Vasiliki Anest (Past Speaker)

Dr. Vasiliki Anest is Senior Director, Business Development and Industry Relations for the MESH (Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Humanities) Academy for the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. In this role, Anest leads a new business development function to evaluate various levels of engagement with industry, and in collaboration with prospective partners, formulate partnering strategies that enable the convergence of disciplines that can meet an unmet need and have a greater impact on human health and disease. Prior to this role, Anest led corporate collaborations at the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, bringing an extensive background in academic-industrial relations, corporate-sponsored research, and technology commercialization management. 

Anest joined USC in 2012 from Life Technologies Corporation, where she held positions as associate director of global market development, program lead of cancer and epigenetics, and associate director of global external R&D and strategic alliances, where she forged numerous strategic relationships with university, government and industry partners and led teams that span functional and divisional boundaries to identify, evaluate, and execute on alliance-based business models to drive organizational profitability. 

Anest earned a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego; a PhD in genetics and molecular biology from the University of North Carolina; and was a postdoctoral fellow in epigenetics with Dr. C. David Allis at The Rockefeller University.