Meet the Team

Investment Fund & Accelerator Team

  • Matthew Rappaport is the General Partner of Future Frontier Capital (FFC). Matthew managed hundreds of early stage technology, market and patent landscape analysis projects through his firm, IP Checkups since 2004.

    He has made investments in Canopy Growth Corporation, Blue Ocean Barns, Magrathea, and Level 42 AI.

    Matthew is on faculty at the Fung Institute of Engineering Leadership, the Haas School of Business, and Co-Founded and Directs the UC Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab at the University of California - Berkeley.

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Matt Rappaport

Nirav Bisarya

  • Nirav Bisarya is a technology and real estate investor with over 15 years of experience scaling B2B startups and SMBs across software, hardware, and services. He is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Coral EV, advancing turnkey EV charging solutions for businesses, and the Founder of TREC Ventures, a co-investment platform focused on sustainable and affordable real estate and proptech. Nirav also serves as Managing Partner at Gen3 Ventures, where he leads investments at the intersection of real estate, infrastructure, and technology.

    He has deep domain expertise in SaaS sales, marketing, and customer success, with prior roles across high-tech electronics, financial services, and government sectors. In parallel, Nirav has over a decade of experience in investment management through a family office, spanning real estate, early-stage venture (B2B), private equity, and alternative credit. He holds degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University, and has worked across nine cities in three countries.

Bowman Heiden

  • Dr. Heiden is the Executive Director of the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at UC-Berkeley and co-chair of the Technology, Innovation, and Intellectual Property program at the Classical Liberal Institute at the NYU School of Law. He is also the Director of the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) at University of Gothenburg, which is a joint platform between academia and industry focused on the transformation of knowledge into wealth and welfare. 

    Dr. Heiden was recently a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Standard Essential Patents. Dr. Heiden is the co-founder of the Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab, the Dynamic Competition Initiative, ICM Global, and Increasing Diversity in Innovation. Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Heiden has also managed over 150 innovation projects with industry, university research institutes, healthcare providers, and start-up ventures.

    Dr. Heiden holds degrees in engineering, technology management, and economics, and his research is at the interdisciplinary interface of economics, law, and innovation, in particular, intellectual property, innovation economics, and competition policy in knowledge-intensive sectors. Before turning his focus to the fields of innovation strategy and policy, Dr. Heiden played professional basketball in a number of European countries. This is why he is so tall.

Viktor Strom

  • Dr. Ström is a Venture Partner of the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator. He is a Research Fellow at the Deep Technology Innovation Lab and an invited Visiting Researcher, sponsored by Professor David J. Teece, at UC Berkeley’s Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership. He is also a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Unit for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, and a member of the university’s research Centre on Knowledge-Intensive Innovation Ecosystems (U‑GOT KIES).

    He holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, an M.Sc. in Entrepreneurship and Business Design, and a Ph.D. in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Intellectual Capital Management. Dr. Ström’s research analyzes how knowledge is created, transferred, and disseminated in various types of knowledge networks—spanning university-industry engineering collaborations, mergers and acquisitions of knowledge-intensive firms, and the emergence and growth of deep tech ventures.

Kavisha Shroff

  • Kavisha Shroff is the Program Manager and Venture Associate at the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator. She is a bioengineer by training who works at the intersection of science, strategy, and storytelling. As Program Manager at the Deep Tech Innovation Lab (DTIL), she leads marketing and communications while supporting operations, industry partnerships, and educational initiatives. She also serves as Venture Associate at the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator, contributing to founder support and startup sourcing.

    Previously, Kavisha helped launch the iGEM Indian League and established her university’s first bioengineering research club to drive interdisciplinary collaboration. At TIDE (Together in Development and Education), she led teacher training pilots, built internship programs, and supported enterprise development.

    Her early experiences span science education, biotech research, and startup strategy—building a foundation in research translation, stakeholder engagement, and go-to-market planning. Kavisha holds a Master of Engineering in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and a B.Tech in Bioengineering from MIT ADT University, Pune, India.

Marian (Murry) Corpus

  • Murry is passionate about building systems and experiences that move people and ideas forward. She started as a scientist, spending over a decade in the biotech industry at Amyris, Perfect Day, and Zymochem, where she moved from the bench into R&D operations and fell in love with the craft of building teams, processes, and structure around hard problems.

