Don Rose

Education

• B.S.P.H. in Nutrition, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Ph.D. in Chemistry, UNC-Chapel Hill

Who Are You When No One Is Watching?

John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever

Elevator Pitch

Don Rose is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Alexandria LaunchLabs. He has extensive experience in funding, launching and building life science startups, most recently as an Venture Partner with Hatteras Venture Partners and as Director of the University of North Carolina’s KickStart program. At UNC, he helped spin out 80 companies which have gone on to raise over $500M. While at UNC, he published Research to Revenue: A Practical Guide to University Start-ups (UNC Press, 2016)). In addition, he’s an Adjunct Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaching a variety of entrepreneurship courses. Prior to UNC, he held senior leadership roles at a number of life science startups:  Metabolon,  Deerac Fluidics (nanoliter dispensing), and DataCentric Automation (high-throughput crystallography).  Before that, he was a partner with Catalysta Partners (now Hatteras Venture Partners), where he co-founded Phase Bioscience (NASDAQ: PHAS).   Prior to Catalysta, he was co-founder and VP of Research and Development at Cartesian Technologies, a leader in instrumentation for DNA microarrays and nanoliter dispensing.  Prior to Cartesian, Dr. Rose was a research scientist at Glaxo Wellcome (now GSK) where he developed and promoted a number of technologies in bioanalytical chemistry, combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening. Prior to GW, Dr. Rose developed various aspects of capillary electrophoreses instrumentation at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.  Dr. Rose received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and BS in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina.  He holds six US patents and has published eight papers, two book chapters and two books. 

Outside interests include endurance sports (bikepacking, triathlons, marathons), writing, gardening, and sourdough bread. 

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” – George Bernard Shaw

Course(s) Taught

• ECON 327.002 Venture Creation Workshop – Scientific Ventures