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Talented Women: Speaker Bios
Moderator:
Lisa Crossley, PhD, P.Eng.
President & CEO of Nysa Membranes
Lisa has extensive experience in the field of biopharmaceutical manufacturing. She became involved with the Nysa platform technology during a brief stint as a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University (2003-2005). She left McMaster in March, 2005 to dedicate herself full-time to Nysa, a company that has developed a comprehensive range of purification products based on their revolutionary, patent pending membrane-basedplatform technology. Prior to joining the faculty at McMaster, Lisa worked in Product Development at Dyax Corporation in Cambridge, MA, where she directed the process development, technology transfer, and large-scale global contract manufacturing of Dyax’s lead therapeutic proteins. In this position she managed multi-disciplinary teams of scientists and engineers at contract analytical labs and manufacturing organizations in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Lisa frequently consults for many of North America’s largest Life Sciences Venture Capital companies, aiding in technical due diligence as well as designing comprehensive product and business development plans for early-stage portfolio companies. Lisa holds a B.Sc. in Anatomy & Cell Biology from McGill University, as well as a B.Sc.E. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Queen’s University. She is a licensed Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario. Lisa lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband, four children and three dogs.
Speakers:
Leila Boujnane
CEO and Founder,
Idee Inc.
Since co-founding Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idée Inc in 1999, Leila has been instrumental in making Idée the leader in visual search and image monitoring solutions for the imaging industry. She is responsible for all aspects of the company's strategy, growth and operations.
Leila brings over a decade of experience in the software industry to her CEO role. She is known inside and outside the company as a passionate and determined entrepreneur with exceptional leadership skills. She blogs at
Hyperbio, is an avid runner and a budding ultra distance marathoner.
Molly Shoichet, Ph.D.
President & Founder, Matregen Corporation
Professor of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto
Dr. Molly Shoichet holds the Canada Research Chair in Tissue Engineering and is a Professor of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, Chemistry and Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Shoichet is the recipient of such prestigious distinctions as NSERC’s Steacie Fellowship, CIAR’s Young Explorer’s Award (to the top 20 scientists under 40 in Canada), CSChE’s Syncrude Innovation Award and Canada’s Top 40 under 40. She is an expert in the study of Polymers for Regeneration – that is materials that promote healing in the body, specifically for nerve regeneration.
Dr. Shoichet’s research has commercial appeal. Her laboratory has numerous patents published and pending on drug delivery and scaffold design. Dr. Shoichet founded Matregen Corp, a spin-off focused on drug delivery and based on a polymer processing platform technology invented in her laboratory and previously co-founded BoneTec Corp, also a spin-off from her laboratory.
Dr. Shoichet received her S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry (1987) and her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992). She worked at CytoTherapeutics Inc on encapsulated cell therapy before being recruited to the University of Toronto in 1995. Dr. Shoichet has published over 268 papers, patents and abstracts and has been invited to speak at over 160 institutions worldwide.
Cynthia Goh, Ph.D.
Founder, Axela Biosensors and Northern NanoTechnologies
Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
Cynthia Goh is Professor of Chemistry and the Institute of Medical Science, and Associate Director of the Institute for Optical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Professor Goh has a diverse set of research interests, ranging from biomaterials to diffractive optics and probe microscopy of biological systems. She received a BS in Chemistry from the University of the Philippines and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, working on experiments and theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena. She did postdoctoral research at Columbia University in the area of nonlinear optics, and at the University of California, Berkeley on vibrational spectroscopy of solids.
Prof. Goh is a strong advocate of the concept of excellent fundamental science forming the basis for new technology, and leading to wealth creation. She invented the technique of diffraction-based sensing, a highly sensitive approach for the detection of biomolecules with applications in medical diagnostics and in drug discovery. She co-founded Axela Biosensors Inc, and served as Chief Scientific Officer of the company until 2004. Her current scientific interest is about gaining a first-principles understanding of the self-assembly of biomolecules and polymers. Offshoots into technology include a rational approach for biological scaffold design for tissue engineering, making nanocomposites with novel properties and designed surfaces and thin films. She is active in global health issues, particularly with regards to medical diagnostics for low resource settings. She has been the recipient of awards from two Philippine presidents for her professional work and service to the community.
Dr. Cindy Gordon
CEO and Founder, Helix Commerce International Inc.,
Vice Chair, CATA WIT Toronto
Dr. Cindy M. Gordon is the Founder and CEO of Helix Commerce International Inc, a company specializing in business innovation and growth acceleration strategies.
Prior to founding Helix, Cindy was a partner with XDL Intervest, a tier-one venture capital firm and a Global Practice Leader with Andersen Consulting. Prior executive roles include General Manager for Xerox Outsourcing and Professional Service, Xerox's President for the Women's Alliance, Senior Director of Global Information Systems Strategies for Nortel Networks and founding partner of InfoTech Consultants.
Cindy advises on a number of high technology company boards. She founded and chaired the CEO Fusion Center, an early-stage technology CEO mentorship community. She is a founding Vice Chair of the CATA Women in Technology Forum (WIT) Toronto Chapter, sits on the National WIT advisory counsel, and has numerous other not for profit board experiences.
Cindy recently published Winning at Collaboration Commerce The Next Competitive Advantage. She holds a Ph.D. Innovation, eCommerce and Knowledge Management, UofT, a Masters of Information and Business Management and BEd from the University of Alta.
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