Company and Leadership

    What are the benefits for inventors and universities in working with VIC Foundry?

    The VIC Foundry team has extensive technology commercialization experience and success. Working with our team can help steer technology development in the most impactful and commercially-promising directions. Access to SBIR and STTR funding is provided without the inventor needing to form a separate new company, which is time-consuming, distracting from the university research, while carrying significant costs and risks.

    When the grant-funded development work goes as planned, a new company is formed to commercialize the technology with private equity funding ensured. VIC has a strong track record for successfully commercializing university technologies. The inventor takes a technical advisor role in the new company and can receive equity and consulting compensation.

    For universities, it is an opportunity for licensing technologies that otherwise may never be licensed due to the stage of development at the university. Universities can benefit from subcontracted work back to the university, and from having a much higher chance of substantial licensing revenue compared to a typical faculty or student-led startup.

    What are the benefits for investors?

    For the VIC Investor network, the VIC Foundry provides an additional source of high-quality deal flow and de-risks highly promising technologies. It allows deeper insights prior to VIC making the go/no-go decision on a new start-up to commercialize the given technology.

    Key Management

    Calvin Goforth, PhD – Chief Executive Officer

    In addition to serving as VIC Foundry CEO, Dr. Goforth is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VIC Technology Venture Development. In these roles, he has raised tens of $millions in capital, helped bring several high value products from concept to market, and helped bring multiple companies to exit events.
     
    He received a BS in Aerospace Engineering with Highest Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. Early in his career, Dr. Goforth held positions at NASA (where he worked alternate semesters while pursuing his BS) and Rocketdyne, where he worked in the space shuttle main engine performance analysis group.
     
    He later received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He then returned to his home state of Arkansas and took a position as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas. There, he received the school’s Halliburton Outstanding Researcher Award in Mechanical Engineering for three straight years.
     
    He left his faculty position to form Vector, Inc. with the vision to build open-architecture PC-based controllers. Goforth self-financed the company and developed its first product in one year. Product sales ramped up quickly and the company was sold at the end of its second year of operations. Dr. Goforth’s experiences with Vector and other early stage technology companies led him to found VIC Technology Venture Development.
     
    At VIC he developed the company’s virtual enterprising business model to support the formation and development of technology start-up companies. Dr. Goforth also founded and manages the VIC Investor Network that provides seed capital into every new company VIC forms.

    Michael Artinger, PhD– Executive Vice President 

    Michael Artinger, PhD, Executive Vice President and Managing Director VIC Colorado Branch, spent his career transforming innovation into commercial opportunity. He works closely with universities and inventors across the nation to recognize the potential of their discoveries and has deep domain expertise across multiple verticals, including therapeutics, vaccines, medical devices, diagnostics and information technology/software.

    Dr. Artinger has held leadership positions in companies in which he helped raise in excess of $45m in growth capital and achieve exit event proceeds for investors and other shareholders in excess of $350m. Dr. Artinger is also the holder of several patents and has numerous peer reviewed publications in the life sciences area. He has held appointments as Visiting Scientist in Medicine at both Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and conducted his Postdoctoral research at the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

    Dr. Artinger earned his Doctorate degree in Biology focusing on Developmental and Cell Biology, as well as his Baccalaureate degree in Applied Ecology from the University of California at Irvine.

    Xiaoli Su, PhD – Vice President Diagnostics

    Dr. Su has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and a broad background in medicine (pharmacy). He has a proven track record in both academia and industry with over 20 years’ experience in automated analytical and bioanalytical systems, biosensors, chemical sensors, and assay development. His technical leadership has led to the successful development of self-contained microfluidic cartridge based automated immunoassay system, multichannel capillary immunoassay instrument, handheld photoelectrochemical biosensing device, novel nucleic acid amplification tests, and many other innovative technologies and products for rapid detection of a variety of biological and chemical species. In his research areas, Dr. Su has published one book chapter and 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and has 4 patents (issued and pending).

