Carl Berke will share his insights gained from two decades of experience in “larval stage” venture financing of aspiring biomedical enterprise. Focus will be on setting future entrepreneur’s expectations and preparing them for “how it works” in the real world to advance from ideation to commercialization.

Carl Berke, Ph.D., is a Partner at Mass General Brigham Venture Fund in Cambridge, investing in new biomedical technologies emerging from Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham & Womens Hospital and Mass Eye & Ear. He is also currently a Founding Director of Mass Medical Angels LLC, a local investment group dedicated to seed stage investment in biomedical innovation. His career has spanned over 25 years in the practice and management of innovation to bring new technologies from lab to market. As a bench scientist and R&D director, he worked at Polaroid Corporation and Hygeia Sciences in the development of photographic and clinical diagnostic products – he is an inventor on 6 US patents. He served as a Partner at Integral/Analysis Group, a management consultancy focused on innovation. He has served on the following board of directors: Quosa [publishing software], Kasalis [robotics], Annovation [safer anesthetics], Combinent [drug delivery], Sebacia [acne treatment], Infobionic [cardiac monitoring], QPID Health [bioinformatics], LifeImage [diagnostic image sharing], Syntimmune [autoimmune therapy], Argo Cardiovascular, Walden Bioscience [renal disease], Pykus Therapeutics [ophthalmology], Starlight Cardio [pediatric device], Walden Bioscience [renal disease], Lyndra [drug delivery], SeQure Dx [gene-editing], Navigation Sciences [surgical device], InStride [behavorial health] and the Sudanese Education Fund [philanthropy]. Carl holds an AB degree from Cornell University and received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He also holds an adjunct appointment as Lecturer in the in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Division.