Stephen Sammut

Stephen M. Sammut, Ph.D. has a career that is both commercial and academic. Outside of Wharton, Steve is Venture Partner, Burrill & Company, a merchant bank and venture capital fund focused on the life sciences and health care. His role there is general management of overseas venture capital funds, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Academically, he holds an appointment as Lecturer, Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and Senior Fellow, Wharton Health Care Management. During his 18 years at Wharton, he has created eight courses and taught over 5000 students. Steve's primary areas of research coincide with his venture activity: health care and biotech capacity building in the emerging markets; private equity and venture capital approaches to economic development; and, the role of the private sector in addressing needs in global health. During his private sector career, Steve has been involved in the creation or funding of nearly 40 biotechnology, Internet, and information technology companies globally. He is on numerous Boards of Directors including HealthRight International, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Dynamis Therapeutics, Combinent BioMedical Systems, and serves as a senior advisor to Mitsubishi Corporation's Life Science Business Unit, and the Royal Bank of Canada Strategic Technology Fund. He is also a member of the publications board of the European Venture Capital Association and the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology. He is also lead editor of Scientific American Lives, a new magazine on innovation in global health. Steve is founder and chair of the International Institute for Biotechnology Entrepreneurship, a non-profit organization that offers intensive training programs throughout the world. His activity with the World Bank/International Finance Corporation (IFC) includes co-authorship of their Bioindustrial Investment Ethics Framework, leader of a major project on global academic technology transfer, the pilot project of which is focused on India. In addition, he is lead contractor on a World Bank project addressing the design of Chinese government-backed venture capital fund. Steve previously held the positions of Vice President of Development of Teleflex Incorporated and Vice President, S.R.One, Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline's venture fund. During his career he was Managing Director of the Center for Technology Transfer at the University of Pennsylvania, and held a similar position at Thomas Jefferson University. At the start of his career, Mr. Sammut co-founded and served as CEO of the Delaware Valley Organ Transplant Program over an eight-year period building it into one of the largest organ banks in the world. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from Villanova University in biological sciences and philosophy, attended Hahnemann Medical College for two years, and holds an MBA from the Wharton School.