Buzz Benson

Buzz has been an active investor and advisor in the medical technology industry for over 30 years. Buzz is a founding member of SightLine Partners and led the effort to establish it as an independent firm by acquiring the healthcare venture capital operations from Piper Jaffray Companies in 2004. Prior to SightLine, Buzz established Piper Jaffray’s dedicated venture investing in 1992, serving as President and Managing Director of Piper Jaffray Ventures from 1992-2004, and was the lead individual in raising four healthcare-focused venture funds. From 1986 to 1992 he co-headed Piper Jaffray’s healthcare-focused Investment banking activities. In addition to over 24 years of venture capital experience, Buzz has been actively involved in a broad range of transactions for healthcare companies including mergers and acquisitions, corporate partner agreements, public offerings and private placements of equity and debt. Prior to joining Piper Jaffray in 1986, Buzz was a partner at Stonebridge Capital, a partnership investing in emerging publicly traded companies. Previously, he was an investment officer with Cherry Tree Ventures, and a manager in the public accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Co. He is a graduate of St. John’s University (MN) and a Certified Public Accountant.

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Robert Weisskoff

Robert Weisskoff, Partner, joined F-Prime Capital in 2004. Robert has worked extensively in both academia and the bioscience industry for thirty years. Prior to F-Prime, he held various senior roles in R&D and Business Development at both pharmaceutical and medical device companies. In his academic career, Dr. Weisskoff was Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, on the faculty of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences Technology (HST) Program, and performed research at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was Associate Director of the MGH-NMR Center. There he worked at the intersection of basic research, medical technology development, and clinical research in a variety of areas. Robert is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and an inventor on 6 US patents. Robert holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. He received his A.B. degree in Physics from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Robert serves on the Board of Directors of Caribou Biosciences, CORE Diagnostics, Farapulse, Plasmagen Biosciences, Promentis Pharmaceuticals, ShouTi, Tempest Therapeutics, Trivitron Healthcare, Xilio Therapeutics and Zenflow, Inc. He has previously served on the boards of Accuri Cytometers (acquired by Becton Dickinson), Ikano Therapeutics (acquired by UCB), Laurus Labs (NSE:LAURUSLABS), Surface Oncology (NASDAQ:SURF), Tetraphase (NASDAQ:TTPH), Transave (NASDAQ:INSM), Topaz (acquired by Sanofi Pasteur), and ViewRay (NASDAQ:VRAY).

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Sigrid Van Bladel

Sigrid Van Bladel, Ph.D. is a partner at Aberdare Ventures and joined NxThera’s board of directors in 2014. Sigrid previously was a Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a leading venture capital firm focusing on technology and healthcare start-ups, where she spent 18 years investing in biopharmaceutical and medical device companies. During her investing career, Sigrid has a long, well established record of backing early-stage healthcare technology enterprises. Successful exits where she was an investor and Board member include Myogen (formerly NASDAQ: MYOG, acquired by Gilead); Kai Pharma (an Aberdare investment acquired by Amgen); Novacept (acquired by Cytyc/Hologic); SurgRx (acquired by Johnson and Johnson); Xcel Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Valeant Pharma); Appriva Medical (acquired by EV3/Covidien); and Spiration Inc. (acquired by Olympus Medical Systems). For two years in a row during her tenure at NEA, Sigrid was included on Forbes Magazine’s Annual Midas List of the top 100 leading technology money makers, as only one of five women included on the list. Prior to joining NEA, Sigrid worked as a Management Consultant at McKinsey and Company. She holds a Master in Chemistry/Biotechnology (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in Molecular Biology from The University of Ghent, Belgium, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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