Molly Schmid

Molly Schmid has specific expertise in guiding early stage companies and technology commercialization, stemming from her roles in scientific management, project leadership, and business development in four biotechnology companies. Her career has been about equally split between academia and industry. Currently, she serves primarily as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC and as a Senior Counselor for TriTechSBDC.

Dr. Schmid has held senior leadership positions in the biotech industry, where she served as Group Vice President, Life Science at ieCrowd (Riverside, CA), Senior Vice President of Preclinical Programs at Affinium Pharmaceuticals (Toronto, ON), Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics at Genencor International (Palo Alto CA), and Vice President of Research Alliances at Microcide Pharmaceuticals (Mountain View, CA).

In these companies, she was part of executive teams that raised over $200MM in funding through venture capital, corporate partnerships, public markets, and US and Canadian federal research grants. Her experiences with these companies included two IPO’s, two compounds that entered human clinical trials, international, multi-year, multi-million dollar corporate partnerships with a number of companies, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Daiichi Pharmaceuticals, and building and managing first-rate scientific teams, while satisfying the business needs of the organizations. She has nine issued U.S. patents, and several others pending.

She began her career in academia, where she has had a distinguished career. Most recently, she was Professor and Entrepreneur- in-Residence at Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, CA and formerly an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. In addition, she has held adjunct professor positions at the University of Southern California (Marshall School of Business), San Diego State University (Biology), and Claremont Graduate University (Drucker School of Management). Dr. Schmid has served on numerous NSF and NIH grant review panels, and served as chair of an NIH SBIR/STTR grant review panel for several years. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Searle Scholar, and a Damon-Runyon Fellow.

She has embedded herself in the Southern California entrepreneurial community since moving here in 2005. She is a member and past president of the Inland SoCal Tech Coast Angels, a member of the TCA Board of Governors (2011-2014), and a Senior Counselor for TriTech Small Business Development Center. Molly Schmid has been a GAP advisor for 3 years.

Education

• Ph.D., Biology University of Utah
• B.S., Biology, University at Albany - SUNY