Dr. Linda Couto serves as Chief Scientific Officer of Rhygaze, Inc. She has over 30 years of experience in the pre-clinical development of gene therapies across multiple therapeutic areas, including ophthalmology, hematology, audiology and infectious disease.  She previously held positions at Akouos, Atsena and Spark Therapeutics. At Spark she played a key role in directing non-clinical and assay development activities to support the commercialization of Luxturna, the first gene therapy licensed in the US for a genetic disease. In addition, she supervised IND-enabling studies to support the clinical development of gene therapies to treat hemophilia A and B. Dr. Couto holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University.