Yale Ventures is pleased to welcome new staff members to its interdisciplinary team supporting innovation and entrepreneurship across Yale. They join six teams at Yale Ventures, including The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale, The Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (Yale CBIT), The Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale, the Corporate Strategy and Engagement Office, IP & Licensing Services, and Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY).  

• Shannon Anderson, PhD – Business Development Associate, Intellectual Property and Licensing Services  
• Morag Grassie, PhD – Director of The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale  
• Candy Hwang, PhD – Interim Project Manager, The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale & Blavatnik Fellow  
• Ben Stang, MPA – Alliance Manager, Corporate Strategy & Engagement Office  
• Janani Ramaswamy, PhD – Senior Executive Director, IP & Licensing Services  
• David Rosenthal, MD – Director of Strategic Partnerships at Yale CBIT
• Isabelle Schellenger, MA – Assistant Director of Student Programming at Tsai CITY  
• Makoto Yoshioka, PhD – Director, Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale 
   

Please join me in welcoming these new Yale Ventures teammates to our community. Thanks to generous support from Yale philanthropists and significant investments from the university, the Yale Ventures team continues to grow to meet the demand from Yale innovators and help them to develop innovations that impact the world's greatest challenges.

Josh Geballe, Yale Ventures Managing Director and Senior Associate Provost for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Yale University. 

Meet the new Yale Ventures staff:
 

Shannon Anderson, PhD  
Business Development Associate  

Shannon is a Business Development Associate with Yale Ventures focusing on life sciences. Prior to Yale, she spent two years as a Senior Consultant at Trinity Life Sciences supporting biopharma clients across a broad range of commercial strategy projects, including market opportunity assessments, indication prioritizations, and strategic portfolio planning. Shannon received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in 2021, where she researched skeletal muscle regeneration following traumatic soft tissue injury.  

Dr. Morag Grassie   
Director, The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale    

Dr. Morag Grassie is promoted to the Director of the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation, previously serving as its Associate Director. Morag has over 30 years of experience in the pharma industry, entrepreneurship, and academic research. After graduating from Glasgow University with a BSc in molecular biology and PhD in virology, she held positions in the pharmaceutical industry and a Yale biotech startup before joining Yale in 2018.  Prior to this appointment, she was the Senior Associate Director for the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale and Associate Director, Business Development. She has advised, expanded, and advanced the portfolio of Blavatnik proposals and projects and using her passion for people and curiosity for knowledge extended her role in 2022 to include business development, with a special interest in under-represented groups. In this area, she co-founded amplifyHERscience in 2020, an initiative within Yale Ventures to advance parity of Yale entrepreneurs to reflect the diversity of the community and ensure innovation support is utilized by all.    

Candy Hwang, PhD  
Interim Project Manager, Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale & Blavatnik Fellow  

Candy is the Interim Project Manager for The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation and a Blavatnik Fellow. Trained as a medicinal chemist and former educator, in her role she is focusing on advancing technologies developed by Yale faculty and supporting the growth of the bioscience ecosystem in Connecticut. Prior to Yale, she was an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Southern Connecticut State University. As a tenured professor, Candy managed a research team focused on designing small molecule inhibitors to disrupt quorum sensing and biofilm formation in bacteria. She was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute studying preclinical vaccines against drugs of abuse, particularly targeting heroin, fentanyl, and oxycodone, and gaining expertise in in vivo pharmacology. Candy received an NSF Fellowship during her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Southern California on the synthesis and characterization of fluorinated oligonucleotides. She earned a BA in Chemistry and BS in Biology from Pepperdine University. She has published 22 peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews.  

Janani Ramaswamy, PhD  
Senior Executive Director, IP & Licensing Services  

As Senior Executive Director of IP & Licensing Services, Janani oversees Yale's technology commercialization efforts and supports Yale Ventures’ business development and IP & licensing teams. Prior to Yale, Janani was the Director of Medical Device Licensing at Innovation Partnerships, University of Michigan, where she led the team responsible for Medtech commercialization and served inventors from the College of Engineering and Medical School.  Janani was also a Licensing Associate at Henry Ford Innovations, the technology transfer unit of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. Janani earned her MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan as well as a BTech in Biotechnology from Vellore Institute of Technology, India.  

David Rosenthal, MD  
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation & Technology  

Dr. Rosenthal is a Primary Care Physician and Assistant Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. At Yale, he currently serves as Co-Course Director of Professional Responsibility and previously served as the Course Director of the Capstone Course and Introduction to the Profession (iPro) course for all Yale Medical Students. He is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT) and is also a Healthcare Venture Partner at Alleycorp. From 2012-2020, he served as the Medical Director of the Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team for VA Connecticut, a medical home model of care with specialized access for Veterans experiencing homelessness and in 2020 deployed to help Mayor Elicker and Dr. Mehul Dalal stand up a COVID Isolation Respite Facility for Greater New Haven. From 2020-2022, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Tesseract Health and Liminal Sciences, and Chair of the Medical Advisory Board for 4Catalyer. Dr. Rosenthal has written extensively on medicine, health information technology, and medical ethics. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, and completed his internship and primary care residency at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in the Management and Leadership Track.  

Isabelle Schellenger, MA  
Assistant Director of Student Programming, Tsai CITY  

Isabelle is the Assistant Director of Student Programming at Tsai CITY. Prior to Yale, Isabelle worked at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation where she was the Assistant Director of Student Programs developing programming related to private equity, venture capital, and entrepreneurship through acquisition. She also advised students, conducted needs assessments, and analyzed program data to guide future programming. Prior to this role, Isabelle worked at The Aspen Institute in their Global Innovators Group. Isabelle received a BA (magna cum laude) in Sociology and Spanish from Franklin & Marshall College and an MA in Social Sciences with concentrations in Sociology, Education, and Qualitative Research from the University of Chicago. She also received a Certificate in Education and Society from the University of Chicago.  

Ben Stang, MPA  
Alliance Manager, Corporate Strategy & Engagement  

Ben Stang is an Alliance Manager in the Corporate Strategy and Engagement Office at Yale Ventures, supporting sponsored programs and industry partnerships by facilitating their formation, implementation, and driving opportunities for further discoveries. Prior to Yale, Ben was the Director of Healthcare Workforce Strategy at Social Venture Partners Connecticut, where he provided management consulting to Connecticut’s Governor’s Workforce Council and Office of Workforce Strategy to grow the healthcare workforce and build career pathways for people entering the field. Ben spent over three years as an Associate Program Officer for The Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Type 1 Diabetes program, where he developed and managed projects to modernize how healthcare is delivered while reducing disparities in access and outcomes. Ben started his career at Community Healthcare Network, a system of Federally Qualified Health Centers throughout New York City. Ben earned a MPA from Baruch College, and a bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University.    

Makoto Yoshioka, PhD  
Director, Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale  

Makoto is the Director of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale. The Colton Center is one of four international Colton Centers that focus on advancing translational research in autoimmune and allergic diseases. Makoto previously served as VP of Research and Collaborations at ConverGene, a startup that discovered and developed epigenetic drugs for cancer, inflammatory diseases, and fibrosis. Prior to ConverGene, Makoto was the Technology Manager at TechCatalyst, a business unit of the American Chemical Society and also held various technical positions at Gene Logic and CuraGen, two companies in the field of genomics. Makoto earned his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Vermont.  

About Yale Ventures

Launched by Yale University in 2022, Yale Ventures seeks to foster and accelerate a vibrant entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem that increases support, resources, and opportunities for Yale innovators—faculty and students—as they translate their ideas and discoveries into new ventures that will positively impact the world's greatest challenges.