RORY STARK
Venture Partner
Dr. Stark is joining Biomark for the second fund after more than a decade of cancer genomics research at the University of Cambridge. As Principal Scientist (Computational Biology) at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, he has made substantial contributions to functional genomics research in cancer, including authoring a widely-used software tool for analyzing transcriptional regulation (Nature, 2012) and publishing high-impact articles in journals including Nature, Nature Reviews Genetics, Cancer Cell, and Molecular Cell. Dr. Stark’s academic degrees cover a range of computational fields, including Computer and Information Science (UCSC, 1987), Cognitive Science (University of Edinburgh 1990), Artificial Intelligence (University of Sussex 1994), and Computational Biology (University of Cambridge 2007). For his PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Stark specialized in Machine Learning and Neural Networks, and has applied this expertise in a variety of areas in biotechnology.
In the commercial sector, Dr. Stark has experience both as a serial entrepreneur and with business development in a corporate environment. He co-founded his first Silicon Valley start-up in 1984, serving as the principal software architect as it grew to over 100 people by 1989. After completing his PhD in 1994, he founded NetCarta, an Internet software company, and served as CTO, growing it to 80 employees before being acquired by Microsoft. At Microsoft (1997-2001) he gained corporate management experience, first as an analyst in the office of the CTO driving technology transfer between research and mainline development, and then as a Group Manager pioneering the development of conversational speech recognition platforms and products. Dr. Stark played a leadership role in multiple acquisition and licensing negotiations associated with these activities. Dr. Stark’s business development experience includes serving as Director of High Technology Trade and Investment for InvestUK between 2002-2004.