From Idea to IPO: The Technology Venture Course (12 weeks)

Course Director

Monica Kerr, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Monica Kerr earned her PhD in cell and developmental biology from the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program at Harvard Medical School. Here she worked with Lewis Cantley, who discovered PI 3-kinase, identifying a new component in the PI 3-kinase pathway through a proteome-wide screen for novel phosphoinositide binding proteins. She then explored the role of this previously uncharacterized protein in Norbert Perrimon's laboratory, employing functional genetic techniques in Drosophila.

Leaving the bench but remaining at Harvard, Monica subsequently moved over to the Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Department to focus on higher education as an instructor and curriculum fellow. She taught and developed science-based curricula for undergraduate, graduate, and medical school science courses, as well as led career advancement initiatives for science PhDs. Throughout her tenure at Harvard, Monica founded a new professional development series for life scientists, received two teaching awards, and was selected to participate in the Harvard Macy Institute's Program for Educators in Health Professions.

Monica joined the New York Academy of Sciences in February 2010 as the Director of Science Alliance, an international career development program for graduate students and postdocs in the sciences.

Speakers

Jahan Ali

New York City Investment Fund

Jahan is Senior Vice President at the New York City Investment Fund and manages the Fund’s investments in the health care sector, including the BioAccelerate NYC Prize competition (www.bioacceleratenyc.org).

Prior to joining NYCIF, Jahan ran her own technology commercialization consulting business, where she worked with entrepreneurs and not for profit research and product development partnerships. Prior to that, Jahan was the Director of Technology Transfer at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where she focused on creating partnerships and licensing in the orthopedic sector. Before that, Jahan was with Mojave Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing therapeutic vaccines, with heat shock protein delivery technology. At Mojave, she successfully identified synergistic partnership opportunities, research collaborations and competitor market research. Prior to that, Jahan was at Mount Sinai School of Medicine's Office of Industrial Liaison. Jahan has a Ph.D. from New York University School of Medicine.

Piraye Yurttas Beim, PhD *

Celmatix, Inc.

Piraye Yurttas Beim is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Celmatix, Inc., an early stage, venture-backed, biotechnology company based in TriBeCa, New York City. Celmatix is developing the world¹s first non-invasive, genetics-based diagnostic for assessing female egg quality and female infertility. The FertilArray test will be a multi-parametric diagnostic, assaying genetic, phenotypic, and environmental determinants of infertility. This vital personalized information will allow women and their doctors to optimize family planning, fertility preservation, and infertility treatments. Piraye performed her postdoctoral work in the field of mammalian pre-implantation embryology at the Gurdon Institute of the University of Cambridge in the UK and her doctoral work on the molecular and genetic underpinnings of mammalian infertility at Cornell University, Weill Medical College/Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City.

Stephen Goodman, JD

Pryor Cashman LLP

Stephen M. Goodman is co-head of the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice at Pryor Cashman LLP. He has extensive experience representing technology-based companies in public offerings; private placements; limited liability company, partnership and joint venture agreements; and complex arrangements for the acquisition, sale, development and commercialization of patents, copyrights and trademarks, in particular for drug compounds and formulations, software and other technology.

Mr. Goodman has also written on topics ranging from export controls relating to biotechnology research to raising seed capital for entrepreneurial companies and has lectured on various aspects of pharmaceutical/biotech collaboration agreements.

Mr. Goodman is a 1977 graduate of New York University School of Law, where he was Order of the Coif and Articles Editor of the Annual Survey of American Law.

Chris Hayter, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Christopher S. Hayter, PhD, serves as Director of Innovation and Sustainability at the New York Academy of Sciences where he leads the group’s work in program evaluation, higher education and science policy, and entrepreneurship research. He also serves as the project lead for Academy’s capacity-building and evaluation partnership with the Malaysian government. He has more than ten years of experience managing complex science and innovation policy projects at organizations such as National Governors Association, Council on Competitiveness, National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP). He also worked for five years in the private sector establishing and managing new resort ventures for a large hospitality company. Prior to joining the Academy, Dr. Hayter served as Visiting Lecturer of Public Policy at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He holds a Ph.D. from George Washington University in Science Policy and Economics and has (co)authored numerous policy and peer-reviewed publications.

Arthur Klausner

Life Sciences and Venture Capital Consultant

A seasoned life sciences venture capitalist, Klausner spent a total of 18 years at Domain Associates (1990-2004) and Pappas Ventures (2005-2009). During that time, he was involved in the investment in and subsequent nurturing of a variety of biotechnology, specialty pharmaceutical, and medical device companies. Klausner has been a board member at Santarus (IPO in 2004, Nasdaq: SNTS), X-Ceptor (acquired by Exelixis in 2004), Orexigen (IPO in 2007, Nasdaq: OREX), Altea Therapeutics, CeNeRx BioPharma, Gentis, and Syndax Pharmaceuticals, and a board observer at Peninsula Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2005), Cerexa (acquired by Forest Laboratories in 2007), and Optherion.

