Taruho Kuroda, PhD (Taru) has previously served as a senior director of global pharmaceutical companies, where he led cutting-edge open innovation and business development. At the same time, he has provided consulting and mentoring in the life science and healthcare fields as a sideline, and as COO of Newsight Tech Angels, Inc. which he co-founded in 2022, he leads global angel investments in the biotech and healthcare space. He is also the Life Science Cluster Program Champion for Venture Cafe Tokyo. He has served as a mentor or judge for more than 10 accelerator programs and led market research as BioLabs Japan Liaison.He has been an academic researcher for 10 years since 2004, working at Harvard Medical School and other institutions. He has received various awards including the Human Frontier Science Program. He joined Bayer in 2014 as Alliance Manager/Senior Scientist at Bayer's Open Innovation Center, where he is responsible for Bayer's Open Innovation Center's partnerships with academia, startups, and other companies to accelerate the implementation of scientific discoveries in society. Through this role, he helped strengthen Bayer's open innovation through partnerships with academia, startups, and other companies. He moved to LEO Pharma in 2019 as Senior Director, where he established a new department to lead innovation and business development in dermatology.Taru holds B.A. and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical sciences from Hokkaido University as well as a pharmacist license. On weekends he enjoys fitness as a ZUMBA® instructor.