Ulrich Elling is cofounder and CTO of ViVerita Therapeutics as well as managing director of its Austrian subsidiary, ViVerita Discovery. He also cofounded JLP Health and acts as political advisor. Before joining ViVerita, Ulrich was a Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences from 2014 to 2024. During the pandemic, he performed the national SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance for Austria and served in various advisory roles for the government and WHO, and in public outreach.

Ulrich is a leader in the development of functional genomics tools, in particular around haploid genetics and CRISPR/Cas9. As such, he is a long-standing collaborator and advisor to Tango Therapeutics. He supported implementation of his technical improvements into the Tango target discovery pipeline including CRISPR-UMI for higher resolution screening by single-cell tracing, CRISPR, StAR for in vivo screening, and the VBC-score as an improved sgRNA design tool. Using his screening technologies to unveil genetic and chemogenetic interactions, he developed an expertise in stem cell- and cancer- biology.

Ulrich conducted his postdoctoral studies in the lab of Josef Penninger at IMBA. He performed his PhD thesis work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg/GER and received his PhD from the Univ. of Regensburg/GER. He also studied in Regensburg as well as Boulder, CO.