Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Misha Plam, Founder of BiOptix and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board. Dr Plam has an extensive background in commercializing research and building high tech entrepreneurial companies. Misha previously founded and served as Chairman, President and CEO of Sievers Instruments, Inc., an analytical instrument company now owned by General Electric. Sievers received a number of SBIR awards and developed an instrument to measure water quality on the Russian Space Station MIR. A Sievers instrument is now used on the International Space Station and the product was successfully marketed to the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries. Misha was selected as Ernst & Young Entrepreneur-of-the-Year (Rocky Mountain Region) in 1997 and was also named Entrepreneur of Distinction at Esprit 97 in Boulder, Colorado. Misha is an Academician of the Russian Academy of Engineering, one of only 77 foreign members of this prestigious organization. He has been widely recognized for his contributions to the American-Russian Space Program and has promoted the US SBIR program in China and Russia. Misha is currently an Adjunct Professor in the University of Colorado's Mechanical Engineering Department and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and the US-Russia Center for Entrepreneurship. He is a graduate of Moscow State University in Russia, where he received an advanced degree in Glaciology.

Dr. John "Jan" Hall, 2005 Physics Nobel Laureate. Dr Hall has earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Physics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 2005 Dr. Hall received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique, in addition to numerous other physics awards. He has authored more than 230 articles in refereed journals, and holds ten U.S. patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and is a a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society. He is also a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a Fellow Adjoint of JILA CU. Dr. Hall has trained numerous graduate students and post docs in the Physics Department at the University of Colorado , Boulder. He retired from NIST in November, 2004 after spending 45 years of his life there, but is still active in JILA and his consulting company (Hall Stable Lasers, LLC). He has been awarded more than 20 professional, peer-generated honors including U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medals, Presidential Rank Award, Charles Hard Townes Award of the Optical Society of America (joint with V. P. Chebotayev), Arthur L. Shawlow Prize of the American Physical Society, Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America. In 2004, he received the IEEE Rabi Award and became a member of the French Légion d'Honneur.

Dr. Patrick Gardner received a B.S. from the University of Florida and a M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He is a retired Colonel, U.S. Air Force, with 25 years of active-duty service where he led research, development, acquisition and test of aircraft control systems, munitions guidance, electro-optical sensors, directed energy systems and chemical, biological, radiological, and explosives detectors. From 1999-2003 Dr. Gardner was assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command. He represented 10 Air Force labs and 14 National labs, providing rapid response technology solutions to meet urgent needs for Special Operations. He served on multiple defense decision panels, including the Joint Science & Technology Panel for Chemical & Biological Defense and the DOD/DOE Munitions Panel. In 2003 Dr. Gardner joined General Dynamics Corporation as Chief Scientist for Detection and Countermeasures. He led a team of program managers, engineers and scientists in the research, development and manufacture of chemical, biological and explosives detection, countermeasures, and decontaminaton systems. In 2007 Dr. Gardner joined Western Carolina University, Center for Rapid Product Realization, where he leads the development, productization, and commercialization of intellectual property for a diverse set of technologies and markets.

Dr. David Barker. From 2000 through 2006 Dr. Barker was Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Illumina, Inc., in San Diego, California, a leading developer of genomic analysis systems. Dr. Barker served from 1998 to 2000 as Vice President and Chief Science Advisor at Amersham Biosciences, now part of General Electric. From 1988 to 1998, Dr. Barker held senior positions, including Vice President of Research and Business Development, at Molecular Dynamics, Inc., until the acquisition of Molecular Dynamics by Amersham. He serves on the Boards of Directors of NextBio, Cell Biosciences, and Microchip Biotechnologies, Inc. In his academic career, Dr. Barker conducted interdisciplinary research in neurobiology as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon and Associate Professor at Oregon State University. Dr. Barker holds a BS with honors in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD in Biochemistry from Brandeis University.

Dr. Marvin Caruthers is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the early 1980's, Professor Caruthers laid the foundation for the development of automated gene synthesizers, used by researchers for chromosome mapping, DNA sequencing, and the diagnosis of diseases and genetic disorders. He was most instrumental in the development of technologies that have led to the emergence of such notable companies as Amgen and Applied Biosystems. Professor Caruthers has served on the boards of a number of biotechnology companies and currently sits on the Board of Directors of Array Biopharma and Barofold Inc, Colorado biotechnology companies. He holds twenty U.S. patents and his laboratory continues to develop new chemistries for synthesizing biological molecules and exploring their uses.

Dr. Ted Haensch, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, was a recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. He has authored or co-authored more than 400 papers, focusing on coherent nonlinear interactions between light and matter. Dr. Haensch is known for his seminal contributions in the field of laser spectroscopy. His early work includes the first narrowband tunable dye laser, the invention of commonly used techniques of Doppler-free laser spectroscopy, and the first proposal for laser cooling of atomic gases. Professor Haensch is a member of the German Physical Society, and the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Lasertechnik e.V. (WLT). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Franklin Institute, and the Laser Institute of America. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Science, and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In 2001, he became co-founder and Member of the Board of Menlo Systems GmbH.

Dr. Nikos Pagratis earned his Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from the University of Chicago. He most recently served as Director of Research and Technology for Drug Discovery at Myogen, Inc., (now Gilead). Before joining Myogen Dr Pagratis was a lead researcher at NeXstar Pharmaceuticals Inc., working primarily on drug discovery. He has over 15 years of industry experience in drug discovery, 20 years hands-on experience in molecular biology and molecular genetics, as well as extensive experience in cell biology and enzyme biochemistry. Dr. Pagratis has also had significant responsibility for management of scientific and technology development projects. He has been the principal investigator on numerous SBIR awards and is credited with over 30 patents.

Dr. Michael Stowell received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in Chemistry and Biophysics. Dr. Stowell is currently a professor at the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Agouron Fellow from MRC-Cambridge and Kyoto University, the Sigma Xi Award, Merck-Kelco Research Fellow, Albert L. Raymond Research Fellow, and NIH Predoctoral Service Fellow from California Institute of Technology. He has over 20 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals and has received numerous research grants from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other organizations.