Investment Committee
Matt McNamara
Chief Investment Officer & Board Director
Matt McNamara is passionate about commercialising promising human healthcare technologies. His business acumen combined with a strong background in the life sciences sector makes him one of the industry’s most credible investment voices.
Currently, Matt continues to invest in and commercialise great healthcare technologies through an exciting portfolio of executive/non-executive board and advisory roles.
Previously, Matt spent over 30 years in the healthcare and medical sciences sector, with more than 20 years as a venture capitalist. He spent fourteen years as CIO at BioScience Managers (4 funds. $200M FUM. >20% IRR), and was previously CEO of SciCapital pre-seed fund. Prior to that he served as SVP Business Development for eBioinformatics Inc.
Early in his career, Matt spent over a decade in the Pharma industry working in sales and marketing with Merck & Co. and in general management at Johnson and Johnson Medical Pty Ltd.
Matt has a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Biology, an MBA, and is a GAICD.
Michael Yassa
Investment Associate
Michael’s background in the healthcare sector includes senior positions within several pharmacy groups, device licensing & distribution, and co-founding a regional health service provider.
Prior to Horizon, Michael was a Healthcare Analyst at PAC Partners covering biotech, medtech and consumer healthcare stocks – a space in which he has deep knowledge of the underlying economics, regulatory processes, and clinical considerations.
Michael holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Monash University and a Master of Applied Finance from Macquarie University. He is a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and is a CFA level II candidate
Assoc Prof Tam Nguyen
Non-Executive Director and Deputy Director of Research
Dr Tam Nguyen has over 15 years of board level experience across not for profit, healthcare and aged care sectors.
Dr. Tam Nguyen has over 20 years of working in the healthcare, health and medical research and research management sector including tertiary teaching hospitals, medical research institutes and universities across Australia.
As the deputy director of research at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Tam is responsible for research strategy, research development and innovation. He leads a dynamic team dedicated to providing strategic and innovative solutions to facilitate health and medical research. Tam serves as non-executive director on various NFP, healthcare and aged care boards providing his broad range expertise including strategy, governance, and sector specific in health and medical research.
He also advises numerous medtech and health tech start-ups on their overall strategies, clinical trials strategies, project management and execution.
Tam is a regular invited speaker on a broad range of topics including: Research Strategy, Industry Collaboration; Research Ethics & Governance; Digital Health, AI & Machine Learning in healthcare and in the clinical trials sector in general. He chairs and moderates and sit on program committee at numerous national and international conferences.
Dr Bev Thomas
Senior Investment Professional & Investment Committee Member
Dr Bev Thomas is an experienced investment, strategic and operational professional with focus on SME management.
Dr. Bev Thomas is an experienced investment, strategic and operational professional with focus on SME management. She has successfully delivered on roles in early-stage venture investment, organisational turnaround and growth. Dr Thomas combines Board experience on start-up investee companies and not-for-profit organisations with strong technical capabilities and commercial acumen, supporting the development and execution of successful strategic outcomes across a range of SMEs.
She is currently CEO at Syntro Health, an Australian contract manufacturing organisation focused on supporting the clinical trial ecosystem, both locally and internationally. Bev is supporting the expedited growth of the organisation through a combination of targeted business development and operational experience.
Previously, she was the CEO of Australia’s leading Phase I clinical faculty, Investment Manager for a large Medical Research Commercialisation Fund that supports the development of Australian life science companies with >$300 million under management and Director at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s venture fund.
She holds a Ph.D. and a Bachelor of Pharmacy, Upper Second Class (Hons), University of Bath, UK, and she also holds an MBA from Deakin University.
Paul Field
Life Sciences Business Development Executive & Investment Committee Member
Paul Field has over 25 years of business development experience across a range of disease areas, and a deep network in the global biopharmaceutical industry.
He is currently a corporate advisor at Alsonex, Marinova, GARDP (Switzerland), and FIND (Switzerland) and until recently a business development advisor to Biocurate.
Paul was previously the life sciences specialist at Austrade, the Australian Government’s investment promotion agency, where he facilitated foreign direct investment into Australian research of infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, cancer and other therapeutic areas.
Paul was the founder and Executive Chairman of Bio-Link, a privately owned biotechnology business development company. His work at Bio-Link involved the commercialisation of discovery, pre-clinical and early stage clinical programs undertaken by Australian biotech companies and medical research institutions.
Paul has served on a number of Boards, and he is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD).
Scott Power
Investment Analyst & Investment Committee Member
Scott Power has spent the last thirty years investing in and researching emerging companies in healthcare and technology sectors.
Currently Scott is a Senior Analyst at Morgans Financial focussed on ASX listed healthcare and life science stocks. His long tenure has resulted in a wide network of contacts across the healthcare, life science and technology sectors which is essential in the identification of key trends and developments.
He has also held the role of Investment Manager in the venture capital industry at QIDC for over a decade where he helped identify and analyse large-scale investment opportunities.
Scott has a Bachelor of Commerce, a Grad Dip Applied Finance (FINSIA) and is a Certified Practising Accountant (CPA).
Dr Qibing Mei
Pharmacologist & Investment Committee Member
Dr Qibing Mei is a world-leading pharmacologist who has dedicated his career to leadership in new drug evaluation. His expertise has been put to impressive effect with his leadership in establishing best practice drug evaluation in China.
Currently Dr Mei is Chief Scientist of the HK Biotech R&D team. He has engaged in pharmacology and new drug evaluation for 41 years and completed more than 100 pre-clinical evaluations of new drugs.
Early in his career, Dr Mei completed postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He organised the establishment of China’s first drug-ability evaluation centre, and the certification of the first drug toxicology laboratory in Shanghai, China that complies with the OECD Principles of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP).
Additionally, he has undertaken 11 national-level projects, including the National 973 Plan, the State Project for Essential Drug Research and Development, the National 863 Project and the National Natural Science Foundation Project, and authored more than 500 publications, 130 of which are SCI papers, and 13 teaching materials and monographs.
Dr Mei has recently become an independent director of the Luzhou New Drug Evaluation and Research Centre.
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