Meet the California Life Sciences Team

Shikha Sharma is the Director of Innovation Services at CLS and supports CLS’s entrepreneurship, education, and partnership initiatives. Previously, Shikha worked at Innovation Ventures (IV) at University of California, San Francisco for 8 years. In IV, she worked with scientists, clinicians, attorneys, investors, & multiple cross-functional teams to move university research towards commercial development.

In her role as a Senior Officer of Licensing, Engagement & Opportunity Development at UCSF, she performed commercial valuation & intellectual property (IP) assessment of hundreds of new technologies in therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, software, and digital health. She has formulated patent & commercialization strategies for pioneering stem cell technologies, novel gene therapy technologies, CRISPR based platforms, next-gen neuromodulation devices, AI based technologies & data mining within the electronic health systems (EHR). She has negotiated multi-million-dollar venture deals, pharma alliances, start-up collaborations etc.

Shikha holds a Bachelor’s with Honors in Life Sciences and a Master’s with distinction in Molecular Genetics. She received the coveted Overseas Research Scholarship from the British Council to pursue her PhD in protein engineering and design, at the University Leicester, UK. Her research was covered extensively in media. She is also a mentor to digital health start-ups within the Nex Cubed (VC firm) investment portfolio. Recently, she completed a course in business from University of California, Berkeley and is deeply committed to supporting innovators and translating their research from bench to bedside. In her spare time, she enjoys writing and is always on the lookout for interesting conversations.