Healthcare Industries: Pharmaceuticals & Life SciencesFunctional Specialties: Market & Growth Strategy, Customer Engagement Strategy, Product Development & Forecasting, Operating Model Design

Founded a venture fund to provide student entrepreneurs with pre-seed, non-dilutive capital and professional mentorship. Raised $2M in investor funding, scaled organization by 10x, and worked with over 200 startups to-date.

Our work investigated the value of transmembrane stem cell factor (tmSCF) as a therapy for peripheral ischemia and the impact that lipid nanocarriers have on both the safety profile and activity of such agents. While soluble SCF has been limited in clinical treatments due to toxicity related to mast cell activation, our work supports that there is minimal mast cell activation by tmSCF-based therapies and that the activity can be targeted to specific cell types and internalization pathways through the use of different nanocarriers. When delivered via lipid nanocarriers (i.e., nanodiscs and proteoliposomes), tmSCF treatments improved blood flow recoveries in ischemic mice models. After demonstrated in vitro and in vivo success, there is a patent on our treatment.Expertise in cell culture, ion exchange & affinity chromatography techniques, protein assays (e.g., western blot, silver stain, ELISA), FACS analysis (i.e., flow cytometry), animal models / tissue analysis.

Project to identify viable species of the Prototheca algal genus for commercial use in the food and cosmetics industries. This relied heavily on DNA sequencing experiments and gene analysis. Gained expertise in PCR, recombination, inoculation, DNA extraction, and basic bioinformatics tools.