Sara joined NEA’s healthcare team in 2009 and focuses on investments in biopharmaceutical companies. She serves on the boards of Mersana, Cydan, Vtesse and Therachon, and Imara, as a board observer for Loxo Oncology (LOXO), Ziarco, Clementia, Millendo, and NightstaRx. She previously served as a board observer for Tesaro (TSRO), Epizyme (EPZM), Omthera (acquired by AstraZeneca), and Zyngenia.  She has also been involved in NEA’s investments in Prosensa (acquired by BioMarin), 3-V Biosciences, Edimer, XTuit, and Proteostasis. Prior to joining NEA, Sara was an Associate with Merrill Lynch’s Global Healthcare Group, where she advised biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies on numerous mergers, acquisitions and financing transactions. Previously, she worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley. She has conducted basic science research in mammalian cardiac development and clinical research in age-related macular degeneration. Sara concurrently earned her MD (cum laude) and MBA from Yale University, where she was a Yale MBA Scholar. She received her AB (magna cum laude) in Biology from Harvard University.

John received an MS from Stanford University and both an MS and PhD from MD Anderson Cancer Center where he discovered that IL-10 directly activates anti-tumor CD8+ T cells. John conducted post-doctoral work for a year at DNAX Research Institute and became a Scientist at Schering Plough where he developed PEGylated IL-10 (AM0010) as an immunoncology asset. He then founded Targenics, later merged with ARMO BioSciences (now a publicly traded company), to clinically develop AM0010 and other immune oncology assets. As a founder and Senior Director of Technical Operations at ARMO, John lead the manufacturing and pre-clinical research teams.

John is currently the Director of Immunoncology R&D at Medimmune LLC and is the author of 27 peer reviewed manuscripts and 18 granted or pending patents. Due to working through all of his education, John has over 20 years’ experience with a variety of biotechnology, (Anergen Inc., Introgen Inc., Bacterial Barcodes, DNAX Research Institute, Targenics Inc., ARMO BioSciences, ACIR BioSciences) and pharmaceutical, (Schering Plough, Merck Inc., MedImmune LLC) companies.

Jason Miller is the Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Washington Partnership. The Partnership is a civic alliance of the region’s leading employers and entrepreneurs committed to making the Capital Region of Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond, one of the world’s best places to live, work and build a business. Prior to this role, Miller was the Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council in the White House, joining the Obama Administration in 2010.  Miller led the Obama Administration’s economic policy development and coordination on manufacturing and innovation, transportation and infrastructure, tax policy, energy, entrepreneurship, and Puerto Rico. Previously, Miller was a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in San Francisco and with Marakon Associates in Chicago, where he advised large corporations across industries on strategic, financial and organizational issues.  Miller received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, a M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Mulvey holds a PhD in Virology from Ian Mohr’s lab at NYU Langone Medical Center. Mohr and Mulvey discovered, patented, and characterized the first oncolytic virus capable of resisting the anti-viral effects of innate immunity. This intellectual property was licensed to create talimogene laherparepvec (T-Vec), which was bought by Amgen for $1B and recently became the first FDA approved oncolytic virus. Mulvey is currently a founder and CEO of BeneVir and an inventor on all BeneVir patents protecting T-Stealth^TM, the first oncolytic virus to resist both innate and adaptive immunity. Prior to BeneVir, Mulvey spent 8 years at Sequella, Inc., a clinical stage anti-infectives company. At Sequella, he patented and developed a molecular diagnostic and licensed it to a major clinical diagnostics company. In addition, he designed and executed clinical trials and was involved in the development of Sequella’s antibiotic pipeline from pre-clinical to clinical.

Ms. Meagher has more than 19 years of experience leading strategic initiatives for clients in the commercial, government, and non-profit sectors. She leads Deloitte’s Federal Strategy practice, which has grown to more than 140 practitioners under her leadership. Within the strategy practice, Ms. Meagher focuses on Translational Science. She is leading efforts to support clients in analytics efforts, growth strategies, public private partnerships, strategic planning, program evaluation, stakeholder management, change management, executive leadership, and communication strategies. Ms. Meagher is an expert at Go To Market strategy development, routinely developing high performing teams that outperform the market. She has C-suite relationships across the Federal, Commercial, and Non Profit markets. Ms. Meagher holds a MA in Organization Effectiveness and a BA in Communication Studies and Entrepreneurial Studies.

