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Work Background
African Initiatives for Relief and DevelopmentStrategic Advisor
Aug. 2020 - Nov. 2022Uganda, KampalaAnalysed organization to identify additional possible revenue streams. Conclusion was to create a Joint Venture - Formula 21 Pitstop - between AIRD (formerly GIZ, principal logistics partner of UNHCR for the refugee camps in 12 African countries) with Toyota Africa (CFAO).
Formula 21 Pitstop is a chain of Toyota Authorised Service Centres and an Authentic Spare Parts distributor for the upcountry African towns and cities.
AjinomatrixChief Product Officer
Jul. 2020BelgiumDevelopment and marketing ChemoSensory AI tools for new product development in the Food and Beverage industry. Targeting market niches that compel product reformulations to accommodate dietary restrictions for health and ethical benefits as well as localisation of products for differing taste palettes. In addition, facilitating early detection of QA problems.
Dei Biopharmaceutical and Dei Natural ProductsGM/CEO
Oct. 2018 - May. 2020Uganda, KampalaReported to the Managing Director and Group CEO.
Help lead the planning, capital raising, public relations, construction project management, and product development of one of largest pharmaceutical and R&D campuses (150 acres) in Africa. Recently voted Best Pharma by African Excellence Awards, organized by MEA Markets, based in London, UK.
A GLOBAL HEALTHCARE PUBLIC FOUNDATION INCStrategic Advisor
Jul. 2018 - Apr. 2020Kampala, UgandaMarketed ISO9000 standardization programs to hospital laboratories. Several of Uganda's leading hospitals were audited, mentored and brought through full accreditation.
Snowman's Sales And Marketing Specialist
Feb. 2018 - Jun. 2018Kampala, UgandaIntroduced Danisco's high purity emulsifier ingredients to the bakeries of Uganda.
AgriLeaf International Ltd. (ALIL)Country Manager - Stevia Plantation and Stevioside Purification Factory
Sep. 2016 - Nov. 2017Vancouver, British Columbia, CanadaDeveloped Business Plan, Site Identification, Governmental Support, Due Diligence for establishing a mega-modern-precision agriculture-solar-drip irrigation-hydroponics-greenhouse nursery for 5 square miles of Stevia plantation with the stevioside processing and packaging plant to serve all of East Africa and the Indian Ocean region.
Murfin Group Family OfficeUganda Portfolio Manager
Sep. 2014 - Aug. 2016Monitored the local companies, attended board meetings, represented the companies in contractual negotiations, helped with business development. Local companies included: Bulungi Bwansi Energy, House of Concrete, and Pizza Hut.
Simba Telecom LimitedResearch Director
Dec. 2012 - Aug. 2014Kampala, UgandaDeveloping and evaluating new products and services as well as identifying acquisition opportunities.
Upstream Biosciencesco-founder and CEO
Jan. 2004 - Dec. 2009Vancouver, British Columbia, CanadaIn 2003, Smith and Bellenson co-founded Upstream Biosciences, which identified and filed patents on genotype biomarkers for personalized medicine - genetic variations predisposing to liver cancer and adverse reactions to various medications - using advanced computational tools to analyze genetic variation. We also applied our computational expertise in Artificial Intelligence and ChemoInformatics to rapidly discover innovative new drugs for tropical infectious diseases, and collaborated with African researchers and government organisations to test and further develop these potentially important new drugs targeting leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and malaria. Using our AI/Neural Network/ChemoInformatics approach we revolutionised the pharmaceutical industry's drug compound testing "hit rate" from 0.01% to 30%.
DigiScentsCo-founder and CEO
Nov. 1998 - Dec. 2001Oakland, California, United StatesDiscovered the olfactory receptor genes in humans. We built the world's first Personal Digital Scent Synthesizer which used a 64-Primary Scent cartridge to synthesize 1,000's of fragrances to be synchronized with movies, games, advertisements and product shopping for fragrant or flavourful products. We raised $25M of investment. Our angel investors including Neurosurgeons and managing directors of several East Asian consumer electronics companies. Our venture investor was Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) in Hong Kong
Our strategic investors were 2 of the world leading fragrance and flavour companies, Givaudan and Quest. We formed collaborations with many Fortune500 companies.
- Sony and Microsoft for the game consoles
- >5,000 video game developers downloaded our ScentWare developers toolkit.
- Columbia-TriStar and Dreamworks for embedding scent in movies.
- Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and Unilever for FMCG product placements in movies, videogames and product sampling cartridges.
Pangea Systems/DoubleTwist IncCo-founder and CEO
Oct. 1989 - Feb. 2002Oakland, California, United StatesIn 1999, California-based Pangea Systems/DoubleTwist assembled and annotated the first-ever draft of the human genome, beating the version championed by Dr. Craig Venter by more than six months. Using publicly available data and computational and analytic tools they assembled themselves, co-founders Dexster Smith, Edward Kiruluta and Joel Bellenson made history. This great achievement built on earlier work at Stanford University, where this team designed and built one of the first databases to link genotype and phenotype. At Pangea/DoubleTwist they went on to develop LifeSeq, which was the first database linking gene expression data to tissue, disease and drug treatment specificity. They further extended their series of "firsts" by designing Rosetta, the first-ever large-scale protein expression analysis system. We pioneered the first Web connectivity to SQL databases. The first Grid Computing system, the first genomic and proteomic datawarehouses and datalakes and application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
We raised $88 million from leading Silicon Valley biotech venture capitalists such as Kleiner-Perkins, Mayfield Fund, Institutional Venture Partners, and several world reknown, high tech venture investors.
Stanford University School of MedicineDNA Automation Laboratory Manager
Jun. 1989 - Jun. 1993Stanford, Established Stanford's Biomolecular Core Facility under Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Paul Berg. Developed new techniques and instrumentation to accelerate the speed of DNA/ RNA Synthesis and DNA Sequencing and Analysis by 1,000%.
Carnegie Institution for ScienceMolecular Biology Laboratory Technician and Manager
Jun. 1986 - Jun. 1989Stanford, California, United StatesLaboratory Technician Extraordinaire. Working for the pioneering plant molecular biologists, Winslow Briggs and Arthur Grossman. Devised and implemented large-scale laboratory processes to produce reagents, isolate DNA and Protein, produce genome libraries, DNA and mRNA expression pattern recognition and comparisons, and made one of the first rudimentary PCR machines.
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