Are you working on an innovation you think should be spun out into a startup? What resources are available to help? How can you become involved in the innovation ecosystem in St. Louis?
Join us for “OTM Office Hours”, a program series from the Washington University Office of Technology Management covering the latest topics in tech transfer and innovation.
The OTM Office Hours series is back on September 14th with “Funding”. Every startup has one thing in common, it needs capital. Our panelists will cover the basics of funding and the tradeoffs of dilutive versus non-dilutive funding. You will learn about accelerators, venture capital, and Washington University gap funds.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about funding and how tech transfer can help.
And once we wrap, we’ll head to Venture Café in the same building!
We welcome panelists:
Elise Miller Hoffman, MBA
Elise Miller Hoffman is a venture capital investor and startup executive with expertise leading digital health companies as an operator, board member, and investor. Elise has advised dozens of healthcare companies at all stages of the startup life cycle including idea generation, scale up, and exit. As a General Partner at Cultivation Capital, she invests in Seed – Series A stage healthcare IT startups. After investing in ImageMover on behalf of Cultivation Capital in 2018, she joined the company as COO in 2022.
Elise is active in the St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem and serves as a Board Member of the Mid-America Healthcare Investors Network. She can often be found on the campus of her alma mater, Washington University, where she serves as an Investor in Residence at the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a Director of the Holekamp Seed Fund, and a member of the Olin Alumni Board. In the St. Louis community, Elise serves as a Board Co-Chair at Forward Through Ferguson, an Advisory Board Member for the Center for Civic Research and Innovation, and a member of St. Louis Forum.
Elise holds a BA in Spanish Literature and Latin American Studies, and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. She was recognized as a St. Louis Business Journal “30 under 30” awardee in 2018 and an Olin Business School Emerging Leader Award recipient in 2020.
Malcolm Townes, PhD
Malcolm Townes, PhD, serves as Innovation Fund Manager in the Office of Technology Management at Washington University in St. Louis. In this role, he oversees a Gap Fund that provides funding for translational work on promising MedTech, engineering, and physical science technologies created by WashU researchers to increase the chances of these technologies attracting the necessary industry partners to commercialize them. Prior to joining WashU, he worked for over 15 years in the technology transfer and economic development field, first at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), and then at Saint Louis University. Before that, he worked in management consulting helping clients implement change management and productivity improvement projects and served in various product management roles with several industrial products companies where he had profit and loss (P&L) responsibility for product lines with as much as $50 million in annual revenue. He began his career working in project management with a construction materials manufacturer. Townes received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Missouri S&T and his Master of Business Administration with concentrations in marketing and entrepreneurship from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He earned his PhD in Public and Social Policy, with a focus in technology transfer policy, from Saint Louis University.
Crystal Winkeler, PhD
Crystal Winkeler, PhD, joined the BioGenerator team as Managing Director of BioGenerator Ventures in 2022. She focuses on building and investing in biopharma companies. Prior to this role, Crystal was COO and Vice President of R&D of Canopy Biosciences, a Bruker Company (Nasdaq: BRKR). Crystal co-founded Canopy Biosciences and was instrumental in the growth of the company, including PE-backed acquisitions of both Zellkraftwerk, GmbH and Core Diagnostics, LLC. She led efforts in fundraising, technology sourcing and licensing, commercialization, operations, and business development. At the time that she joined BioGenerator, Crystal led a large international team across four sites. Crystal also brings experience in life science investing from her time as a VC Fellow and Senior Analyst with BioGenerator Ventures. During her initial tenure with the team, she participated in multiple investments, including Arch Oncology, Confluence Life Sciences (trading as Nasdaq: ACRS), Immunophotonics, Benson Hill (NYSE: BHIL), CoverCress (Bayer AG), and Medibeacon. Additionally, Crystal has spent time speaking to various student groups about entrepreneurship and judging pitch competitions. Crystal holds a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, where her research focused on analyzing the genetics of a mouse model for studying osteoclasts and the role of the ARF tumor suppressor in post-mitotic cells. Outside of the office, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, playing board games, euchre, traveling, and cooking.