Moderator: Imran Nasrullah '87
Imran Nasrullah is an intrapreneur driving external innovation with entrepreneurs and possesses 25 years of business development and licensing, strategy, economic development and technology transfer experience. He is Chief Business Officer for Grove BioPharma, Inc. a Chicago-based biotechnology company focused on oncology and neurodegeneration. Previously, Imran was Vice President and U.S. Head of BD&L & Open Innovation at Bayer Pharmaceuticals; he was responsible for forging new business relationships with academia, biotech and venture capital for early access to technologies. Imran also led late-stage and in-market licensing deals across Bayer’s U.S. portfolio; he also created & leads several programs at Bayer centered on mentoring and partnering with early-stage life science companies.
Prior to Bayer, Imran worked for Boehringer Ingelheim in BD&L leading scouting and evaluation primarily in Boston and San Diego. Imran received Boehringer Ingelheim's distinguished President’s Award within two years of joining BI. He possesses extensive experience covering strategy, business development, alliance management, partnering and licensing activities in diagnostics, personalized medicine, therapeutics, and technology platforms. He holds a proven track record track record at blue-chip organizations like Boehringer Ingelheim, Genzyme Genetics (now LabCorp), Millennium Pharmaceuticals (Takeda), Dana Farber Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic. In the diversity of his experiences, Imran was also the Chief Business Officer for Massbio, where he successfully turned around Massbio into the most successful biotechnology state trade-association in the country; and launched several ground breaking mentoring and partnering programs that were later adopted by other state trade associations.
Imran is passionate about ecosystem development and new company creation; towards that end, he founded many innovative programs centered on life-science mentoring and partnering starting at Massbio, followed by Boehringer Ingelheim, and now at Bayer. Through his various programs, he has coached over 300 early stage companies over the past decade.
Imran earned his Bachelor's degree in Kinesiology from UMass Amherst in 1987. He subsequently received his Master of Science (M.S.) degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Suffolk University Law School with an emphasis on intellectual property and licensing.