Jay M. Short, Ph.D.
Chairman, CEO & Member
Dr. Short is Chairman, CEO and Principal of BioAtla, LLC, a protein therapeutic service business based in San Diego and Beijing. He is the Founder and former CEO, President and CTO of Diversa Corp. (now British Petroleum and Verenium) where he achieved the largest biotech IPO at that time of over $200MM. Dr. Short also served as President of Stratacyte, and VP of R&D and Operations for Stratagene Cloning Systems (now Agilent).
Dr. Short received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from CWRU. He authored more than 100 publications and is the inventor of over 100 issued patents. In 2006, Dr. Short was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as a personality making the most significant contribution to biotech in the past decade. He is the recipient of numerous other awards, including Ernst &Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, American Chemical Society’s Henry F. Whalen, Jr. Award for Business Development, Adaptive Business Leaders’ Innovations in HealthCare Gold Award, two of Connect’s first place Most Innovative Product Awards, and in 2010 received an international Best-of-the-Best award from the Young Presidents Organization (YPO). Dr. Short’s board experience includes Invitrogen (now Life Technologies), Senomyx, Femta Pharmaceuticals, BioDuro (now PPD), Taxon Biosciences, Biotech Investment Group and Ciris Energy. He is a member of YPO/WPO and a founder of Capia IP, VivaMab and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Dr. Short serves as an advisor to City National Bank, UCSD’s Division of Biology, Genalyte, San Diego Science Festival, SG Biofuels, Rho Ventures and Thomas McNerney Partners.
For more information on Dr. Short, please visit his linkedin profile.
Masood Tayebi, Ph.D.
Business Advisor & Member
Dr. Tayebi is a Founder of BioAtla and Executive Chairman of BioDuro. Prior to founding BioAtla and BioDuro, Dr. Tayebi held the position of Chief Executive Officer at WFI, a leading global services firm. Dr. Tayebi has built and funded numerous companies creating market capitalization of nearly $10 billion.
Carolyn Anderson
Member
Ms. Anderson is a Founder of BioAtla and President of Capia IP. Prior to founding BioAtla and CapiaIP, Ms. Anderson served as Vice President of Intellectual Property at Diversa Corporation for over 11 years. Ms. Anderson has a wide range of experience in intellectual property, licensing, technology transfer, contracts and business development.
Cathy Chang, Ph.D.
Vice President of Scientific Projects & Collaboration
Dr. Chang is a Vice President at BioAtla. Prior to joining BioAtla, Dr. Chang held scientific management positions at Synthetic Genomics, Diversa Corporation, Stratagene, Digital Gene Technologies, Scripps Research Institute and the University of Southern California. Dr. Chang received her B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University and has significant experience in molecular virology, gene discovery and synthesis, metagenomics, protein expression and purification.
Gerhard Frey, Ph.D.
Vice President of Scientific Projects & Collaboration
Dr. Frey is Vice President of Bioatla. Prior to joining BioAtla, Dr. Frey managed several programs at Diversa Corporation and the University of Regensburg. Dr. Frey received his Ph.D. from the University of Regenburg, and has scientific expertise in assay development, immunology, antibody engineering, microbiology and molecular biology.
David P. Wellis, Ph.D.
President & Business Development
Dr. Wellis has over 25 years experience in the life sciences and over 15 years experience in business development, marketing and product commercialization in venture-backed startups to public companies. Prior to BioAtla, Dr. Wellis headed Product Marketing at Illumina Inc., and was responsible for managing hundreds of products for DNA and RNA analysis. He was previously president and CEO of GenVault Corporation, a company that provided innovating dry-state technologies to manage biological samples for research, diagnostic and applied markets. Dr. Wellis began his commercial career at Axon Instruments, that developed novel instrumentation for biomedical research, drug discovery and diagnostics. Dr. Wellis received a BS from the UC Irvine, MS and PhD from Emory University, postdoctoral training at Tufts University Medical School and UC Berkeley and business training at Leavey Business School of Santa Clara University and Haas Business School at UC Berkeley. Dr. Wellis has been an active member of the Young President’s Organization since 2008.
Leslie A. Hickle, Ph.D.
Vice President, New Business
Dr. Hickle has extensive experience in technical and business development innovation, and demonstrated leadership within biotech and growth-oriented companies. She has a B.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Entomology with a specialty in Toxicology from the University of California, Riverside.
Aron Stein, Ph.D.
Toxicologist
Dr. Stein’s areas of management responsibilities have included Toxicology, Regulatory and Medical Affairs and Quality Assurance with both small and large pharmaceutical companies. In addition to project specific regulatory strategies for rapid registration of multiple products, he has been involved in strategic FDA initiatives which involved partnering with the Agency to develop CDER guidance and reintroduction of marketed products. Dr. Stein has a B.S. in Biomedical Science and a Ph.D. in Toxicology from Texas A&M University.