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Professional Conference Organiser
Heather Walsh is currently the Executive Director, Head of New Business Opportunities of the Rx+ Business Accelerator at Astellas. She leads the ideation and incubation activities, collaborating closely with colleagues across the company and with their VC partners and other external collaborators, as she builds new businesses for Astellas. Prior to this role, she was the Executive Director of the MedTech Accelerator program at mHUB where she was responsible for sourcing and evaluation, as well as program execution.
Heather joined Baxter in July 2017 as part of the central innovation team. She led technical assessment teams for due diligence of new opportunities for mergers and acquisitions and venture investment. Following that initial role, Heather was appointed the Director of External Innovation where she led Baxter’s efforts to increase open innovation partnerships across universities, incubators/accelerators, medical centers, and other partners. She supported strategically aligned transformational innovation for all the global business units and for technology platforms. She then served as a Director for Medical Operations responsible for the day-to-day operations of the medical affairs and clinical development function including grants programs, clinical contracting, and CRO management.
Prior to joining Baxter, Heather was the Assistant Director and Head of Business Development in the Technology Commercialization and Licensing group at the Polsky Center at the University of Chicago. She spent nine years developing, protecting, and licensing University-owned intellectual property. In addition to her technology portfolio, Heather supported the efforts of the commercialization team by identifying and managing high-value contacts, coordinating the university’s marketing strategy for the opportunity pipeline, representing the team at multiple partnering meetings, and launching a program to cultivate relationships with venture capital groups. She piloted and grew a proof-of-concept fund and launched several internship programs to leverage the talents of students and postdocs exploring alternative careers. Heather completed a PhD in Neurobiology, Pharmacology & Cell Physiology from UChicago.
Saumil joined Clearcover in 2021 as General Counsel. Prior to joining Clearcover, Saumil spent a decade as Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Gogo LLC (acquired by Intelsat), the leading provider of in-flight connectivity. In that role, Saumil provided legal oversight over M&A activities, intellectual property (IP) and commercial litigation, and he regularly negotiated IP and IT related transactions with airlines, airframe manufacturers, satellite capacity providers, and other key technology partners. Saumil also has extensive experience establishing innovation capture initiatives and providing strategic guidance over IP portfolios.
Prior to Gogo, Saumil worked as a senior attorney at IBM, and before that, in the IP transactions group at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Saumil started his career in patent prosecution and litigation at Leydig Voit & Mayer Ltd. He received his JD from the University of Minnesota, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, an MS from the University of Virginia, and a BS in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Michelle A. Booden is Director, Business Development and Licensing in the Pacific Hub for Merck & Co., Inc. and is based in San Francisco. Dr. Booden leads identification of external opportunities from discovery to preclinical proof of concept in therapeutic areas of Immunology, Infectious Diseases and Vaccines, and Oncology. Prior to Merck, Michelle held roles of increasing responsibility at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She was also a co-founder of Trek Therapeutics, a life sciences company developing small molecule therapeutics for patients with genetic mitochondrial diseases and NXT Biologics, which is developing vaccines and therapeutics for invasive fungal infections. Michelle also held licensing and business development appointments with the National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer and the University of Pittsburgh Office of Technology Management.
Michelle earned her BS degree in Chemistry from George Mason University and PhD from the Iowa State University in biochemistry and cell biology. She completed her post-doctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Linberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and is also a registered patent agent with the U.S. PTO.
