René is the VP of Strategic Alliances at Team8. He has over 20 years of experience in innovation, entrepreneurship, technology transfer & commercialization, business development, public/private collaborations, consulting, and economic development. He is also an instructor of the Lean Startup methodology for the NYC Regional Innovation Node and the Co-Founder of three startups. Previously, he was the founding Executive Director of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub; the Special Advisor on Innovation and Entrepreneurship to the City University of New York; the Director of Industry Interactions and Entrepreneurship at the Columbia University Data Science Institute; the Chief Business Officer at the New York Academy of Sciences; Associate Director at Columbia’s Science & Technology Ventures; a consultant in Ernst & Young’s healthcare/HIT consulting group; and spent several years in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate, Eric Kandel, at the Columbia University Center for Neurobiology and Behavior.
René earned both his Master’s in Biomedical Informatics and his B.A. from Columbia University.
