Pai Advisory, LLC · Ruth-Anne Pai, PhD
Turning patient priorities into funded, well-run research.
I help nonprofits, philanthropy, and industry partners move mission-driven science forward, combining the rigor of a publishing scientist, the discipline of a program leader, the perspective of a patient, and AI used well as an accelerator.
The challenges I unlock
Where I move the needle.
Mission-driven science stalls in predictable places: priorities that never become fundable plans, AI tools that get talked about but never implemented, and complex programs that lose the patient, or the timeline. I work at exactly those chokepoints, across three kinds of organizations.
From mission to funded research.
You know your community's priorities. Turning them into a research agenda funders will back is a different skill set.
- Research agendas, roadmaps, and gap analyses
- Patient-partnered study & natural-history design
- Grant strategy that converts relationships into dollars
- AI literacy your small team can actually use
From portfolio to real leverage.
Deploying capital across many diseases and grantees demands landscape clarity and disciplined execution, not just good intentions.
- Landscape & whitespace analysis across disease areas
- Grant-approval memos and scientific due diligence
- Cross-grantee convening and training
- Monitoring, evaluation, and impact frameworks
From target to credible program.
Patient-partnered evidence and AI-designed biology are now competitive advantages, if you have someone who can build and pressure-test both.
- Target & disease landscaping, AI-assisted
- AI-assisted modality exploration & in-silico design concepts
- Patient voice for trials, PFDD, and endpoints
- Program governance and cross-functional delivery
Working with AI
AI, used well and open-sourced.
AI is a tool in my work, not the point of it. Through expert prompting and skill-building, I use AI to move the real work faster: research and disease landscaping, target analysis, and drafting. The strategy stays with my judgment and experience, and every result runs through the scientific checks, criticism, and validation that keep it honest.
And I don't just prompt a chatbot. I build. As an early adopter of Claude Cowork and Claude Science, I design specialist skills and agents for real research work, and wire in the validation loops that keep them trustworthy. When I build something reusable, I open-source it so other teams can use it too.
Selected from ~6,000 applicants (top ~8%) for the Built with Claude: Life Sciences Hackathon. The work spans twelve open-source repositories, from omics analysis to target mining to manuscript drafting.
About
A scientist, a program leader, and a patient, with an AI toolkit.
I'm Ruth-Anne Pai, PhD, an immunologist by training and a builder by instinct. I build the scaffolding that lets science move: the relationships and scientific capacity-building that unlock progress, and the strategy to scale what works. Along the way I've directed research strategy for a rare disease nonprofit, driven the science agenda of a patient-founded research network, and earned a PhD studying the immune biology of Castleman disease.
My work sits at an unusual intersection: the rigor of a publishing scientist, the operational discipline of a program leader who has scoped seven-figure grants and shepherded multi-year partnerships, and the lived perspective of a patient. Increasingly I bring a fourth strength: fluency with AI, not as a user but as someone who designs, builds, and critically validates the tools mission-driven teams need.
Through Pai Advisory, I bring that whole toolkit to the organizations doing the hardest, most important work in rare disease and beyond.
Patient-Partnered Science
More than a decade keeping the patient voice central to how research gets prioritized, designed, funded, and delivered.
AI-Accelerated Research
Using AI as a tool, and building skills and agents, with the checks and validation that keep results trustworthy.
Program Leadership
Governance, timelines, partnerships, and cross-functional delivery for complex, multi-stakeholder science.
Scientific rigor, program discipline, patient partnership, and AI used well — I bring all four to the same table, so they reinforce each other instead of living in separate silos.
— Ruth-Anne Pai, PhD · Founder, Pai Advisory, LLC
Selected work
A track record of turning priorities into progress.
What I bring
Skills across AI, bio, and nonprofit.
AI & Data
- Research & disease landscaping (Claude Science)
- AI literacy & enablement
- Applied AI / LLM workflows
- Specialist agent & skill development
Science & Bio
- Immunology (PhD)
- Translational research strategy
- Multiomics analysis (Claude Science)
- Scientific writing & review (with or without AI)
Program & Nonprofit
- Cross-functional program management & governance
- Grant writing & capacity building
- Patient advocacy & engagement
- Partnerships & stakeholder alignment
Work with me
Two ways to put this to work.
Whether you need senior capacity for a season or a leader to own the mission long-term, the same combination comes with it: scientific rigor, program discipline, patient partnership, and AI you can trust.
Contact
Let's work together.
Tell me about your organization and what you're trying to move forward. I'll reply within a couple of business days.
Seattle, WA & remote
Engagements are hourly or project-based. I offer sliding-scale rates for mission-driven and patient-led organizations, because the work matters more than the invoice. For-profit and industry engagements are scoped to the project; reach out and we'll find a fit.