Daniel Catron

President

Dan brings over 20 years of biopharma industry experience, from start-up formation to acquisition and all phases between. Specializing in business development, corporate strategy, and finance, he presently serves as Executive Director of Business Development at Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA and as the Executive Director of the Scintillon Research Institute’s Office of Technology Transfer. As a board-member and treasurer of the San Diego Innovation Council, Dan is engaged with the innovation ecosystem throughout Southern California. Dan received doctoral training at Duke University and and holds an MBA from the University of Miami.

Mysty Rusk

Vice President

Mysty Rusk is the Executive Director of the USD Knauss School of Business Free Enterprise Institute (FEI). Having served 3 years as the Director of the Brink SBDC at the University of San Diego (USD), Rusk helped to establish USD’s role as a contributor in San Diego’s innovation ecosystem. Under her leadership, the Brink has served over 1,100 innovation-based companies, representing 15% of all startups in the San Diego region. Those companies have added jobs, increased sales, and taken on $180M in funding (angel, venture, grants, loans).

As part of this effort Rusk also founded the San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC), which aims to activate new investors in a learn-by-doing series that invests at least $200,000 in the winning company each cycle. With a focus on supporting values-driven free enterprises, the FEI provides consulting services, access to angel and venture capital, and support for family-owned businesses with an eye on stewardship, as a path to the greater good. To date, the SDAC has invested $2.8M directly and $100M indirectly.

Before coming to USD in 2017, Rusk served as the Associate State Director for Program Innovation and Technology Commercialization with the Central California SBDC. Supporting scalable innovation-based businesses has been her primary focus since 2004. Rusk comes to the FEI with experience in building innovation ecosystems, developing the human, physical and sustainable infrastructure needed to support growth-oriented entrepreneurship.

Margaret Ng Thow Hing

Treasurer

Margaret is the Sr. Director of Technology Development at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology where she oversees all aspects of La Jolla Institute’s patent portfolio and technology agreements, and supports business development functions. Prior to joining the Institute, Margaret was an attorney with Smart & Biggar, Fetherstonhaugh, a leading intellectual property and technology law firm. She advised clients on patent prosecution matters with a focus in the area of biotechnology. Margaret obtained a Master of Science in Molecular & Medical Genetics and J.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada.

Tari Suprapto

Board Chair

Tari is a seasoned technology commercialization professional in the life sciences and Vice President of the Board of the San Diego Innovation Council (SDIC). She has served as Program Chair in the SDIC’s Innovation Showcase and helped steer the growth of the organization resulting in the rich diversity of its members. She is currently the Director for Search & Evaluation for Western US and Canada for Novo Nordisk, a Top 20 pharmaceutical company. She also has experience with the animal health industry when she was a part of the External Innovation team at Elanco, and spent over 15 years in the non-profit sector promoting and commercializing innovative opportunities from world-class research institutions such as the Salk Institute, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Tari has extensive experience in licensing, building and managing strategic alliances with industry and other academic institutions, and a well-rounded technical background in a variety of therapeutic areas resulting from her Ph.D. in Molecular & Cellular Biology from The Rockefeller University and an Honors B.A. from Swarthmore College. Tari is also a mother of two daughters and two dogs, loves kickboxing, yoga, beaches, and sea turtles.

Ha Nguyen

Director

Ha is the Senior Director of the Office of Technology Development at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where she leads a team dedicated to the translation and commercialization of scientific innovations of Salk researchers, aligning with Salk’s vision to be Where Cures Begin®.    Ha is a seasoned technology commercialization professional in the life sciences, leveraging 20 years of experience in IP management, technology transfer, licensing, business development, and supporting new company formation.

Prior to joining Salk, Ha was with ThermoFisher Scientific, Inc. (formerly Life Technologies Corp.) in licensing and business development roles where she was responsible for managing patented product portfolios and expanding partnerships in the applied markets for human/animal diagnostics and forensics.   Prior to that, she spent many years in academic technology transfer at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was responsible for IP protection and commercialization of a range of life science technologies. 

