David P. Roberson

About David P. Roberson

Neuroscientist and serial biotech and tech founder-operator driven to advance scientific discovery. I thrive when told “it can’t be done,” and am fueled by proving naysayers wrong.• As a Harvard Neuroscience PhD student, under Clifford Woolf, MD, PhD, I co-invented a new class of sodium-channel-blocker medicines (“nocions”) and the blackbox imaging technology used in discovering them.• During my postdoc at Boston Children’s Hospital I developed and patented deep-tech neuroscientific instruments that employ AI-driven machine vision to find new medicines through their effects on lab-mouse behavior.• As a data analyst at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), I contributed linguistic coding to train recurrent neural networks (RNNs)—early precursors to today’s large language models (LLMs).• As junior faculty at Harvard Medical School, I mentored a computational biology PhD student in developing automated scoring for blackbox behavioral data—later recruiting him as Blackbox Bio’s Head of Data Science.• As founding CEO of deep-tech startup Blackbox Bio, I led a multidisciplinary team of AI developers, neuroscientists, software engineers, and hardware designers disrupting how neuroscience discoveries are made and how new medicines are discovered at academic and biopharma labs worldwide—including multiple top global pharma companies.• As scientific co-founder of Nocion Therapeutics, I contributed to the invention of clinical-stage investigational drugs now in Phase 3 development.• As scientific co-founder of Cacti Therapeutics, I invented “nociplastigens” for chronic pain and neurological disorders.• As co-founder and COO of Blue Therapeutics, I led IND-enabling studies of our non-addictive painkiller BLUE-181.• As an instructor at Harvard, I taught the graduate section of “Neurobiology of Drug Addiction” and served as a Teaching Fellow for Jeff Lichtman’s “Neuroscience of Behavior” class (MCB80).• As scientific advisor to the Texas-led U.S. Ibogaine Initiative, I supported Governor Rick Perry and W. Bryan Hubbard in advancing psychedelic medicine policy.• My translational track record spans elucidation of basic neural mechanisms to discovery of clinical-candidate NCEs, including first-author publications in top-tier journals and executive experience across science, technology, and business.

Experience

1. Founder

   Stealth

   Jan 2026 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   Stay tuned.

Education

• Harding University

  Bachelor of Arts - BA, Psychology

  1991 — 1996

• Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

  Medical School

  2006 — 2010

• Harding University

  Master of Business Administration (MBA)

  2003 — 2005

• Harvard Medical School

  Postdoctoral Fellowship in Analgesic Drug Development

  2015 — 2019

• Harvard University

  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Neuroscience

  2010 — 2015

Skills

• Clinical Research
• Tissue Culture
• Histology
• Engineering
• Assay Development
• Biophysics
• Neuroscience
• Storage Systems
• Statistical Data Analysis
• Molecular Biology
• Fluorescence Microscopy
• Cell Biology
• Industrial Design
• C++
• Mechanical Engineering
• Research
• 3d Rendering
• Data Analysis
• Animal Models
• Science
• Biochemistry
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Microscopy
• Life Sciences
• Html Scripting
• Cinema 4d
• Scientific Writing
• 3d Modeling
• Storage Management
• Autocad
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Immunofluorescence
• Cgi/Perl
• In Vitro
• Solidworks
• Drug Discovery
• Experimental Design
• In Vivo
• Cell Signaling
• Computer Graphics