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Mike has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical development experience and has focused on clinical-stage product companies, particularly in the oncology and neurology areas. He is currently Executive Partner at Omega Funds and was Managing General Partner at Sofinnova Investments from 1997-2021. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Mike worked on 20 clinical products and authored almost 100 papers and books, including a 1,000–page treatise on vaccine design. Mike was the initial investor in a number of companies that went public, including Actelion (SWX: ATLN), InterMune (Nasdaq: ITMN), Orexigen Therapeutics (Nasdaq: OREX), Seattle Genetics (Nasdaq: SGEN), Threshold Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: THLD) and Trius Therapeutics (Nasdaq: TSRX), as well as several private companies, including Intellikine (acquired by Millennium/Takeda), Labrys Biologics (acquired by Teva) and Pionyr Therapeutics (partnered with Gilead). Mike is currently Board Chair of Galera Therapeutics (Nasdaq: GRTX) and on the Board of Trustees of Washington University in St. Louis. He is past Board President of AVAC (AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition) in NYC, a former Advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a former Strategic Advisor to One World Health, and a Founding Venture Advisory Board member of the IAVI (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) Innovation Fund. He is an Adjunct Professor in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas and served on the advisory board of the Institute for the Advancement of Medical Innovation at the University of Kansas. Mike had senior-level operation roles at Genentech, Cytel, and Syntex Research and was the first scientist from the biotechnology industry to be elected a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Toronto, and a postdoc at the University of California, where he was a faculty member before moving into biotech.