Consultants

If you would like to join QNVC as a consultant, please email your resume and cover letter to QNVConsulting@gmail.com.

Directors:

• Anirban Datta, Ph.D.

  Anirban has been a director of QNVC since 2008. He started as a consultant for the Virochip engagement and later served as the project manager for the T3 engagement.  He was subsequently promoted to director.  Anirban is a scientist at the UCSF School of Medicine. He is studying how the cells that make up organs like kidney, breast and lung develop and how the disruption of this process leads to epithelial cancers. For his work, he received a Breast Cancer Concept Award from the US Department of Defense. Anirban did his postdoctoral research at UCSF, where he held a fellowship from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. He obtained his Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. in physics and biology from University of Chicago.

• Angela Won
  

  Angela recently joined QNVC as a consultant.  As a graduate student at UCSF, she researches signal cascade specificity and rewires recruitment interactions to probe kinase identity. Angela’s long-standing interest in drug discovery and disease prevention has led her to serve on the BayBio Therapeutics Committee and work with the MIT Healthcare Reform Initiative. Angela’s awards include a National Science Foundation fellowship and a US Office of Naval Research Paper of the Year.  Prior to UCSF, Angela completed internships at Genentech and Tularik. She received her B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Associates:

• Geoff Benton

  Geoff is a graduate student in Thea Tisty's lab at UCSF. He is currently studying the role of metabolism in the early stages of breast cancer and possible targets for prevention and early detection. Geoff also serves as the executive director of Innovation Accelerator at UCSF, a student and postdoc run bioentrepreneurship organization.

• Markus Bussen, Ph.D.

  Markus is currently a postdoc at UCSF in Gail Martin's lab, where he has been working on cardiac/coronary vessel stem cells. His major focus is how the epicardium contributes different cell populations to the mammalian heart. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Hannover Medical School in Germany. During his Ph.D., he used genetic, molecular and cell-based methods to study early aspects of mesoderm formation and patterning. Markus carried out his undergraduate studies at the University of Cologne and performed his external Diploma thesis at the Rockefeller University in New York. During this time he studied how pancreatic beta-cells differentiate and how embryonic stem cells can be programmed to become functional beta-cells. He held stipends from the German National Merit Foundation and German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Markus’s interest in business in science led him to join QNVC in the summer of 2008. Since then he has been acquiring business experience serving as a consultant for the ViroChip and T3 projects. He participated in the Boston Consulting Group Open in 2008.

• Silvia Curado, Ph.D.

  Silvia has been a member of QNVC since it was founded and has served as a consultant in the ViroChip and the T3 engagements. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF in the laboratory of Didier Stainier. Her current research is focused on cardiac and liver regeneration. Silvia obtained her Ph.D.  in genetics and molecular biology from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. During her M.S. in cell biology, she worked on minimal residual disease in chronic leukemia at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in collaboration with the Hammersmith Hospital in London. During her B.S. in biochemistry, she worked on the expression of HIV proteins, in collaboration with the Institute of High Technology in Bergen, Norway. In parallel to research, Silvia is interested in the business of science.  She has obtained the Certificate of Business Administration from UC Berkeley Extension and is a co-founder and organizer of the Business Club at UCSF.  In addition, Silvia acted as a member of the EMBL Graduate Program Committee and organized multiple symposia at EMBL and UCSF. 

• Jesse Engelberg

  Jesse is a 6th year Ph.D. student in the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering.  His dissertation is titled “The essential aspects of cellular morphogenesis” and is a report on the design, implementation, and validation of agent-based models of cellular organization. Jesse is focused on the growth and organization of tumor spheroids in suspension and epithelial cells grown in culture, and his areas of expertise are computation and cell biology. He has past experience that includes two years in software development, the UCSF "Idea to IPO" class, and the UCSFIA Global Life Sciences Competition.

• Claire Kinlaw, Ph.D.

  Claire joins QNVC as an MBA candidate in the Evening & Weekend program of the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. She received her B.A. in chemistry from University of Virginia and a Ph. D. in biochemistry from Rice University. She was awarded a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to conduct molecular genetics research at UC Berkeley. For twenty years she led teams conducting research on genome evolution and gene discovery as a research scientist and later as head of the Institute of Forest Genetics for the US Forest Service. She is active in the life sciences track for Astia’s entrepreneurship programs (formerly the Women’s Technology Cluster), where she has helped to develop their annual boot camp programs for entrepreneurs and has advised early stage life-science startups regarding their business models. Claire continues to provide consulting services to scientific and engineering enterprises and small businesses. She is active in promoting business growth through the Business Value Alliance of business advisors, which she co-founded, and through the Steering Committee of the East Bay Women in Business Roundtable, on which she volunteers.

• Han Li

  Han is a cell biology/biochemistry graduate student at UCSF, and her research project involves dissecting the mechanism of the unfolded protein response in mammalian cells.  She joined QNVC last summer as an associate consultant, and has since worked on the Simprota and T3 projects. Han is from Scranton, PA and graduated from the University of Scranton.

• Sharianne Louie

  Sharianne is an MBA candidate in the Evening & Weekend Program at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. She holds a B.S. in biochemistry from UC Davis and a master's degree in endocrinology/cancer biology from UC Berkeley. For the past 13 years, she has been working in the fields of cancer biomarkers, translational medicine and clinical trial laboratory operations spanning three Fortune 500 companies: Pfizer, Novartis, and currently Genentech. As part of her MBA activities, Sharianne has led projects for health science management consulting firms focused on marketing analytics and strategy for the development of client product concepts and identification of potential licensing partners. After completing her MBA, Sharianne aspires to expand to the commercial side of the life sciences industry to help scientists and physicians turn scientific questions into business solutions.

• Jay Parrish, Ph.D.

  Jay is an MBA candidate in the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Emory University. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of South Florida under Professor Kyung Woon Jung. At South Florida, his research focus was in the area of natural products synthesis and palladium(II)-catalyzed method development. Jay completed postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute in the laboratory of Professor Dale Boger. While at Scripps, Jay’s research was focused on finding novel DNA alkylation agents to be used in oncology. Currently, Jay is a research scientist in the medicinal chemistry department at Gilead Sciences, Inc. His research is in the area of anti-virals, with a focus on HIV and hepatitis C small molecule therapeutics.