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Zishan Haroon, MD PhD

Dr. Haroon brings over two decades of experience in drug development, corporate/business development and investment as he leads Julz Co., a US-based investment fund focused on healthcare. He has been involved in transactions and fund-raising efforts that total in billions of dollars. He started his career at Duke University Medical Center as faculty, focused on research in oncology and angiogenesis. He started his first company while he was at Duke, and was later recruited to lead Drug Discovery at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, CA. His focus at SRI included not only internal drug development efforts and NIH funded research, but also setting up a pre-clinical CRO helping both small biotech and Major pharmaceuticals. Subsequently, he headed corporate and business development at Synergenics, a venture group in San Francisco led by Bill Rutter, former Chairman and CEO of Chiron. In addition to his regular duties, he also established one of the first Biotech Innovation centers in the San Francisco Bay area. He moved on to head up the life sciences business (a P&L of over $1 Billion with offices in over 22 countries) at VWR International, a CDR (Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, private equity) owned company. After he left VWR, he consulted extensively with biotech and multinational CROs on matters of corporate and business development. He joined UNC Chapel Hill and had numerous roles as Director, Professor, Senior Advisor and Associate Dean over the years in Schools of Medicine, Business and Pharmacy. He led efforts in recasting the commercialization efforts, fund raising (largest single fund raise i.e., $100M) and major center grants (Nanotechnology). He continued his consulting efforts under his company Medbioz, and helped C-level management in biotech, pharmaceuticals and the investment arena. He still maintains a partial appointment at UNC Chapel Hill as Professor and Director of the Department of Ophthalmology, in the School of Medicine. He is currently Chairman of the Board for Julz and Blue Jay Mobile Health, and Board Director of Calcivis and Stent Tek.

Dr Haroon received his PhD from Duke University Medical Center and his Bachelor’s and Medical Degrees from Punjab University, Pakistan. He carried out his post-doctoral training at Duke University Medical Center and a brief stint as Lab Medicine Fellow at UNC Chapel Hill.