Dr. Olivia Walch is the CEO and founder of Arcascope, a startup pioneering dynamic circadian tracking in clinical trials. Her work centers on leveraging smartphones and wearables to monitor and optimize circadian rhythms in real-world conditions, with the aim of reducing clinical trial failures by accounting for circadian timing.
Her research has been featured in CNN, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. In addition to her scientific work, she is the co-editor of the textbook Political Geometry (Birkhäuser) and the author of the popular science book SLEEP GROOVE.
Under her leadership, Arcascope is redefining drug development by identifying compounds that failed—not due to inefficacy, but because they were administered at the wrong time of day. The company’s platform combines proprietary circadian biomarker data with domain-specific AI to identify, de-risk, and advance high-potential therapeutic assets whose efficacy is time-dependent.
Arcascope focuses on shelved, off-patent, underdeveloped, or failed late-stage drugs with circadian potential—such as vatalanib and motesanib, both of which failed in Phase III trials but demonstrated dramatically improved efficacy in Arcascope’s preclinical studies when administered at circadian-optimized times.
By repositioning these compounds through method-of-use innovation, Arcascope compresses traditional development timelines, reduces capital requirements, and unlocks significant clinical and commercial value.