Joel S. Marcus is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. and Alexandria Venture Investments (NYSE:ARE), an urban office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative life science and technology campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations. Mr. Marcus co-founded Alexandria in 1994 as a garage startup with $19 million in seed capital and has led its growth into an S&P 500 company with an approximately $18 billion total market capitalization and a total shareholder return of nearly 1,350% since the company’s IPO in 1997. In 1996, Mr. Marcus founded the company’s venture investments arm, Alexandria Venture Investments, to provide strategic investment capital to innovative life science and technology entities developing breakthrough therapies and technologies. Mr. Marcus serves on the boards of several organizations, including Accelerator Corporation and AgTech Accelerator Corporation, for which he was an original architect and co-founder, Applied Therapeutics, Atara Biotherapeutics, Boragen, Intra-Cellular Therapies, MeiraGTx Limited, Yumanity Therapeutics; Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), Friends of Cancer Research, The Scripps Research Institute; the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the Navy SEAL Foundation, the Partnership for New York City, and Robin Hood Foundation.

Bethany Mancilla is Vice President of Business Development for Amgen. Since joining Amgen in April 2012, Ms. Mancilla has led the execution of a number of deals including the clinical immuno-oncology collaboration agreements with Merck for Imlygic and Blincyto, the Novartis collaboration in neuroscience for Alzheimer’s disease and migraine and the multi-product cardiovascular collaboration with Servier. In 2015, she was selected as a top woman at Amgen who has helped build the company’s history and is impacting the world of science, technology, and business.

Prior to joining Amgen, Ms. Mancilla served as the Vice President of Business Development and Alliance Management for Micromet from April 2010 to March 2012. During this time she was responsible for negotiating the multi-target BiTE® immune-oncology antibody collaboration with Amgen which led to the acquisition of Micromet by Amgen.

From February 2008 until March 2010, Bethany was the Vice President of Business Development and Licensing for PharmAthene a developer of biologics and vaccines for the biodefense and emerging infectious disease markets. Prior to joining PharmAthene, Bethany was the head of Business Development for Gene Logic. During her ten year span with the company she spear-headed several multi-million dollar partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Roche, Wyeth, Lilly, Organon, Solvay and Abbott.

Ms. Mancilla began her career as the Director of Business Development for BCM Technologies, the for-profit subsidiary of Baylor College of Medicine, where she was involved in the creation and financing of four start-up biotechnology companies. Ms. Mancilla received an M.B.A. from the University of Houston and a B.A. from the University of Colorado.

Geoffrey Lynn, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of Avidea Technologies, a Hopkins-based start-up that is developing immunotherapies for cancer treatment and infectious disease prevention based on an immunotherapeutic delivery (“Nanoscaffold”) platform. Over the last 12 months, Avidea has raised over $1.5M in financing, primarily through R&D partnerships with Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies. These partnerships are helping to propel Avidea’s development of different assets based on the Nanoscaffold platform, including Avidea’s lead asset—a personalized cancer vaccine (PCV). Avidea has demonstrated that the PCV is safe and effective in non-human primates and has successfully completed a pilot GMP manufacturing run. Based on this compelling data, Avidea is now raising Series A financing to advance the PCV to first-in-human testing. Prior to joining Avidea, Geoffrey was a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Seder at the Vaccine Research Center, NIH. Geoffrey has a B.S. in chemistry from Elon University, attended medical school at Johns Hopkins, and has a Ph.D. (“D.Phil.”) in Biomedical Engineering from Oxford University through the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge program.

Wallace Loh has served as President of the University of Maryland since 2010. Previously, he was Executive Vice President and Provost, The University of Iowa; Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Seattle University; Director, Executive Policy Office and chief policy adviser to Governor Gary Locke, State of Washington; Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculties, University of Colorado-Boulder; Dean, University of Washington Law School.

At Maryland, he is Professor of Public Policy. Previously, he was Professor of Law at Washington, Colorado-Boulder, and Iowa; Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell, Peking University (China), Emory, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, and Vanderbilt. His scholarship and teaching are in the areas of law and social change and in criminal justice reform.

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; board of directors, American Council of Education; advisory board, U.S. Comptroller General; former advisory board chair, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; “Influential Marylander” (Daily Record); “Power 100” (Washington Business Journal); “Immigrant Achievement Award” (American Immigration Council); former President, Association of American Law Schools; recipient of three honorary degrees.

Born in China, Loh moved with his family to Peru. After high school, he immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized citizen.

Douglas Liu is the Senior Vice President Global Operations for QIAGEN. In this capacity he heads Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Regulatory and Clinical Affairs at QIAGEN. He joined QIAGEN in 2005 as Vice President Global Operations. Mr. Liu has 30 of experience in the life sciences industry and previously worked at Bayer Healthcare, Chiron, Abbott Labs and Washington University. He has worked in the United States and Europe with leadership roles in R&D, Manufacturing, Strategic Planning and Program Management. Mr. Liu has an MBA from Boston University and a BS from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He is active in supporting the development of the BioHealth industry and is chairman of BioHealth Innovation, Inc. a public private partnership focusing on developing the life science industry as well as being a member of the Maryland Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board.