    Today she leads community and program operations at BGA, focused on the ecosystem and founder experience. A background in user experience design and Microbial Bioprocessing shapes how she works: grounded in both the technical and the human.

    Fun fact: Murry is obsessed with her poodle Moku, collecting stationery, and enjoys doodling.

Emily Anderson

Kirthika Padmanabhan

  • Kirthika Padmanabhan is an Entrepreneurial Fellow with the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator, focusing on deep tech commercialization.

    She is an operator, founder and investor with 20 years of experience building products, teams, and companies globally.  Her experience began in engineering, spanned various business leadership roles at Google (strategy, operations, finance etc) and later included work at Google X where she was part of building and scaling two climate deep tech moonshots from the lab to the commercial phase. She is a founder in climate tech, mentor / advisor to startups and accelerators and  an early-stage climate tech investor at Climate Capital.

    She loves building companies at the intersection of frontier tech and planetary impact. Outside of work, she is passionate about uplifting underserved communities and bringing more women into climate work. 

Aditi Jhanwar

  • Aditi started her career in the world of business strategy and operations. She spent her early years focusing on how companies grow and stay organized. While she enjoyed the operational side of things, she always had a deep fascination with science.


    She spends most of her time working closely with founders through the Berkeley Gateway accelerator at FFC. She is currently deep in the trenches with teams like XPYQ, Expand Power, and Assemble Robotics. For Aditi, the best part of the job is the opportunity to learn something new every day. She loves being in the room with founders and hearing the science behind their work. 


    Fun Fact: Outside of work, Aditi is a lifelong learner who is always looking for a new adventure. She loves being outdoors and especially enjoys diving or exploring any new activity/place. She is also a bit of a software enthusiast. You can often find her playing around with new digital tools.

Advisors

David J. Teece

  • David J. Teeceis Distinguished Scholar of Strategy and Innovation at the University of South Florida and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Teece has been ranked as the world's most-cited scholar in business and management and has received nine honorary doctorates, along with Royal Honours recognition. He pioneered the dynamic capabilities perspective in strategic management, with his seminal 1997 paper becoming the most cited work in economics and business globally from 1995 to 2005.

    Dr. Teece co-founded BRG, an expert services and consulting firm with over 1,600 employees across forty offices, and previously founded the Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG). He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and has held positions at Stanford and Oxford. His distinguished honors include the Clarivate Citation Laureate (2021), induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2020), and the Herbert Simon Award (2011). With over thirty years of consulting experience across industries ranging from technology to petroleum, Dr. Teece has testified before federal and state courts, Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission, establishing himself as one of the world's preeminent authorities on strategy, innovation, and competition.

Wayne Stacy

Lisa Salley

  • Lisa Salley is an award-winning corporate executive entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Heritage Solutions Group (HSG), a boutique strategy and operations firm focused on mentoring, staffing, and financing projects in emerging and underserved urban markets. 

    Lisa spent over 25 years in executive officer positions at General Electric, Dow chemical, Underwriters' Laboratories, and the American Petroleum Institute where her expertise in strategy, commercialization, scalability, and operations were honed through roles ranging from Nuclear Materials Engineer to Division President.

    Lisa teaches part-time at Babson College in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program. She serves on the Philadelphia Board of Education and on the Advisory Board of the Materials Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University where she earned a BS in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science. She also holds a MS in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For the past few years, Lisa has been listed on the Philadelphia Tribune’s List of Most Influential African Americans in Philadelphia.

Bruce Kahn

  • Bruce Kahn is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Shelton Capital Management, where he leads ESG-focused investment strategies within the Shelton Sustainable Equity Fund. With over two decades of experience in sustainable finance, Bruce brings deep expertise in environmental science, ecological economics, and responsible investing. Prior to Shelton, he served as Executive Director and Climate Solutions Specialist at MSCI, advising clients on technical implementation of climate tools and datasets.

    Bruce is also a long-time lecturer at Columbia University’s Sustainability Management Program, where he teaches sustainable finance and statistics for sustainability. His career includes roles at Macquarie Group, Edgewood Capital, and other financial institutions where he supported capital formation, risk evaluation, and impact investment planning. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin and has built a career at the intersection of science and sustainable investment strategy.

