Our Leadership

As a founding partner and managing director of Bay City Capital, a San Francisco-based merchant bank, Mr. Salquist focused on securing first and second-round financing and investment for more than 30 life sciences companies. Prior to founding Bay City Capital, Mr. Salquist served for 12 years as chairman and CEO of Calgene Inc., a Davis, California-based agribusiness biotechnology company, until it was acquired by Monsanto in 1996. He has also served as chairman of the California Industrial Biotechnology Association and was founding chairman of the Biotechnology Industry Association’s Food and Agriculture Division. He is the current chairman of the board of UC Davis CONNECT and serves on the Advisory Board of the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington. Mr. Salquist received his B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Dr. Watkins co-founded Lipomics in 2000 and currently serves as its President and Chief Scientific Officer. He received his Ph.D. at UC Davis in 1998 studying the effects of fatty acids on mitochondrial membrane metabolism and function. Prior to founding Lipomics Dr. Watkins headed NIH funded core laboratories in lipid analysis and biological function determinations at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Watkins was a founding member of the Metabolomics Society and its editorial board. He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, journal articles and book chapters on metabolomics, lipid analysis, lipid metabolism, personal health assessment and drug development. He has also been an invited speaker at numerous international conferences and has co-organized symposia and workshops for various international meetings such as the American Nutrition Society and the Metabolomics Society.

Dr. Jayasuriya is a life science venture capitalist. Dr. Jayasuriya is founding partner of a new life Science fund, an affiliate fund of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, called “LifeScience-India”, investing in US companies that are leveraged by performing core strategic functions in India. She was previously a partner with Skyline Ventures in Palo Alto, and prior to that with the German – US venture capital firm TVM, in San Francisco. Dr. Jayasuriya's expertise consists of a unique combination of business, basic science and medical knowledge. Her prior positions include VP-Corporate Development at Genomics Collaborative Inc., and Vice President, Global Drug Development at Hoffman-La Roche for opportunistic infections in AIDS and Transplantation. Dr. Jayasuriya received a BA from Harvard summa cum laude, and an MD and PhD (in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) from Harvard Medical School. She interned in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Dr. Jayasuriya also has a M. Phil. in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, England.

With significant experience in the technology industry as an entrepreneur and as a venture capitalist, Mr. Lenet is a founder and Managing Director of DFJ Frontier, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson affiliate and early-stage technology venture capital fund. He was the founder and CEO of SmartFrog.com, purchased in 1999 by Cybergold (acquired by UAL). He was also the first associate at Geocapital Partners, an equity capital investment firm focused on technology investments. Mr. Lenet serves on the boards of UC Davis Connect, the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA) and several private companies. He received his M.B.A. in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. from Princeton University.

Michael Miille joined AgraQuest in April 2004. Prior to that, he was co-founder, COO and CFO of Sagres Discovery. Previously, he was Director of Operations at Celera AgGen, a leader in genomic discovery and testing services within the animal and plant markets. Dr. Miille spent the first fifteen years of his career with a startup environmental testing lab (California Analytical Labs) that became Enseco and eventually Quanterra. During that time he held a variety of positions, eventually becoming General Manager of the $70 million Commercial Business unit nationwide. In 1995 he left Quanterra to become CEO and President of Zoogen, which was subsequently acquired by Applied Biosystems and grew into Celera AgGen. Dr. Miille received his B.S. degree from Stanford and his Ph.D. in Environmental and Agricultural Chemistry from the University of California, Davis.

Professor of Food Science & Nutrition, University of California, Davis.

Professor of Entomology, University of California Cancer Center; Director, NIEHS Superfund Basic Research Program Project at the University of California, Davis; Member, National Academy of Science.

James Stevens Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism and Chair, Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health.

Professor Emeritus, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa; former President of the International Society for the Study of Lipids and Fatty Acids, Chairman of the Council on Arteriosclerosis of the American Heart Association, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lipid Research.

Steve Watkins received his Ph.D. in Food Science from UC Davis studying the effects of dietary lipids on mitochondrial energetics and lipid metabolism. After completing his Ph.D. he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Davis and the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne Switzerland. In May of 2000 Steve co-founded Lipomics and, along with Ryan Davis, developed the technology underpinning the Company’s research and service capabilities. He has published many articles and chapters in peer-reviewed journals, is frequently sought as an invited speaker at conferences worldwide, and is a founding board member of the Metabolomics Society.

After completing his B.S. in Biochemistry at UC Davis, Mr. Davis, along with Steven Watkins, developed the technology which today provides the foundation of Lipomics' research and service capabilities. Mr. Davis has served as the head of laboratory operations, building a world class lipid testing lab which services many of the top pharmaceutical and academic research centers in the world.

The information technology group is responsible for all aspects of data and knowledge management at the company. The group is lead by Jeff McDonald, who has has organized a team of domain experts and built several key technologies including a web-based laboratory information management system and a collaborative knowledge-management infrastructure. Additionally, this team has pioneered the delivery of complex lipid metabolism data to clients through user-friendly and knowledge-rich interfaces. He graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. degree in Engineering: Computer Science. Before joining Lipomics in 2001, Jeff worked as a lead programmer with ETrade Financial developing speech recognition interaction systems.