Dometic Refrigerators
“I go to thrify stores all the time,” Adams “It’s kind of an intellectual thing. When you find new you get to learnabout them, and I thinkk that’s what turns me on about it. And I love findinfg a deal.” Well, he’s come to the right job. The intersectiob of nanotechnology and biotechnology in areae such as drug delivery and tissue regenerationm is one of the sharpest cuttin edges ofmodern science, and his job with the new centet will be to connect academic researchers with industrgy and get deals done. (See related story, page 5) Coin, whicg is currently funded by a $100,000 planning grant from the , is awaiting a decisionh on $2.
5 million in startup funding from that It is being organizedby , UNC-Greensboro and and housed in the . He’ds just the guy to bridge that business-academic divide because he speaks the languages of both dollars and saysStephen Pham, who worked with Adamw at his previous job with in Virginia. Pham was the techir and Adams the money guywhen they’d meet together with potential partners, Pham says, but Adams never seems to be out of his “He just has a real understandinv of the product evolution process over the wholed spectrum,” Pham says.
“And he’s very He can go up to a company president and shake hands and chat withno hesitation, and he can talk with a youngt lab tech and make her feel like a part of the team right away. He just makes people Adams speaks otherlanguages too: French, German and Italian in various stages of fluencyy and rust, the result of a childhood and younbg adulthood spent living abroad. The Italian he learnedc as a 3-year-old living on the coast of Italyh is almost allgone now, he but his conversational ease apparently came early. “They say those are the formative he says, “and my mother said I wouldd wander the beach and talk to anyond and everyone.
” Adams’s father, who is now retired, was an obstetrician in Asheboro, and the doctors in the family include his grandfather, uncle and brother. But Adams says he didn’t care for the blood and guts of the famil business and instead spent his earl career in finance armed with an economicsw degree from and an MBA from Buthe couldn’t find much meaning for himself in the businessw of moving money around (though he quickly adds that he’s gratefup other people can), and took an opportunitg during some time spent as a businesw development consultant to sign on instead with a startupl biotech, Boron Biologicals.
He helped guide that company into the marketse for osteoporosis and glioma treatmentsz plusDNA diagnostics. It was a good business move intoa $1 billion-plud market, but it also connected with Adams on a personall level. “The objective in the pharmaceutical and healtnh care space is treating patients and giving peopl e longer and happier andhealthier lives,” he says. “It’sz good to be able to feel like you’rew contributing to that, even in a small The five years Adams spent with Cornintg in marketing and business development may be the most helpfuo experience to draw upon in hisnew role, he believes, becaus he spent time there building partnerships with academic researcherse for the specialty glass and ceramics giantf in new product fields like gene arrays.
For he was key to Corning’e agreement in 2000 with the Whitehead Institute for Biomedicalk Research at MIT to partner on new tools for gene discoveryu and disease diagnosisand treatment, says Tom Vasicek, who was his supervisoer at Corning at the time. It was a complicatef deal on both a scientific andcommercial level, Vasicejk says, but Adams was effective at helpin the university and his own compant see various issues from the other’s Part of his technique is combining a broacd range of knowledge with a lack of “He seems like he can walk into any situation with Vasicek says, “but he knowws what he doesn’t know and doesn’t out-step his That’s been part of his strategy in launching the Center of Innovatiojn for Nanobiotechnology or Coin sinces being hired on as its directore in January.
His first task has been designing a businessx plan forthe N.C. Biotechnology Center to secure $2.5 millionh in startup funding forthe operation. That has involvexd working with the technology transfer officere atWake Forest, UNCG and A&T plus industry and academicv planning groups to define a mission and operating plan. Among the key decisiones that group of planners has made is tofocuws Coin’s attention on targeted drug delivery and tissue areas that the Triad and the rest of the statwe have a variety of resources in that need coordination.
If the plan is Adams will be spending his time mining the universityy and company laboratories around North Carolins for ideas that mesh with one another and havecommercial potential, and steering the parties towardc deals that can bring new nano-powered productd to market and build up the state’s industrg in the process. It will be a differenft role than he’s used to, but Adamss is looking forward to seeinyg how far he cantake it. “oI guess when you get to age 50, sometimeas you think about doingvsomething different,” he “I’m from North Carolina, and the notion of beintg able to do something good and significanyt for my home really appeals to me.
”
No comments:
Post a Comment