Among his other activities, he currently serves as Chief Business Officer and on the Board of Directors of Neurotez (a privately held biotherapeutics company focused on Alzheimer’s disease). He is on the Advisory Boards of Edge Therapeutics, Northeast Securities, and Fritsche Capital Group, and he is on the Life Science Investment Review Board for the New York University Innovation Venture Fund.

Klausner began his venture capital career after earning an M.B.A. at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. While attending business school, he completed summer internships emphasizing corporate planning and market research functions at ImClone Systems and Neurogen, two start up biopharmaceutical companies that subsequently went public. Previously, Klausner had spent six years at Bio/Technology magazine (now Nature Biotechnology), where as Senior Editor he researched and prepared over 200 articles concerning scientific and business aspects of applied biology. He has also performed consulting projects for the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, Arthur D. Little Decision Resources, and a range of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. His undergraduate degree in Biology is from Princeton University.

Aaron Rabinowitz, JD

Woodcock Washburn LLP

Aaron Rabinowitz is an intellectual property attorney with Woodcock Washburn LLP in Philadelphia, where he focuses on every step of patent law, from drafting and prosecuting complex patent applications to litigating granted patents in federal trial and appeals courts. Aaron has experience with patent validity and infringement opinions as well as with due diligence and licensing matters.

Aaron works with a broad range of technologies, including DNA manipulation and sequencing, genomic analysis, microarrays, nanotechnology, alternative energy technologies, fuel cells, wound dressings, medical instrumentation, beverage container technology, pharmaceutical formulations, building materials, and printable electronics. Aaron also directs prosecution of international patent portfolios for a diverse group of clients, and has prosecuted numerous patents to completion in the United States and abroad.

A chemical engineer by training, Aaron holds degrees from Princeton University (undergraduate), the University of Pennsylvania (graduate), and Temple University (law school). Before coming to Woodcock Washburn, Aaron served as a law clerk to Judge Franklin S. Van Antwerpen of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and to Judge Jan E. DuBois of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Aaron is also an adjunct professor of patent law at Temple University School of Law.

Zach Schildhorn

Lux Capital

Zack is a Vice President and Director of Operations with Lux Capital, based in the Firm's New York headquarters. Zack has been working with Lux since 2006, focusing on marketing, operations, and investments within energy, novel materials, and technologies at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. Zack has worked extensively with a number of Lux portfolio companies including Transphorm, Kurion, and Siluria.

Before joining Lux, Zack worked as an expedition photographer on the Colorado Plateau. He received his B.S. cum laude from Cornell University's College of Engineering, where he developed his own curriculum to study materials science engineering and business entrepreneurship. He also completed his M.B.A. at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management after being chosen for a highly selective dual-degree program. Zack is a regular contributing editor for Forbes and has been an invited speaker and guest lecturer at Cornell University, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Donna See, MBA, MPH

Columbia University

Donna See is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Columbia Technology Ventures, the technology transfer office of Columbia University. She currently leads portfolio strategy, marketing, and technology development initiatives for the office, supported by a team of 30+ graduate student analysts. She is also the Director for a new internal medtech development fund, the Columbia-Coulter Translational Research Partnership, which aims to accelerate the commercialization of medical devices, diagnostics, and mobile health/healthcare IT technologies. Many of these initiatives involve the growing entrepreneurial community and network at Columbia, particularly for bio and medtech ventures which require access to specialized expertise, resources and significant but scarce gap funding.

Donna has negotiated numerous partnership agreements, including options, licenses, and collaborative agreements, with foundations, CROs, established and emerging biopharma, medtech and healthcare IT companies to help validate and incubate early stage technologies. She serves as a Screening Committee member for the Life Sciences Angels Network and as a reviewer for the Coulter Translational Research Program and the NSF SBIR program, is a regular guest lecturer for the BME Senior Design capstone at Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and is a judge/mentor for the Entrepreneurial Greenhouse Program at Columbia Business School. Donna received her BA in the Natural Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA and MPH (in health policy) from Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, Donna spent 11 years launching and managing public-private partnerships and technology development programs with the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Public Health Service, as well as hospitals and health care networks in NYC, San Francisco, and Hawaii, to improve health care access and outcomes.

Raphy Soussan, CPA

CBIZ MHM, LLC; Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C.

Raphy Soussan is based in the New York, NY office of Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C. Raphy has 16 years of extensive experience in both auditing and accounting as well as providing consulting services to publicly and privately held companies in the technology, consumer products, apparel, wholesale distribution and life sciences industries. He joined the organization in February 2002. Prior to joining the firm, Raphy spent a year in the marketing and operations business at Berkely Care, a subsidiary of Aon, a global insurance company. In addition, he served a combined ten years as an assurance manager in the New York offices of Ernst & Young LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he dealt primarily with publicly held and privately owned middle market companies and assisted them with their report requirements.

