BU - Office of Technology Development - Team

New Ventures

N. Stephen Ober, MD, MBA
Executive Director, New Ventures

Dr. N. Stephen Ober is OTD’s Director of New Ventures and currently serves as Associate Director of the Health Care Entrepreneurship Program (HCEP) at BU, an academic program designed to train physicians, medical students, and dental students in business and venture creation. Prior to joining BU in 2004, Dr. Ober was co-founder and president of Beyond Genomics, Inc., a biotechnology company that developed and applied a unique “systems biology” approach to drug discovery and development. Prior to Beyond Genomics, Dr. Ober was president and chief executive officer of Synergy, a successful health information and data management company. Synergy was founded by Dr. Ober in 1995 and was acquired by ENVOY Corp. in 1998. As part of ENVOY, Synergy developed leading-edge technologies and analytic methods to develop one of the industry’s largest and unique health care data warehouses based on real-time, patient-level electronic claims data. In March 1999, ENVOY was acquired by Quintiles Transnational, the world’s largest Clinical Research Organization (CRO). At Quintiles, Dr. Ober successfully integrated Synergy’s data and technology into Quintiles’ drug development processes to improve the efficiency of drug clinical trials. Prior to Synergy, Dr. Ober spent five years as executive vice president and corporate medical director of Private Health Care Systems (PHCS), one of the largest national managed care companies in the country.

Dr. Ober received his BA and MD degrees from Boston University, his clinical training in surgery and orthopedic surgery from University of California San Diego, and his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Al Hawkins, MBA, MS
Director , New Ventures

Al Hawkins joined BU’s OTD in January 2007. He manages the process of starting and developing new faculty companies and also administers the Boston University venture capital fund.

Prior to BU, Al was a Co-founder and Partner of Agave Group, a management consulting firm that focused on fundraising, business development and investment due diligence for early stage life science companies and investor groups. In five years at Agave Group, Al led over 60 consulting projects.

Al received an SM degree in Biomedical Enterprise from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). His HST biomedical business and clinical medicine masters’ degree track was designed for life science leaders with a prior MBA. Al received a Masters in Business degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Bachelors degree from Emory University. He has served on the boards of several private life science companies and non-profits.

Mark L. Loranger
Manager, New Ventures

Mark joined New Ventures in September 2007. Prior to that, Mark was an Associate Licensing Officer in the MIT Technology Licensing Office, supporting the commercialization of inventions in the areas of chemistry, materials science, software, and medical devices. During his tenure at MIT, Mark spent much of his time working with startup companies in their efforts to secure and license MIT intellectual property. He also served as TLO liaison to the judging panel of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Mark received his BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MS in Management of Technology from the University of New Hampshire. During his graduate work he was a Research Associate at the UNH Center for Venture Research, a recognized leader in statistical analysis and trend reporting in the Angel investment industry.

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