Marian Barber

  • Marian Barber is a career program, product, project leader, and business partner passionate about execution. Mastery around building, leading, and supporting early-stage and growth businesses. Expert project portfolio, product and project manager, scrum master, and facilitator - supporting the innovation pipeline ideation through (pilot) tech transfer and commercialization/launch of award-winning outcomes.

    15+ years of hands-on building/growing "dream teams." More than a decade working with and for creative & technology development teams at multiple studios, and skunkworks, Ginkgo Bioworks, Perfect Day Foods, Beyond Meat, Amyris Biotechnologies, Symantec, and Sun Microsystems. I am all about the team with a proven track record of cradle-to-grave project and product management, delivering revenue-generating, impactful solutions to some of the most challenging problems of our lifetime.

    Specialties: Execution on delivery of strategic initiatives in support of the innovation pipeline using Lean, Agile & other development approaches. Spend a good bit of time thinking about visual means of reporting results that help drive smarter, faster, better decision making. Coaching teams in communication & collaboration skill building. Often the liaison between pure research/technology and business centric backgrounds.

Steve Krawczyk

  • Steve Krawczyk is a business development and IP strategy expert advising startups across biotech, AI, and deep tech. He serves as a strategic advisor at Level 42 AI and Blue Ocean Barns and leads IP consulting engagements through IP Checkups and Magrathea. With over a decade of experience in life sciences commercialization, Steve supports clients in patent strategy, portfolio evaluation, and regulatory-aligned IP execution. He also helps design information delivery systems from a human factors perspective, manages product development and positioning, and builds go-to-market strategies by deploying cohesive sales teams.

    He is also an investor in companies like Alio.ai and a limited partner in venture funds including J-Ventures and Rubicon Venture Capital. Steve holds a law degree from Santa Clara University and is a licensed attorney in California. His specialties include prior art searching, pharmaceutical M&A due diligence, aligning patent strategies to commercial realities, market research, software design, sales strategy, and customer retention.

Ryan Anderson

  • Prior to co-founding his latest Berkeley-based venture, Ryan Anderson served as IBM's CTO for Palo Alto Networks and IBM's Architect in Residence in San Francisco for 10 years. He holds an MBA from Cambridge University and over 20 patents in AI, ML, agentic systems, brain-computer interfaces, and edge computing.

    Ryan's career includes engineering, design, development and manufacturing of tactical communications equipment (aviation) and seismic telemetry (energy), and gaming terminal design (London) and manufacturing (Taiwan) supporting to Cyberview's 2008 exit to IGT. 

    He joined IBM in 2015 first as a AI Solutions Architect, then Product Manager for multiple IBM Watson offerings; then Platform Strategist for Edge Computing and 5G. He was instrumental in helping IBM ecosystem partner Influential develop their ML/AI platform, leading to a ~$500m acquisition by Publicis Groupe.

    Ryan created a guild for security, governance and compliance of agentic systems; hosted a monthly #SolanoSalon debate club in Berkeley since 2018; joined the Linux Foundation Edge Governing Board in 2019; and currently serves as a volunteer advisor panelist at the UC-Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab.  He also advises and invests in early-stage companies.

Michael Yan

  • Michael Yan is the Managing Director & Head of Technical Investments at Scrum Ventures, a Japan & US venture capital firm that is partnered with many large Japanese corporations and conglomerates. He leads Scrum Ventures’s DeepTech investments, and he led and is responsible for his firm’s early-stage investments in companies including Apptronik (seed), TeraWatt Technology (seed), EARTH AI (series A), Olio Labs (seed), Ixana, Eztia (seed), CompScience (seed), 222 (seed), etc. He is Managing Director of the Hokkaido F Village X (HFX), which is partnered with Fighters Sports & Entertainment, and co-Managing Director of Sakura Deeptech Accelerator (SDA), which is part of the SAKURA DEEPTECH SHIBUYA innovation hub. Michael strongly believes in the potential of DeepTech innovations to be scaled and commercialized in order to drive positive impact. He studied mathematics at MIT and the University of Cambridge.