Brown Technology Innovations

BTI Advisory Board

The Brown Technology Innovations Advisory Board is a group of external experts who provide guidance and support for technology commercialization at Brown.

  • Kristopher Brown, Partner, Goodwin Law

    Kristopher Brown

    Partner, Goodwin Law

    Mr. Brown has experience in the full range of complex commercial transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, public offerings, licensing transactions, the formation of investment partnerships, and the creation of strategic and collaborative alliances and joint ventures. Practicing for more than 20 years, Mr. Brown has advised on more than 250 transactions in the life sciences sector alone. In addition, he counsels investors, management executives, and boards of directors on governance and regulation issues and securities law matters

    Mr. Brown is listed as a “Life Sciences Star” and a “U.S. Transactional Rising Star” by LMG Life Sciences and has been listed as a recommended lawyer for life sciences and capital markets: equity and global offerings by The Legal 500, where he was cited as being “highly skilled and committed” and noted for the “strength of his client relationships.” Prior to joining Goodwin in 2018, Mr. Brown was a partner at Dechert LLP.

  • Neil Cohen

    Neil Cohen

    Chairman, Emerald Development Managers

    Neil Cohen is the Founder and Chairman of Emerald Development Managers LP, the successor to Cohen & Company, LLC which he founded in 1994. Mr. Cohen is also Co-founder, Co-CEO, and Member of the Executive Committee of American Rock Salt Company LLC since its formation in 1996. 

    From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Cohen was Executive VP, CFO, and a board member of AmBase Corporation, a publicly held financial services company during a turnaround. From 1986 to 1992, he was an investment banker at Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. specializing in M&A, leveraged finance and restructuring.

    Mr. Cohen holds a MS in Management from MIT-Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Engineering Sciences in Mathematical Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University.

    He serves on the Board of Directors of Proscia Inc. as well as the advisory boards of the Whiting School of Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (member, Executive Committee).  

  • Rich Ganz

    Rich Ganz

    Executive Chairman, Sentien Biotechnologies, Inc.

    Richard Ganz is a life sciences executive with over thirty years of experience in multinational pharma/device companies and venture-backed startups. He spent the first twenty years of his career at Abbott Laboratories, holding various positions in Sales, Marketing and General Management. His last position was Vice President and General Manager, Vascular Medicine. He joined Baxter Healthcare in 2001 as President, Renal North America. In 2004 he moved to Boston to join OmniSonics Medical Technologies as President and CEO. From 2012 to 2014 he was the Chief Operating Officer of Piramal Critical Care, a global leader in anesthetics. He founded RGA LifeSciences, a healthcare advisory company in 2014; assisting companies with formation, strategic planning and fundraising.

    He has served on several private and one public company board of directors. He also has been an executive in residence at the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Chicago.

    Mr. Ganz received his M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Minnesota.

  • Keith Kerman

    Keith Kerman, MD

    Operating Partner & Senior Advisor, The Riverside Company

    Keith Kerman, MD is an Operating Partner and Senior Advisor with The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm focused on growth businesses. Dr. Kerman has 20 years of experience in healthcare related private equity, venture capital, and operating roles, and has been an executive, investor, and board member at numerous healthcare businesses and organizations.

    Prior to joining Riverside, Dr. Kerman was a Managing Director and led the healthcare practice at Primus Capital Funds, a growth equity and middle market buyout firm, and was previously a General Partner with Morgenthaler Ventures. Dr. Kerman also was an operating executive at U.S. Healthcare, where he was president of the company’s subsidiary providing managed care services to self-funded health plans. Prior to joining U.S. Healthcare, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, was a member of the clinical faculty at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and was a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at The Wharton School. He has an AB and an MD from Brown University, and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kerman currently serves on the Board of Directors of AxioMed Spine Corporation, Cleveland Heart Labs, IDOC, and Physicians Pharmacy Alliance. He also serves on the Worldwide Board of Directors of the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

  • Rajiv Kumar, MD

    Rajiv Kumar, MD

    President and Chief Medical Officer, Virgin Pulse

    Rajiv Kumar serves as Chief Medical Officer and President of Virgin Pulse Institute, which provides Virgin Pulse clients with cutting-edge Value-on-Investment (VOI) studies and promotes research on health, wellbeing and employee engagement. Dr. Rajiv Kumar’s responsibilities also include overseeing the Virgin Pulse Science Advisory Board and the organization’s analytics team.

    Dr. Kumar joined Virgin Pulse in 2016, following the company’s acquisition of ShapeUp, an employee wellbeing company that he founded in 2006. As CEO of ShapeUp, he led the growth of the company from a two-person, dorm-room startup to a global company with over 100 employees, 800 customers, and 2 million participants around the world. During his time at ShapeUp, he pioneered new approaches to leveraging social connections to enhance employee health and wellbeing and co-authored several peer-reviewed studies on the relationship between social networks and healthy behavior.

    Dr. Kumar earned his medical degree from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and has focused his career on prevention, public health, and innovation in health care. He also received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics from Brown University.

