Founders
Dr. Jay M. Short
Dr. Short is a founder of Diversa Corporation (now Verenium) where he served in multiple roles including CEO, President, Chief Technology Officer, and Director for the company over his 11 year tenure. Dr. Short led the company in raising over $500 million in the IPO and in committed funding from corporate partners. Before joining Diversa Corporation, Dr. Short served as President of Stratacyte, Inc., the first company to express libraries of antibodies in bacteria, and Vice President of Research & Development and Operations for Stratagene Cloning Systems, a molecular biology company based in La Jolla, California.
Dr. Short earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University and his BA in chemistry with honors at Taylor University.
Dr. Short received San Diego's 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Health Sciences and was the recipient of two first place awards granted by the University of California, San Diego, Connect Innovative Product Program. In addition, Dr. Short's grant program was selected as the top one percent of research programs in the United States for commercializing new products funded by the SBIR program.
Dr. Short has authored more than 100 publications and is named inventor of over 100 issued patents and several hundred pending patents. He has served on the U.S. National Research Council panel for Chemical Science and Technology at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and numerous other governmental, grant and journal review committees and boards. In 2003 he received the ABL Innovations in HealthCare Gold award for antibody discovery and evolution technologies, and in 2004 he received the Henry F. Whalen, Jr. Award for Business Development by the American Chemical Society.
Currently, Dr. Short serves as a Director for Invitrogen, (NASDAQ: IVGN), Senomyx (NASDAQ: SNMX), Nventa Biopharmaceuticals Corporation, (TORONTO: NVNBF), and Anaptys Biosciences. In addition, he is a member of YPO and founder and co-owner of Capia IP, LLC. He is also currently the Founder, President and Chairman of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, principal of BioAtla and an advisor to City National Bank, Genalyte, the Division of Biology at UCSD, and Celunol Corporation.
Dr. Masood Tayebi
Dr. Tayebi's ability to build and grow a global multi-billion dollar outsourcing services business is incontrovertible. He brings the wealth of experience and critical insights into the service sector, gained through his success in the telecom industry, and in founding BioDuro, Masood applies the lessons learned to advancing the drug development industry.
Dr. Tayebi has been involved in founding, financing, and managing numerous companies. Most recently, he founded, built, and managed WFI, the leading global services firm to the wireless industry. WFI currently employs 2,700, has operations in over 60 countries. In 2000, at the peak of telecom hype, WFI had a market capitalization of over $7 billion.
Dr. Tayebi is also a partner in Bridgewest, a San Diego Based investment firm that is active in venture capital and real estate investment. BridgeWest has invested in 12 start-up companies including LogicTree and QThink.
Dr. Tayebi is a direct investor with sizable holdings in 9 venture firms including Oak Investment Partners and Credit Suisse's venture fund.
Prior to co-founding WFI, Dr. Tayebi enjoyed a successful engineering career with several well known multinational corporations including British Telecom and LCC International.
Dr. Tayebi received his Ph.D. in mobile radio propagation from the University of Liverpool, his M.S. in electronics engineering from the University of Southampton and is a principal of BioAtla.
Carolyn Anderson
Ms. Anderson was a member of the founding management team of Diversa Corporation (now Verenium) where she served as Vice President, Intellectual Property and Licensing, Director of Intellectual Property and Contracts, among other roles, over her 11 year tenure. Ms. Anderson led the company's intellectual property group from inception in 1994 to her departure in 2005, where she managed a portfolio of over 250 issued and 500 pending patents, and over 50 pending and issued trademarks worldwide. During that time she successfully led the company through multiple proceedings. In 2000, the Diversa management team achieved the most successful biotechnology IPO at that time, raising over $200 million in gross proceeds. The portfolio she managed at Diversa was cited by MIT Magazine as being in the top 10 in the world both in 2003 and 2004 across all industries based on citation frequency.
In addition, during her tenure as the head of IP, Ms. Anderson was the IP lead in business negotiations that raised $300 million in committed funding from corporate partners that included Novartis, Syngenta, Dow, Merck, Dupont, Givaudan, and Cargill. Before joining Diversa Corporation, Ms. Anderson served in multiple roles at Stratagene Cloning Systems, a molecular biology company based in La Jolla, California, including in sales, marketing, product management and business development.
Ms. Anderson earned her undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego in Biochemistry and Cell Biology, is a registered Patent Agent with the USPTO, and has published in the area of intellectual property concerning biodiversity access. In 2003, she was a nominee in the T Sector Magazine and BIOCOM BioFUSION award for the "Life Sciences In-House Legal Counsel of the Year". Currently she is the President and co-owner of Capia IP in San Diego, California that provides business based intellectual property advice and services to the life sciences industry. Carolyn and her team at Capia IP provide intellectual property and contract services for BioAtla in the area of protien evolution and engineering. She is also a principal of BioAtla.