Neena Kadaba, Ph.D.
Director, Science
Quark Venture LP
Boston, MA, USA
In January 2017, Dr. Neena Kadaba joined Quark Venture as Director, Science, and its headquarter office is based in Vancouver with offices in Berkeley, Hong Kong and Chengdu. Dr. Kadaba currently serves on the board of Eyevensys on behalf of the GHS Fund.
Previously, Dr. Kadaba was the Director of Strategic Partnerships at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, an institute at the University of California made up of UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Kadaba worked to initiate new collaborations between external partners and QB3 scientists and QB3 start-ups. She created the QB3 Collaborative Startups program to initiate collaborations between start-ups and industry partners, which grew to 7 partners in 3 years. She managed QB3’s multi-year, multimillion dollar alliances with Calico and Pfizer, ran its pre-commercial $1 million a year grant program and worked with QB3’s venture fund, Mission Bay Capital. Dr. Kadaba was also the creator and Director of the primeUC program, a UC-wide startup competition and networking program in the life sciences.
Prior to QB3, Dr. Kadaba was a Kauffman Fellow while she was an Associate in Venture Investment at Itochu Technology, Inc, the California office of Itochu, the Japanese trading company. Dr. Kadaba received her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), in Pasadena, California. Her research focused on elucidating the structure of an ABC Transporter, and her work was published in Science. While at CalTech, Dr. Kadaba was a recipient of the national P.E.O. Scholar Award, a Moore-Hufstedler Project Award, a DOW Career award and was a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Recipient. Dr. Kadaba received her undergraduate and masters’ degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and she serves on MIT’s Educational Council.