  • Kirsten Leute

    Kirsten Leute

    Partner, University Relations, Osage University Partners

    At OUP, Ms. Leute is responsible for the relationships with the more than 100 academic institutions that are partnered with the fund, engaging potential new partner institutions, and enhancing and creating value-add programs for the partnered academic institutions. Ms. Leute is an experienced technology transfer professional, spending 19 years in technology transfer at Stanford University and the German Cancer Research Center. Prior to joining OUP, she was Associate Director at Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing. Over her career at Stanford, she managed portfolios of inventions in most technology areas, but concentrated in biotechnology.  Ms. Leute has also been actively involved in technology transfer outside her daily work. She is a former two-time board member for the Association of University Technology Managers and speaks frequently on university technology transfer. 

  • Walter Jin

    Walter Jin

    Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pager, Inc.

    Walter Jin has more than 20 years of investment and operational experience in the healthcare sector with a track record of successfully investing over $4 billion across more than 30 portfolio companies with virtually no losses. Jin is the co-founder of Three Fields Capital and Pacific Healthcare Management, which act as the investment company and operating company that manages a portfolio of private equity and venture capital healthcare investments. Previously, Jin was the co-founder of the healthcare group at The Carlyle Group, a healthcare portfolio manager at SAC Capital and an investment banker at Salomon Brothers.

    Jin is a graduate of Harvard University and currently serves as an executive in residence at Johns Hopkins Medicine and an innovation fellows technical advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

  • Annie Mitzak

    Annie Mitzak

    Principal, Omega Funds

    Annie joined Omega Funds in 2015. She focuses on private company investing, particularly in the areas of oncology, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and technology platforms. She previously served as a Director on the board of Trevi Therapeutics (NASDAQ:TRVI) and as an Observer on the board of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CMPI).

    Prior to joining Omega, Annie spent three years at MIT’s Technology Licensing Office as a licensing associate and associate licensing officer, where she managed a portfolio of drug delivery and biotechnology inventions. Annie also worked as an independent consultant for Nelsen Biomedical, where she performed market analyses and advised clients on partnering and market entry strategies. Annie earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

  • Sara Nunez-Garcia

    Sara Nunez-Garcia

    Co-Founder, Partner, Forty51 Ventures

    Sara is co-Founder and Partner at Forty51 Ventures, an emerging Biotech venture fund focused on venture formation. Previously, Sara Núñez-García served as Partner and Head of European Investments at Roivant Sciences where she led investments across several therapeutic areas in the Biotech space. Prior, Sara served as Principal with Sofinnova Partners. She invested in Delinia Bio (acquired by Celgene), ProQR Therapeutics [PRQR], Auris Medical [EARS], MedDay Pharma, ObsEva [OBSV], Enyo Pharma, Asceneuron, MyTomorrows, Leucid Bio and Comet Therapeutics. She served on the Board in several portfolio companies.  Sara spent seven years in the Pharma industry in a preclinical development role and was also an Associate in the Licensing and M&A team at Onyx Pharmaceuticals (now Amgen) in California. In addition, Sara did her postdoctoral fellow in the Biochemistry and Biophysics departments at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York where she developed several inhibitors for oncology targets, one of which was in-licensed by Biocryst and is currently in clinical development. Sara received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Manchester, UK. In addition, Sara holds an MBA from INSEAD with a major in Finance.

  • Jeff Pootalal

    Jeff Pootalal

    Managing Director, Sixth Street Partners

    Sixth Street Partners is a global finance and investment business with over $31 billion in assets under management. SSP has a long-term oriented, highly flexible capital base that allows it to invest across industries, geographies, capital structures and asset classes. Since its inception, SSP has invested in the healthcare space including working with companies and academic institutions on royalty monetization transactions, debt financings, late stage clinical trial fundings, and other healthcare related financings.

  • Greg Sieczkiewicz

    Greg Sieczkiewicz, J.D., Ph.D.

    Executive Partner & Chief IP Counsel, MPM Capital

    Dr. Greg Sieczkiewicz serves as Chief IP Counsel for several MPM portfolio companies including Potenza Therapeutics, TCR² Therapeutics, Trieza Therapeutics, Werewolf Therapeutics and Cullinan Oncology. He is also an intellectual property strategy advisor to Maverick Therapeutics, Oncorus, CODA Biotherapeutics, Tizona Therapeutics and iOmx Therapeutics, all MPM portfolio companies.

    Prior to joining MPM, Greg was the IP strategy architect for more than a dozen venture-backed life sciences companies across the spectrum—from nucleic acid therapeutics, oral biologics and the microbiome to oncology and protein engineering. He has served as Vice President, IP at Flagship Ventures, and also practiced patent counseling and enforcement at national law firms Mintz Levin, Proskauer Rose and Foley Hoag. Greg is a member of the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is also the former President of the Boston Patent Law Association.

    Greg received his J.D., magna cum laude, from the evening program of Suffolk University Law School and earned his Ph.D. in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology from Tufts University School of Medicine and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. He received his A.B. in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross.