Philip Ashton-Rickardt has built a career around science, leadership, and the willingness to take a different path when needed. Raised in the UK in a working-class family, he learned early that progress would require independence, persistence, and the confidence to make his own way.
He earned a BSc with honours from King’s College London before completing a PhD in Molecular Immunology at the University of Edinburgh. He later trained at MIT and began an academic career that included senior roles at the University of Chicago and Imperial College London.
After more than two decades in academia, Ashton-Rickardt made a major career change. In 2017, he returned to Boston and founded Smith Therapeutics. The company focused on engineered immune cell therapies for neurological diseases, including multiple sclerosis and ALS. The move introduced him to company building and helped shape the next stage of his career.
He later held scientific leadership roles at AZTherapies and Sigilon Therapeutics. At Sigilon, he helped guide research and development around engineered living cell therapies. The company was acquired by Eli Lilly in 2023.
Ashton-Rickardt has continued working at the intersection of science and entrepreneurship. He co-founded Halyard Therapeutics and later became Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer of BE Therapeutics, where his work focuses on engineered cell therapies for brain disorders.
Throughout his career, he has relied on resilience, curiosity, flexibility, and high personal standards. He continues to see learning as central to both scientific progress and long-term success.
What does success mean to you?
Success means creating something new and important while staying true to my own standards. I have never thought of success as simply reaching a certain title. I spent many years in academia, became a professor, and eventually held a senior position at Imperial College London. Those were meaningful achievements, but they were never the final destination.
My definition of success has changed as my career has changed. Today, I think more about whether I am working on problems that matter, whether I am still learning, and whether the work has the potential to make a real difference. I also think success means being able to look at your own work and know that it meets the standards you have set for yourself.
Did growing up in a working-class family affect the way you think about success?
Very much so. I did not grow up with a clear roadmap for becoming a scientist or professor. I had to chart my own progress through college and into an academic career.
That taught me independence. When there is no obvious path, you learn to figure things out for yourself. I think that experience later helped me when I became a company founder. Starting a biotech company is similar in some ways. There is no perfect instruction manual. You have to make decisions with incomplete information, learn quickly, and keep moving.
That background also made me value progress. I tend to think less about where someone started and more about how far they have been willing to go.
Was leaving academia one of the biggest risks you have taken?
Yes. I had spent more than 20 years building an academic career. I had positions at the University of Chicago and Imperial College London, so leaving that environment meant stepping away from something familiar.
I reached a difficult point in my career at Imperial, and it forced me to think seriously about what I wanted next. Instead of trying to recreate the same career somewhere else, I decided to return to Boston and start Smith Therapeutics.
That decision taught me something important about success. A difficult period can become the beginning of a completely different chapter. You do not always see that while you are going through it, but sometimes change creates opportunities that would not have existed otherwise.
What did starting Smith Therapeutics teach you?
It taught me that having a good scientific idea is only the beginning. I was interested in using engineered immune cells to approach neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and ALS. But building a company around an idea requires a very different set of skills.
You have to explain why the science matters, decide what deserves resources, find the right people, and know when an idea needs to change. In academia, you can sometimes follow an interesting question because it is intellectually valuable. In biotech, you also have to ask whether the work has a realistic path toward helping patients.
That discipline changed the way I think. It made me more focused on turning ideas into something useful.
How do you handle setbacks when something important is not going well?
I try to think back to times when things were worse. That gives me perspective. Then I take one step at a time.
Science almost trains you for this. Experiments fail. Programs change. Companies change direction. What looked promising six months ago may no longer be the best path.
Resilience is important, but flexibility matters just as much. I do not think resilience means stubbornly doing the same thing forever. Sometimes resilience means accepting that circumstances have changed and finding a better way forward.
What qualities have mattered most throughout your career?
Curiosity, hard work, resilience, and flexibility. I would also add authenticity.
You need curiosity because science never stops changing. I completed my PhD decades ago, but I cannot work as though everything I learned then is enough. Cell therapy, engineered immune cells, iPSC technology, and approaches to brain disorders continue to develop.
I try to always learn. That keeps the work interesting, but it is also necessary if you want to remain useful as a scientific leader. The moment you believe you have nothing left to learn is probably the moment you start falling behind.
Has your definition of leadership changed since moving into biotech?
Yes. As a young scientist, success can feel very individual. You think about your experiment, your paper, or your next academic step. As you become responsible for larger groups and organisations, that changes.
Leadership becomes more about creating the conditions for other people to do strong work. You still need scientific judgement, but you also need to know when to listen, when to challenge an idea, and when to let someone else own the solution.
I have my own standards, and they are high, but leadership is not about making everyone work exactly as I would. It is about getting people with different strengths moving toward the same goal.
What keeps you motivated after such a long career in science?
The possibility that there is still something important to build. I have moved from academic research to entrepreneurship, established biotech companies, advisory work, and now engineered cell therapies for brain disorders. Each stage has given me another problem to solve and another reason to keep learning.
I also make room for life outside work. My family keeps me grounded. I read, write, run, and follow Liverpool Football Club. Those things matter because a career is only one part of a life.
For me, success means being able to keep learning and building while still recognising what matters outside the laboratory or boardroom.