ADVISORS and INVESTORS

Jeffrey Birkmeyer 

Jeffrey, Vice President of Advanced Development at FUJIFILM Dimatix, Inc., has more than 20 years experience working to develop and manufacture innovative technology in the data storage, semiconductor, and MEMS industries. He has held technical, managerial, and executive positions at Stolle (a division of Alcoa), Panasonic (a division of Matsushita), Akashic Memories (a division of Kubota), Topaz Technologies (a division of Lockheed Martin), Xerox, and FUJIFILM Dimatix. Jeffrey has a very broad background and skill set including plasma physics, process development, equipment design and optimization, laboratory and factory design and construction, and capital equipment acquisition. Most recently, he focused his career in the area of precision drop-on-demand technology for the graphics and material deposition industries utilizing microfluidics to advance the fields of nanoparticles, MEMS, semiconductors, and biotechnology. After earning a Bachelor of Science from Bowling Green University and working briefly in Ohio, Jeffrey moved to Silicon Valley where he currently resides. Having travelled extensively, he has done business with companies in many countries and across multiple continents. Jeffrey holds 18 patents with an additional 12 pending approval and has also co-authored several papers and publications. 

Christine Boeckl

Christine, Quality Manager at Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), has worked for more than 14 years in various engineering roles in the Food Industry. Her background includes a broad range of experiences in product and package development, commercialization, manufacturing, and food safety and quality systems. She is currently responsible for quality and food safety programs of 30 manufacturing sites in the European market, driving $2.3 billion in revenue. Christine also contributes to the development of Global Quality & Food Safety policies and oversees their implementation within the EU region. Originally from Florida, Mrs. Boeckl holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida and now makes her home in Zurich, Switzerland. 

Michael Boyd

Michael Boyd is currently the Director of Global Treasury Operations for Apple, Inc. His responsibilities include: Managing the Treasury Operations staff in Cupertino, Cork, Beijing, and Singapore; SOX compliance for Cash; Treasury Systems; Bank Relationship Management and project related work. Examples of projects include: Host to Host payments and collections; geographic expansion support; and cash repatriation. During his 10 years at Apple, he has also served as Americas Treasury Operations Manager and Treasury Systems Manager. Prior to Apple he operated an independent Treasury Services company, Orbit Treasury Solutions, which was a sales agent for Green River Computing and provided consulting on Sungard's Quantum TMS. In addition to these roles he has worked for Juniper Networks, Solectron, Dell and Caterpillar in various Treasury capacities. He holds an International MBA from Top Ranked University of South Carolina and a BS in International Business from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Michael is fluent in Portuguese and conversational in Spanish. Originally from New York, Mr. Boyd has lived and worked in Texas, South Carolina, and Brazil and has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twelve years.  

John Patton

John is an entrepreneur in the field of Drug Delivery, particularly Pulmonary Delivery and Protein Delivery. Prior to founding Dance Pharmaceuticals in 2009, he was co-founder of Inhale Therapeutics (now Nektar; NKTR), where he served as Head of Research and CSO from 1990-2008. Before that, he led Drug Delivery at Genentech (1985-1990). At Inhale/Nektar he initiated and helped lead the development and FDA approval of Exubera®, the first inhaled insulin product. Prior to joining Genentech, Dr. Patton was a tenured professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Patton received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, and held post-doctoral positions in biomedicine at Harvard Medical School and the University of Lund, Sweden. He serves on scientific advisory boards for Penn State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Aridis Pharmaceuticals as well as the executive boards of Dance, Halozyme, Activaero, and Incarda Therapeutics. He has >100 publications and >40 patents.