Entrepreneurs-in-Residence

QB3’s entrepreneurs-in-residence are here to help QB3 professors, postdocs, and graduate students commercialize their research.

Contact our EiRs

You may drop in and talk to our EiRs during their office hours (frequent, but currently irregular) in 214 Byers Hall, UCSF Mission Bay, or e-mail them to arrange a time to meet.

Jim Adair

Jim Adair (adair.jim2@gmail.com) comes to QB3 with over 15 years of experience in business development and venture capital.

Jim joined Genentech’s Business Development department in 2001. In that capacity, he led a number of licensing transactions for novel drug candidates as well as technology platforms. While in Business Development, Jim founded and ran Genentech’s internal private equity fund. He also served in cross-functional M&A integration roles. In 2010 he joined Genentech’s Alliance Management group, in which he is responsible for managing a variety of collaborations with domestic and international companies and academic institutes.

Prior to Genentech, Jim was Senior Associate at the Aurora Funds, an early-stage venture fund based in Research Triangle Park, NC. At Aurora, Jim helped source and make investments in novel life science and information technologies. Jim also helped with the start-up activities (operations, business development) of certain Aurora portfolio companies.

In addition to his work with Genentech and Aurora, Jim has been an employee at several other start-up companies. He has a BA from Pomona College and a PhD from Duke University.

Dan Burnett

Dan (burnett@theranova.com) has a long history of biomedical device design and testing. During his undergraduate career at the University of Pennsylvania, Dan focused on bioengineering and spent a year at the Food and Drug Administration both testing devices and writing congressional reports on the current state-of-the-art devices. He then went on to Duke University where he completed his MD and his MBA. A licensed physician in the state of California, Dan finished his one-year internship at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL then joined Medventure Associates, a medical device focused venture firm. After working for two years as a venture capitalist, Dan resigned as partner and committed himself to his medical device incubator, TheraNova, and its subsidiaries.

Since 2006 Dan has raised, or helped raise, over $45 million for the four venture-backed TheraNova spinouts: BAROnova, Novashunt, Velomedix and EMKinetics. He is an inventor on 9 issued patents and 70 patents pending. He will be teaching a course in translational medicine in UCSF’s Department of Bioengineering beginning in the spring semester of 2011.

Robert (Bob) Dunkle

Bob (rdunkle@abes.com) has more than 20 years’ experience leading business growth in life sciences, imaging, informatics, and process monitoring and control. He has served as CEO of three life science companies and VP/GM at the world’s largest cheminformatics company. As a principal player, he has turned three businesses from perennial losses to sustained profitability.

Bob is CEO of A.B.E.S. Partners, a corporate advisory firm for public and private companies, specializing in strategy development, mergers and acquisitions, and serving in a chief executive capacity for startup clients. Engagements include companies in gene expression, protein expression, MDx, stem cells, disease management, biology/chemistry assays, chiral chemistry processes, platform technologies, and R&D informatics. In his capacity at A.B.E.S., he has served as CEO ofa startup company providing novel gene expression analysis tools and diagnostics, and as acting CEO of a medical diagnostic company.

Former positions:

Scimagix: President&CEO
The National Center for Genome Resources: President&CEO
MDL Information Systems: Vice President&General Manager
Sierra Monitor: Vice President
DuPont: Chemical Engineer

Dushyant Pathak

As a serial entrepreneur between projects, Dushyant (dushyant@ventureedge.net) would like to help launch one or more new companies, but he can also provide invaluable feedback on business plans; help determine what resources a startup will need; and advise on the prospects for licensing or partnership with industry.

Dushyant has financed, led, and grown life sciences companies from concept to commercial development. He knows how to transform a great idea into a promising product concept or an exciting business opportunity.

Dushyant is president of the consulting firm VentureEdge, LLC , to which he brings over 20 years of experience in life science research, industry and venture capital. He has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology from Northwestern University; held a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell cancer fund fellowship at Yale University; and earned an MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. His industry experience spans information technology, small molecule drug discovery, antibody therapeutics, molecular diagnostics and induced pluripotent stem cell technology.He is also interested in the cleantech, synthetic biology, and bioenergy space.