The NanoBio
Convergence
Team
About Us
Meet The Team
In The Press
The Management Team
Laura Mazzola, Founder and Chair
Dr. Mazzola has over twelve years of experience in the biotechnology industry, from fundamental research and technology development to the commercialization of integrated instrumentation platforms. She is CEO for Excellin Life Sciences, a start-up with devices for cell engineering. She founded and chairs NanoBioConvergence in the SF Bay Area. Dr. Mazzola was an early employee at Affymax and Affymetrix, developing the high-density array technology that became the prototype for the revolutionary GeneChip(TM) product line. More recently, she helped reorient business development at Symyx Technologies toward the Life Sciences through collaborations with Merck and Eli Lilly and licensed their first commercial product, which won the Frost & Sullivan 2002 Market Engineering Technology Innovation Award. Dr. Mazzola received a B.S. from Kalamazoo College and a M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Monique Farantzos, Co-Founder
Monique Farantzos is the Managing Director at DoubleTwist Ventures and is currently incubating a start-up focused on interoperability of proprietary data formats. Monique’s personal interests revolve around the intersection of biotechnology, nanotechnology and information science. She has assisted several Bay Area start-ups to commercialize their inventions and has served on the Biotechnology Industry Organization's Business Forum Committee. She holds an MS in Applied Science with emphasis on Bioengineering from UC Davis and a BS in Physics.
Viji Jagannathan, Co-Founder
Viji Jagannathan currently manages programs and outreach for the US-Asia Technology Management Center at Stanford University. She also organizes topical seminars in business, engineering and biotech twice a year and each one of the series runs for 10 consecutive weeks. Prior to that, Viji worked in Public Health Outreach & Community Education in Seattle. She has a Masters Degree from the University of Washington, Seattle. The US-Asia Technology Management Center (http://asia.stanford.edu) delivers research and educational programs to engineers, researchers and the public to enhance American awareness and capabilities through the study of Asian approaches to business & technology and leading edge research in Asia and the U.S.
Steve Mushero
Steve Mushero is a InterDisciplinary technologist working with startups and investors to build exciting new products and companies in a variety of diverse areas including software, biotech, nanotech, and semiconductors. Steve's background is exceptionally broad and diverse across these areas, including extensive hands-on technology work, executive management, finance, sales, and marketing. His current work ranges from managing finance and manufacturing software to advising on medical devices to semiconductor equipment design to writing protein viewers to architecting telecommunications systems. With a BSEE and an MBA, he holds a number of patents in software and data delivery, with additional pending in other diverse areas. Steve is also extremely active in philanthropy, especially women and girls' entrepreneurship, education, and third-world development.
Sarah Cooper
Sarah Cooper received her ScB in Chemical Engineering from Brown University in 2002. She is currently an intern at NASA Ames’ Center for Nanotechnology through the National Space Grant Program, investigating flow dynamics and ion transport through carbon nanotubes, nanotube derived materials, and nanoporous membranes. Her previous work has included the design and optimization of veterinary diagnostics for infectious diseases, bulk chemical manufacture, and tracking system design for IDEXX laboratories in Westbrook, ME. At Los Alamos National Lab, she was a liaison between the lab and state Environmental Agency, responsible for the characterization of industrial chemical usage in the five largest industries in NM and assessment of alternative “green” technologies.
Harry Wachob
Dr. Wachob, an engineering leader in materials science and biomedical device engineering, directs and mentors multidisciplinary teams in solving complex technical issues in order to improve a product¹s safety and performance. Dr. Wachob received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees in Engineering and Materials Science from Cornell University. He was most recently the Director of Engineering for Aerogen, Inc., an emerging biopharmaceutical company specializing in novel aerosol drug delivery. Previously, Dr. Wachob was Managing Engineer at Exponent/Failure Analysis Associates where he guided research and development or product failure investigations covering a broad range of medical and industrial applications. The results of this work allowed clients to reach critical technical and/or financial decisions efficiently and effectively. Prior to this, he was a scientist and manager of EPRI and DOE programs at NASA Ames Research Center. Currently Dr. Wachob leads The BioDevice Group, an organization he helped found, which is actively engaged in putting talented biospace professionals back to work.
Scott Ritterbush
Scott has over nine years of experience in the semiconductor equipment industry, from process engineering to senior marketing management roles. He recently left the semiconductor industry to focus on start-up opportunities in the nanobio space. Before entering the microchip industry Scott held a research staff position at Harvard Medical School, where he was a co-inventor of a full thickness dermal-epidermal skin regeneration process. As an undergraduate, Scott studied protein structure at the MIT/Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. His Master’s thesis at MIT’s Biopolymers Laboratory utilized a collagen matrix based skin graft model to investigate mechanisms of skin graft rejection. He received a B.S. and an M.S., both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scott leads the MIT Club of Northern California’s Semiconductor Entrepreneurship program and helps run the BioE2E program.
Kim Parnell, Ph.D.
Dr. Kim Parnell specializes in the mechanical engineering design and behavior of implantable, biomedical devices, shape memory metals, bioabsorbable polymers, electronic and miniature components such as MEMs, applications of nanotechnology, and telecommunications. Dr. Parnell consults actively in these areas as well as failure analysis. He served as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University and is currently developing a group training program for the innovative Stanford Biodesign curriculum. He is a member of the CSIX Connect executive team and was instrumental in the project to obtain 501(c)3 non-profit status. He is Principal and Founder of PEC, an engineering consulting firm. He worked previously for Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, SST Systems, Inc., ATT Bell Laboratories, Stanford University, and General Motors Corp. Dr. Parnell holds Ph.D. and MSME degrees from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering and a BES from Georgia Tech.
Mary Rank
Steph Rutel
Steph is a successful marketing executive with extensive experience in the high technology arena. Having worked for major corporations including Intel, National Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard, Steph now focuses on more exciting challenges helping smaller/startup companies and organizations establish product road maps, positioning, and a strong sense of awareness and branding at both the corporate and product levels. Steph has led a number of marketing groups that has created and introduced products that have captured over $500 million of revenue, ranging from silicon (image sensors) to enterprise software to embedded computing and development tools. Armed with an MBA supported by a technical foundation, Steph now lends a deep expertise to the NanoBioConvergence group in its search for industry presence, credibility and visibility.
Development and Support Team
Jeffrey M. Ovadya, Webmaster
Having developed and implemented numerous web and e-commerce solutions, Jeff has extensive experience in web and e-commerce development using HTML/XHTML, JavaScript, VBScript, CSS, DHTML, XML/XSD/XSL, ASP, VB/ASP/ADO.NET, Microsoft Access and SQL Server on Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP. In addition to database and e-commerce development, Jeff administers several NT servers and workstations using most of Microsoft's and other third party software. Noted for creating our web presence, Jeff is actively involved in developing and maintaining our industry presence through his valued recommendations to our team, and through his prolific use of internet technologies.