Melinda Thomas, MBA **

NYC Tech Connect

Melinda Thomas is currently the inaugural Entrepreneur in Residence for New York City. She works to build up the hard science ecosystem in New York by connecting resources and providing one on one mentoring to aspiring scientific entrepreneurs. Previous to this she was VP, Operations at CardioDx, where she took the company from day one through first product launch, with responsibility for all non-research functions. CardioDx develops and commercializes molecular based diagnostics for cardiovascular disease. It is funded by Kleiner Perkins, TPG, and MDV. Prior to CardioDx, she was the first employee and VP, Operations at ParAllele Biosciences, a high through-put genotyping and SNP discovery company. It was acquired in 2005 by Affymetrix. ParAllele was funded by Versant Ventures and MDV. Melinda holds a B.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Her career out of HBS started with Molecular Dynamics/Amersham Pharmacia where she ran the manufacturing organization.

Paul Tumpowsky, MBA **

Square Zero, Inc.; InSITE

Paul is the CEO of Square Zero, a development stage company building a platform designed to achieve real-time data processing and analytic capabilities for today's large-scale data challenges.

Prior to Square Zero, Paul was a principal with Metropolis Venture Partners in New York. Paul sourced deal flow, evaluated business plans, conducted due diligence and interviewed companies for early-stage venture fund focused on investing between $1-$10 million per transaction in the telecommunications, networking, wireless and enterprise software markets. As part of his responsibilities, Paul was the founding Chief of Staff of an optical networking hardware firm and operated a commodity metals trading software firm as CEO through multimillion-dollar Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy and wind down.

Prior to business school, Paul spent over four years at Andersen Consulting, where he specialized in acquisition advisory, custom database design and development, and logistics strategy. Paul is the chairman of the Board of the InSITE Fellowship program in New York and has led the early-stage selection committee for NYNMA's VentureDowntown conference.

Paul received his MBA from Columbia Business School, where he concentrated on finance and entrepreneurship, a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois and has studied at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo.

Mentors

Zubin Canteenwalla, MBA

NGEN

Zubin Canteenwalla is a Senior Associate in NGEN’s New York office. He brings to NGEN experience working in sales, product development and consulting roles at high-growth technology and energy startups.  Prior to NGEN, Mr. Canteenwalla worked at Investor Growth Capital where he sourced and evaluated late-stage cleantech investments. He previously worked in Toronto as a business analyst for PriceMetrix, an enterprise software firm that provided reporting and analytic tools to financial services firms.

Before joining PriceMetrix, Mr. Canteenwalla spent several years at an energy technology startup that designed and manufactured systems for refueling alternative fuel vehicles. He led the growth of their hydrogen business, building relationships with many of the top energy companies and automakers.  Mr. Canteenwalla holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Queen's University in Canada.

Jessica Hunt, PhD

Gerson Lehrman Group

Jessica serves as General Manager of G+, crafting strategy and executing business plans for product development, community development, marketing and sales. With us since 2004, Jessica has previously worked as General Manager of Corporate Markets and Senior Vice President in charge of the Life Sciences Segment. In these roles Jessica forged and grew multiple Fortune 500 corporate relationships, including many of the world’s leading global life sciences, industrial and technology corporations.

Jessica was instrumental to the firm’s growth from the original 11 corporate clients to 160 firms, including nine of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies. She has also managed and directed the sales and marketing teams across the business in the U.S., EU and Asia. Jessica holds a B.A. in biological anthropology from Duke University and a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from Yale University.

Thomas Lipkin, PhD

Osage Partners

Thomas joined Osage in 2011. He most recently worked at Columbia Technology Ventures, where he helped develop several initiatives to facilitate technology assessment, external marketing, and startup creation. Thomas’s scientific research both at Harvard Medical School and Columbia University focused on further understanding intracellular actin-based dynamics. Thomas holds a PhD in Cell Biology and Pathology from Columbia University, and a BS in Biology from Indiana University.

Joshua Spodek, PhD, MBA

Submedia

Joshua Spodek (PhD '00, Physics, Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, MBA '06 Columbia Business School), after helping assemble an x-ray observational satellite launched by the European Space Agency and researching supernova remnants, became an entrepreneur with several patents and start-ups. He is now an executive / personal coach working with Columbia Business School's Program on Social Intelligence. Joshua helps clients develop effective leadership skills and optimize their professional and personal lives by helping them understand what brings them meaning and happiness and acting on it. He has been quoted and profiled in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, Fortune, CNN, and the major broadcast networks. Esquire magazine named him "Best and Brightest" in their annual Genius issue.

Judges

Milena Adamian, MD

Life Sciences Angel Network

Frank DeBernardis

Nascent Enterprises LLC

Steve Winick

TopSpin Partners

Steve has been a partner at Topspin Partners since 2004, focusing on technology-driven opportunities. He comes to Topspin from Honeywell, Intl., where he had been serving as CIO of its $2B Security Group. He had been with Honeywell (the Ademco division of Pittway Corp., before its acquisition by Honeywell in 2000) for over 21 years as CTO of the security business, as well as founder and president of its wireless communications services business.

Steve received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1972, also from Penn. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is a registered Patent Attorney. Today, he serves on the boards of Setpoint Medical Inc., Celmatix, Inc., Mirimus, Inc. and Certerra Inc., all Topspin portfolio companies.

* Also serving as Mentors

** Also serving as Judges