Laurence Ion
Laurence Ion is the Director of Vitality Healthspan Foundation, the Founding Steward and Strategy Advisor at VitaDAO, and Co-initiator at Vitalia.city. He is a versatile individual known for being an entrepreneur by day and a hacker by night.
At VitaDAO since 2021, Laurence has been the Steward of the Dealflow Working Group, helping fund aging research projects and spinning out longevity biotech startups to extend a healthy lifespan. They are the world’s first decentralized collective, funding early-stage longevity research. Their mission is to extend the human lifespan by researching, financing, and commercializing longevity therapeutics openly and democratically. Read VitaDAO Closes $4.1m Fundraising Round With Pfizer And Shine Capital.
In 2023, Laurence co-initiated Vitalia.city, a multi-jurisdictional city to faster create longevity therapies, in 4 months to get to market, instead of 10+ years. It will harbor life scientists, artists, biotechnology engineers, and an entrepreneurially driven community who love life and want to see the future. From the idea of the pop-up city Zuzalu, organized by Vitalik Buterin in Montenegro, it will be the first ongoing permanent district on the Caribbean island of Roatan.
Watch Laurence Ion on Vitalia’s Vision for Longevity Cities at The Network State Conference and Starting a Longevity City: Niklas Anzinger and Laurence Ion Introduce Vitalia at EARD 2023.
He is a Core member at JellyfishDAO, making movies inspiring humanity about how great a world with longevity would be. He is also a Member at BeakerDAO, where he is funding Decentralized Science projects.
In 2021, Laurence became the Director of the Vitality Healthspan Foundation, a not-for-profit to advance the development of biomedical interventions that addresses age-related diseases to improve healthspan. Read A New Kind Of Organization Is Here To Disrupt Big Pharma — And They Cannot Stop It. Watch Decentralised Longevity Science and Communities — Laurence Ion at Longevity Summit Dublin 2024.
In 2023, Laurence was also the Core Organizer of Zuzalu.city. The first-of-its-kind pop-up city, initiated by Vitalik Buterin in Montenegro, where 200 core residents were brought together by a shared desire to learn, create, live longer and healthier lives, and build self-sustaining communities. The Zuzalu community continues with gatherings around various conferences like ZuConnect 2023 in Istanbul, and many more, as well as developing open-source software for more pop-up cities and permanent settlements to be created.
Previously, Laurence was the Cofounder of Wabbit, which later became Intersect App. Intersect recommends new people based on the places you’ve been in real life.
Laurence earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Bucharest in 2016. He also studied and earned a degree in Computer Science at the Ion C. Bratianu National College in Pitesti between 2009 and 2013.
Read Guardian : Privacy-preserving Infection Risk Alert System that actually scales and Decentralizing Longevity Research Funding with VitaDAO’s Laurence Ion.
Watch Laurence Ion | Vitalia: New Cities to Accelerate Scientific Progress and Make Death Optional, The Network State Conference 2023 — Laurence Ion — Vitalia, and Laurence Ion & Vincent Weisser: Vita DAO — From DeSci to Longevity Research.
Watch Laurence Ion from VitaDAO on Slaying the Dragon Tyrant of Aging, Forming a Network Union of Bioscientists and Crypto-Native Nomadic Tribes In Search for Legal Autonomy, and Laurence Ion | Vitalia: New Cities to Accelerate Scientific Progress and Make Death Optional.
Listen to VitaDAO: Democratizing Longevity Research | Laurence Ion + Theo Beutel.
Laurence is also a member of the Live Forever Club.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, Clay profile, and his Signal page. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, Quora, Crunchbase, YouTube, GitHub, and Twitter.