The team behind OAI
OAI was founded by two students who believe that understanding rare disease access requires both scientific fluency and systems thinking.
Aarush Shah co-founded the Orphan Access Initiative and shapes its research agenda, working where healthcare meets capital. His focus is the economic machinery that decides which rare disease treatments get built, and who can afford them once they exist. He leads the financial and access track, modeling R&D costs, reimbursement constraints, and the funding structures that determine whether a therapy ever reaches a patient. He also designed and built the AI systems that run OAI Nexus.
He is the founder of ShahTrades, a biotech and equity research platform with over 1 million views, where he runs the Financial Oncology Research Lab. He also serves as CEO and Head of Healthcare Equity Research at Advanced Equities, and has worked in strategic finance across oncology and asset management.
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Veer Chandwani is a student researcher focused on the clinical barriers that limit treatment access in ultra-rare disease. As Co-Founder, he leads OAI's clinical research track, analyzing disease biology, trial design constraints, and the regulatory challenges that slow development from the lab toward patients.
Through physician interviews, literature review, and trial analysis, he examines how therapies actually move from lab to patient. His work identifies where clinical development becomes constrained, contributing the scientific grounding behind OAI's research.
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OAI was founded by students and operates with the rigor, curiosity, and independence that serious academic research demands.
Our research is not funded by industry, payers, or advocacy organizations. We follow evidence, not interests.
All Access Reports, educational content, and interview transcripts are freely available to the rare disease community.