Board of Directors

Derek Proudian

CHAIRMAN

Derek Proudian is a Silicon Valley venture investor, start-up CEO, and entrepreneur.

He has served as the CEO of six venture-capital backed companies. Mr. Proudian has worked as a general partner at the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), a venture partner at Morgan Stanley Ventures, and as an R&D manager at Hewlett-Packard Labs. As a general partner at MDV he was part of a team credited with delivering $3.5 billion in returns to limited partners from an initial $225 million investment.

As a founding board member, Mr. Proudian has helped shepherd a number of companies to highly successful exits on behalf of founders and shareholders, including: mSpot, which was sold to Samsung in 2012; Daintree Networks, which was sold to General Electric in 2016; SquareTrade, which was sold to Allstate in January 2017; and Newtrax Technologies, which was sold to Sandvik AB in June 2019.

He received a BS in Cognitive Science, a BA in Creative Writing, an MS in Computer Science, and an MBA from Stanford University.

David Sharp, Ph.D.

Dr. David Sharp is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He is recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on microtubules and cell movement, with numerous publications in prestigious journals including Cell, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, and Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

His career-long research focus has been on the roles and regulation of the microtubule cytoskeleton in cell migration, division, and morphogenesis, as well as harnessing these mechanisms for tissue repair. He has co-authored over 60 papers on this topic to date and has received multiple research grants from federal and state government agencies and private foundations. Dr. Sharp’s research has led to the identification of enzymes that can be targeted in vivo to predictably alter cellular motility in a variety of clinical contexts related to tissue repair and regeneration, for which he has been issued seven U.S. patents. He is now leading the therapeutic translation of these findings for MicroCures.

Dr. Sharp has been the recipient of numerous research awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. He also has received the LaDonne H. Schulman Excellence in Teaching Award and is a scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Dr. Sharp holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin.

Robert Singer, Ph.D.

Dr. Singer is Professor Anatomy and Structural Biology (co-chair), Cell Biology, and Neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as co-director of the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center and the Integrated Imaging Program. He also is a senior fellow at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Singer’s research focuses on the cell biology of RNA, including the translation of information encoded in DNA into proteins. His lab developed a patented technique for detecting RNA in preserved cells and has been instrumental in developing rapid and sensitive microscopy for studying single molecules of RNA in living cells, as well as devising methods to track them through their life cycle. This technology has significant implications for understanding the role of RNA in disease processes such as cancer metastasis and in developmental processes leading to intellectual disability. Dr. Singer holds 12 patents on his work.

Dr. Singer has received numerous awards for excellence in scholarship and research. He serves on a wide range of editorial boards and scientific advisory boards, and is also a member of many different distinguished professional societies, including induction into the Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009) and the National Academy of Sciences (2013).Hereceived an undergraduate degree in physical chemistry fromOberlin College and a Ph.D. in developmental biology fromBrandeis University. He did postdoctoral work inmolecular biologyat MITand at theWeizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

Hans Küpper, Ph.D.

Dr. Küpper has more than 30 years of experience in biotechnology, including activities ranging from research to R&D management to technology assessment and acquisition.

He joined Global Life Science Ventures in 1999 as a managing director of GLSI’s advisory company, based in Munich, Germany. His career in biotech began in 1980 at Biogen, one of the first biotech companies, at its European headquarters in Geneva. In 1985, he joined Behringwerke AG to establish and head their molecular biology department. Later, Dr. Küpper became head of R&D and member of the board of the company’s immunology/oncology business unit. His most recent non-executive board seats have included Pieris AG (Freising, Germany, chairman); Santaris A/S (Copenhagen, Denmark); Action Pharma A/S (Copenhagen, Denmark); IMI, Intelligent Medical Implants AG (Zug, Switzerland); and Intercell AG (Vienna, Austria).

Dr. Küpper received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1974 and spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at MIT in Boston with Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana.

Jeff Hanson

An experienced financial services industry strategist and entrepreneur, Mr. Hanson has worked as a senior advisor to a broad range of financial/professional service companies, boards, founders, investors and leadership teams spanning investment banking and capital markets, asset management, private equity and credit, real estate, insurance, healthcare, financial technology, venture capital and other service-oriented sectors. Defining, achieving, and re-inventing “success” across business, market, and organizational life cycles is Hanson Advisors’ key focus with client-partners –particularly private partnerships and companies in transition.

Mr. Hanson also was a founding member of a successful institutional money management business, Milestone Capital Management, after beginning his career on Wall Street with Goldman, Sachs & Co. An active early and growth stage investor, Mr. Hanson serves on the boards and advisory boards of a number of healthcare, service and technology-enabled companies. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MBA from Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.