Amy joined the University of California, San Francisco, as the Associate Director of the Office of Strategic Alliances for the department of Innovation Ventures in July 2022. She received her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo – Roswell Park Cancer Institute. She has experience in designing, implementing, and maintaining tailored action plans and partnering strategies for multidisciplinary research collaborations and agreements with government, industry, academia, and philanthropy partners.
Previously, Amy served as a Lead within the Strategic Science Engagements Office for the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where she coordinated high-level efforts across various Department of Energy (DOE) labs and the National Cancer Institute and was recognized in 2017 by the United States Department of Energy for the Secretary’s Appreciation Award for responding to the Vice President's Cancer Moonshot. She has focused on the application of computational predictive biology in oncology, drug discovery, and neurodegenerative efforts resulting in numerous publications and external funding.
With an education in film, a passion for adventure, and the good fortune to work with organizations like Greenpeace, Amazon Watch and Sea Shepherd, Sean has spent much of his life travelling and documenting the environmental movement. In 2005 he settled in San Francisco, joined Beyond Pix Studios to cover the world’s biggest technology innovators, including Apple, LinkedIn and Amazon. Along with new priorities came new skills that included commercial production and design.
Working with an incredible team of creative professionals, Sean led commercial campaigns for local and national broadcast television, which was honored with a pair of Emmy Awards for directing ad campaigns in 2009 and 2014.
In 2016, he began working with the University of California designing and producing educational media projects, and today you can find him wandering the ivy walled campus of UC San Francisco tending to brand and visual communications with the Innovation Ventures team.
Aleks comes to UCSF after almost a decade at Verily, a precision health company where she worked on multiple diverse programs beginning with the company’s inception as a moonshot project at GoogleX. Notable examples of her experience at the intersection of health and biotech include research on diagnostic and therapeutic nanoparticles, and product management of Virtual Stainer, a digital pathology platform for tissue imaging and deep learning-based histological staining. She has a passion for early-stage product development and building meaningful partnerships that accelerate the commercialization of new technologies.
Aleks received her Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC).
Olivia joined the Office of Strategic Alliances in November 2018 as an Alliances and Business Development Manager. Previously, Olivia worked as a scientific advisor where she focused on protection of biotechnology intellectual property. Olivia received her PhD in Immunology from Mayo Clinic School of Biomedical Sciences where she studied the endogenous antiviral mechanisms in the domestic cat. Subsequently, Olivia was awarded an NIH institutional research and academic career development award to pursue her postdoctoral studies at UCSF in the laboratory of Dr. Melanie Ott. A focus of her postdoctoral research was to identify the molecular mechanisms contributing to transcriptional repression at the HIV-2 promoter. During her tenure as a UCSF postdoctoral fellow, she also worked as an immunology consultant, where she provided technical expertise to support a biotechnology litigation case. Additionally, Olivia was an intern in the Office of Technology Management where she conducted prior art searches for patentability and determined commercial assessment of UCSF technologies.
Inder joined the University of California, San Francisco, in June 2022 to manage special projects/programs for the Innovation Ventures team, specifically working with Strategic Alliances and the Entrepreneurship Program. He has a background in executive public relations, partnership development, and communications. Prior to joining UCSF, Inder worked at Morling Financial Advisors, SLAC National Lab, and the Global Engagement Office at UC Berkeley. Inder has his MA from San Francisco State University and BA from the University of California, San Diego.
