southeastern University. Starratt earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Florida Atlantic University.

Sham Dholakia, MD, DPhil, Vice President of Science and Innovation, leads Radicle’s translation of clinical evidence into new products, formulations and defensible claims. He is a physician and healthcare innovator whose work spans pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices and artificial intelligence. A former surgeon with a focus on vascular and transplant surgery, Dholakia has designed and led preclinical and clinical studies across all phases of development, from first-in-human through pivotal trials, and has served as chief medical officer at CareDx, the transplant diagnostics company, and at GEn1E Lifesciences, an AI-driven drug discovery platform. He earned his medical degree from Imperial College London and a DPhil in Surgical Science, Immunology and Inflammation from the University of Oxford. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Jaime Tartar, PhD, Vice President of Clinical Science, is a neuroscientist who concurrently serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Nova Southeastern University, where she received the President’s Distinguished Professor Award of Excellence. She earned her doctorate in Psychology with a Behavioral Neuroscience concentration from the University of Florida and completed postdoctoral training in neurophysiology and sleep at Harvard Medical School. Tartar has served as principal investigator on numerous randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials evaluating dietary supplements and wellness interventions, and guides Radicle research spanning the gut microbiome, probiotics, cognition and sleep.

“What I appreciate most about Radicle is that we are fully committed not just to rigorous science, but science that is actionable and impactful,” Starratt said. “We have to design research that’s strong enough to produce meaningful evidence and practical enough to work in the real world for real people.”

Radicle has also expanded its advisory board with the appointment of Jonathan Ketcham, PhD, strengthening the company’s ability to assess not only how wellness interventions improve health outcomes, but also the economic value those improvements can create. Ketcham is the Earl and Gladys Davis Distinguished Research Professor of Business at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business and founder of Margin Health. From 2025 to 2026, he served as Chief Healthcare Economist at the White House, advising on U.S. healthcare policy. His research examines how incentives, information and institutional design influence decisions by payers, providers and patients, using causal-inference methods across experimental and real-world data.

“Health innovation scales when evidence, incentives and value align,” Ketcham said. “Radicle has a unique opportunity to show how better wellness outcomes can translate into economic value—and ultimately drive broader adoption of what works.”

By bringing together leaders across these complementary disciplines, Radicle is creating compounding value from evidence—as advances in science, data, innovation and health economics strengthen one another and accelerate the path from evidence to impact. Together, they advance Radicle’s long-term vision of making proven, precision wellness accessible to all.

About Radicle Science

Radicle Science is an AI-native healthtech company powering the evidence and innovation infrastructure for proven, precision wellness. Its patented Proof-as-a-Service platform combines artificial intelligence, citizen science and decentralized clinical trials to generate rigorous health data at unprecedented speed, scale and precision. Radicle empowers consumer health companies to validate existing products, develop novel patentable formulations and make strong, defensible claims. Since 2021, Radicle has conducted randomized, placebo-controlled trials involving approximately 100,000 diverse Americans across all 50 states, generating precision health insights into what works for whom. Radicle Science has been recognized by Fast Company for a World Changing Idea, by KPMG as a leading U.S. technology innovator, and by Inc. among America’s fastest-growing private companies for a second consecutive year.

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