Dushyant has over two decades of life-sciences business experience with a unique background in both research and business, in executive and administrative leadership roles in industry and academia, respectively, and in venture capital. As an investor, he worked in venture capital with Connecticut Innovations and with Mission Bay Capital, and is currently responsible for transactions and alliances for Autobahn Labs, a joint venture between Samsara BioCapital and Evotec. He is the founder and managing member of VentureEdge LLC, through which he delivers financing, business development and operational solutions within a strategic framework customized to emerging companies' business needs and capital formation objectives.
His business and leadership roles have included being an SEC-reporting section 16 officer with experience in Fortune-500, early-stage and start-up companies in roles as CEO, leading business development, and directing non-clinical and clinical project operations and pharmaceutical product development. He has been an active member of biotech leadership teams responsible for transformative M&A transactions and a successful NASDAQ IPO, including actively facilitating over $100 million in investment capital over the span of his career.
Dushyant’s unique background includes being the first Associate Vice Chancellor of Research at UC Davis, where he was responsible for innovation and technology commercialization and founded, launched and served as the Executive Director of UC Davis Venture Catalyst, a transformative resource focused on the effective translation of university research into effective startups. He laid the groundwork for, developed and managed a network of incubators and accelerators to support and grow technology-driven startups in the Greater Sacramento regions including creating - in partnership with HM.Clause - the very first wet-lab incubator in the Davis / Sacramento innovation region to support biotech and agtech startups.
As an adjunct professor in the University of San Francisco’s Masagung School of Graduate Management, he teaches entrepreneurship, management of technology and life science innovation. His unique experience raising capital for and leading early stage and startup companies and leading and developing novel initiatives to commercialize technology out of the top-tier research university setting makes him uniquely experienced to add value to early-stage biotech and the capital formation needs of these companies.
In addition to private company board service, he has contributed to a number of not-for-profit boards (governance and advisory), including the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance, the California Technology Council, and the Leadership and Small Business Technology Councils of the National Small Business Association. He was a member of the Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness and Economic Prosperity (CICEP) of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), and served as a member of the Commission’s Executive Committee and its Strategic Communications sub-committee, as well as co-chairing its Innovation and Economic Competitiveness (IEP) Designation sub-committee. He served on the Board of Creativity Explored, a San Francisco-based not-for-profit, focused on providing studio, gallery and economic self-sufficiency support for developmentally disabled artists.
Dushyant received an MBA from the Berkeley Haas School of Business, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, a B.A. from Bennington College, and was a member of the faculty in the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry department at Yale University.