    Chien Nguyen, PhD – Vice President Engineering

    Dr. Nguyen received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas in 2004. He has expertise in microfabrication of sensors, packaging and testing, and the design and implementation of microprocessor/micro-controller based systems. He programs in C++, Matlab, VHDL, and assembly languages, is experienced with CAD, and has expertise with microfabrication and analysis systems including CVD, RIE, ESEM, and AFM. Dr. Nguyen is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and of the American Chemical Society.

    Robyn Goforth, PhD – Vice President BioPharma

    Robyn Goforth, PhD, Vice President Technology Assessment, also presently serving as Chief Scientific Officer for portfolio company BiologicsMD. At BiologicsMD she oversees pre-clinical drug development programs for the pipeline of products for treatment of alopecia, severe bone disorders, and metastatic breast and prostate cancers.

    Her primary areas of technical focus are drug development, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and regulatory strategy. With VIC’s Opportunity Assessment Team, Dr. Goforth leads technical and commercial evaluation of technologies ranging from medical devices to pharmaceuticals as well as scientific research tools and instrumentation.

    Dr. Goforth has been the principal investigator on over $3M in Small Business Innovation Research and Department of Defense grants and has served as co-principal investigator on over $10MM in National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy grants. Dr. Goforth earned her Doctorate degree in Chemistry from the University of Arkansas in 2001.

    Kelly Mabry, PhD – Executive in Residence

    Kelly Mabry is a technical leader passionate about bringing meaningful technologies from lab to market. She has developed comprehensive product development plans with a strong product foundation, developed supply chain & manufacturing strategies, and shaped regulatory submissions. Currently, she is the CEO of Cellia Science and a VIC Executive in Residence (EIR). Previously she was the Director of Research and Development at Tangible Science, where she has led the development of contact lens-related products from inception through development and on to FDA clearance and commercialization. A chemical engineer by training, she has worked at the interface of engineering, materials science, biology, and medicine. Her PhD thesis in the lab of Kristi Anseth of the University of Colorado focused on designing biomimetic materials systems for in vitro study of heart valve cells.

    Matthew Leming, PhD – Entrepreneur in Residence

    Matthew Leming is a former bench scientist who now serves as a strategic advisor for healthcare focused startup companies. He has 10 years of experience in basic science research with 10 peer reviewed publications in journals ranging from BMC Genomics, Journal of Neuroscience, and Scientific Reports. This is complimented by more than six years of direct healthcare focused startup project management and technology transfer experience. This experience was gained at the University of Notre Dame where he received his PhD in Biology, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he did his postdoctoral training and worked in tech transfer, and, most recently, the Texas Medical Center Accelerator, a program that is rated silver by the Accelerator Seed Rankings Project. Along the process he has had the opportunity to sit on every side of the entrepreneurial table. Matthew has a breadth of experience in commercialization projects ranging from academic to commercial translation, mobile health platforms, medical devices, and drug discovery. His passion truly lies in the commercialization of medical innovations.

    Sobha Pisharody, PhD – Entrepreneur in Residence

    Sobha Pisharody, Ph.D., has held senior leadership roles in both startups and large companies, from Chief Strategy and Product Officer at InformedDNA, a genomics company focused on bridging the gap between innovative health technologies  and health plans, to Senior Vice President, Product and Strategy at Talis Biomedical (fka SlipChip) and Director of Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific where she led businesses within the qPCR and Capillary Electrophoresis franchises. Prior to that Dr. Pisharody was the founder and CEO of GenoRx, Inc a molecular diagnostic startup. She holds a PhD in Molecular Oncology and Immunology from the New York University School of Medicine and a BS in Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley.

    Jonathan Rayner, PhD – Entrepreneur in Residence

    Dr. Rayner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of South Alabama, where he also serves as Director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Responsible Official for the select agent program. He earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Colorado State University and completed postdoctoral training at the CDC and USAMRIID, where he began his work in vaccine development. Dr. Rayner has held senior scientific leadership roles in industry and government-supported research organizations, including AlphaVax, MRIGlobal, and Southern Research, leading GLP-compliant programs and serving as PI on major DoD, NIH, and BARDA contracts. His research focuses on antiviral therapeutics, vaccine strategies, and preclinical model development for high-consequence pathogens, with current funding from government agencies, biotech, and pharmaceutical partners.