Maria Lai joined Quantum in February 2026 as a Regulatory Specialist. She has over 10 years of experience in both academia and biotech with a strong technical background in cell and gene therapy, genomics and transcriptomics, and molecular biology. Most recently, she led applications development for a non-viral gene delivery platform, enabling efficient cell engineering from discovery through manufacturing. Prior to that, she focused on developing genomic NGS assays to detect CRISPR-mediated events and transcriptomic NGS assays to capture nascent and steady-state RNA. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Development Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she studied protein interactions in signaling pathways that regulate retinal vascular development.