Ha received her Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from the University of California, San Francisco and B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine; and is a registered patent agent with the USPTO. 

Christie Marcella

Director

Christie Marcella is COO of Connect, a non-profit serving San Diego for over 30 years to grow and support the region’s innovation ecosystem. She is a passionate practitioner of inclusive economic development, being a first-generation American herself. Prior to joining Connect she was executive director of the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation as well as the economic development manager for the City of Carlsbad. Christie has a love for transportation and its role in supporting thriving communities. She holds her Master’s in Urban Planning and always looks at the intersection of physical and social systems to improve quality of life equitably and sustainably. She enjoys cooking, traveling (particularly to Spain) and spending time with family. 

Abu Jalloh

Director

Abu Jalloh is an Associate of Business Development at The Scripps Research Institute, where he is responsible for evaluating novel technologies’ technical strength, patentability, and commercial readiness. He liaises between the Institute – on behalf of the inventors/NewCo founders – and potential technology licensors/NewCo funders. 

Prior to his role at Scripps Research, Abu worked at 3 biotech companies – at the time, two pre-IPO startups (CUE & GRTS) and one mid-sized establishment (FATE). As a wet lab scientist and project lead at Cue Biopharma, he generated novel and comprehensive assays for T cell-engagers, which made the basis for the S-1 filing at CUE Biopharma. He established optimal workflows for TCR identification and validation for a newly formed TCR Department at Gritstone Bio (fka Gritstone Oncology). Most recently, he developed robust processes and QC assays to enable manufacturing of a multi-edit, iPSC-derived, HER-2 targeting CAR-T at Fate Therapeutics.

Abu received a BS in Biological Sciences from Cornell University in Ithaca NY and a PhD in Glycobiology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx NY. As a new San Diegan, he cherishes the time spent in the garden and the canyon, experimenting with grafting, and propagating select plants.

Zac Dobbin

Director

Zac Dobbin is the Program Director of Cleantech San Diego’s Southern California Energy Innovation Network (SCEIN), a California Energy Commission funded program that provides innovative energy startups in San Diego, Imperial, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties with access to commercialization services. The program has helped over 58 companies bring their energy innovations to market. Prior to joining Cleantech San Diego, Zac worked with the Port of San Diego’s Aquaculture and Blue Economy Incubator.

Zac holds an MBA from the University of San Diego and a Bachelor of Commerce in Entrepreneurship from Dalhousie University.

Tommy Martindale

Director

As Director of the Technology Transfer Office for the SDSU Research Foundation, Tommy Martindale is responsible for the protection and commercialization of innovations and creative works developed through the research endeavor at SDSU. Tommy also serves as a member of the teaching team for the NSF funded CSU Biological Sciences I-Corps Site program, which provides education to researchers in lab to market commercialization. Additionally, Tommy is Past President of the San Diego Innovation Council (2018-2019) and past Chairman of the SDIC board of directors. Tommy is a USPTO registered patent attorney with over a decade of innovation management, technology commercialization and licensing experience gained in a variety of capacities.

Victoria Cajipe

Director

Victoria Cajipe is Associate Director of Physical Sciences Innovation at the Office of Innovation and Commercialization of the University of California San Diego. She first joined the UC San Diego Technology Transfer Office in 2008 as a senior licensing officer, managing a large and diverse portfolio of physical science and engineering inventions and facilitating several startup licenses through the years.

Before then, Victoria was Vice President for Operations with NOVA R& D which was acquired by Kromek, a leading supplier of advanced radiation detection components and devices.

Her career in business and applied innovation was preceded by many years in the research enterprise, principally at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter of the University of Pennsylvania, and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique laboratories of the Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel in Nantes.

Victoria has a PhD in experimental solid-state physics from the University of Pennsylvania and a post-doctoral Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches from the Université de Nantes. 

Martin J. Machniak

Liaison to the Board