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.

    Xiaoli Su, PhD – Senior Scientist

    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).

    Evan Goldberg, PhD – Senior Fellow

    Evan serves as the Director of Scientific Affairs for the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI), a Georgia Tech affiliate. He works with academic faculty to help commercialize their early-stage technology and works with industry partners to expand their academic collaborations. He currently leads program leadership and business development for preclinical testing at GCMI. With over ten years of experience as a Study Director, he has managed hundreds of preclinical research projects for medical device, pharmaceutical and biologics companies of varying complexity ranging from model development and initial prototype testing to GLP safety and efficacy studies in many therapeutic areas. Prior to joining GCMI, he served as a Research Engineer at the UCLA Center for Cerebral Palsy, where he managed a clinical laboratory serving patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Evan holds a BS and MS from the University of Texas at Austin in Mechanical Engineering and an MS and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, in Biomedical Engineering.

    Cristhiaan Ochoa, MD, PhD – Senior Fellow

    Cristhiaan Ochoa is a staff Pulmonary and Critical Care physician at JPS Health and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX. With over 20 peer-reviewed publications and two patents pending, he is passionate about medical research and innovation. He holds an M.D. from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in his native country of Colombia and a Ph.D. from the University of South Alabama Center for Lung Biology. He did his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NHLBI and NCI) and the American Heart Association. Cristhiaan is also a medical officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

    Alexandra Antonioli, MD, PhD – Fellow

    Alexandra H. Antonioli, MD, PhD, received a BS in Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. She then joined the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the University of Colorado and received her combined MD and PhD degrees. Her thesis research and brief postdoctoral work focused on combining structural biology with translational immunology experiments to better understand mechanisms that drive inflammation and autoimmunity. In addition to continually trying to improve and develop her clinical skills and medical knowledge base, Alexandra has a passion for volunteer work and has spent time volunteering in Yamoransa, Ghana with the Yale Alumni Service Corps. Alexandra is also a Rotarian and in 2014 was honored with the Thomas Jefferson Award for service to the University of Colorado. She has also completed a medical journalism elective at ABC News in New York City.  Alexandra believes that forming collaborations in science, medicine, media, and technology serve as important keys to making advances within any field and hopes to continue a combination of medicine, science and service throughout her career. Dr. Antonioli is currently a PGY4 resident and member of the Psychiatry Research Track at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

     

    Danielle France, PhD – Fellow

    Danielle France is a scientist and biotech entrepreneur fascinated by emerging biotechnologies and their path to meaningful impact. As a researcher she looked for details that make or break an experiment or a new technology. As an entrepreneur she brought technology out of the lab and onto the path to market. She can ask the tough questions that determine if it’s time to take that first brave step on the path to commercialization.

    During 15 years in biophysics and microbiology research, Danielle worked with a sustainable energy startup in microbial coal methanogenesis, showed the potential of “material probiotics” for preventing steel corrosion, and invented a new technology for sensing nanomechanical movements of bacteria. That technology formed the basis of a company pursuing a 2-hour phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility test for urinary tract infections. In her role as co-founder and CEO, Danielle combined business development with her hands-on expertise in wet lab microbiology, data acquisition, and data analysis in order to drive technology development. Danielle holds a BS in biomedical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in biological engineering from MIT.

    Mark Jarboe, MBA – Fellow

    Mark Jarboe has spent his entire career, with innovative healthcare companies. Mark is experienced in comprehensive start-up business operations including business development, strategic partnerships, customer discovery, and product development.

    Currently, Mark is COO of Health Connect South, who’s mission is to bring together executives, researchers, and entrepreneurs from across the Southeast to share ideas as well as be a platform for strategic collaborations and partnerships.  In addition to Health Connect South, he also serves on several advisory boards and consults with early-stage companies.  Mark is a proud alumni of Leadership Georgia and recently served on Lt Governor Geoff Duncan’s Innovation Task Force, to help make Georgia the “Innovation Capital of the East”.

    Mark holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio as well as an MBA with an emphasis on international business from Georgia State University.

    Matthew Leming, PhD – Fellow

    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.

    Ronald Walls, MD, MBA – Fellow

    Walls attended medical school at Drexel College of Medicine and did his residency at U.C. Davis Medical Center and a fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health. In 1999, Walls decided to pursue a career in the biopharmaceutical industry. To understand both the commercial and medical sides of the industry, in 2006, he received his MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Business. This experience exposed him to the Healthcare/ Life Science venture capital industry.