S. Dexter Squibb Lecture Series"Entrepreneurship in Chemical Technology " Dr. David J. Rakestraw Funded in part by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center |
The ninth annual S. Dexter Squibb Lecture series took place from October 16-17, 2006. The speaker was be David J. Rakestraw, founder of Eksigent Technologies, based in Dublin, California. Dr. Rakestraw received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Ohio Northern University, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Stanford University. From 1988 to 2000, Dr. Rakestraw was engaged in research and development activities at Sandia National Laboratories in the Combustion Research Division. In 1995, he won the Coblentz Award for his pioneering work in developing nonlinear spectroscopic methods for trace species detection. During the 1998-99 academic year he was on leave from Sandia and was an Associate Research Professor at Stanford University. The next year, Dr. Rakestraw left his position as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia to found Eksigent Technologies. Dr. Rakestraw holds 7 patents, has authored 65 scientific publications and has made over 100 presentations at scientific conferences and universities. In September 2006, he was recruited to be Chief Technologist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.
Eksigent Technologies was founded by Dr. David Rakestraw in May 2000. Dr. Rakestraw will provide a chronology that follows the evolution of a fundamental scientific discovery to the manufacturing and sale of products that are used throughout the world by every major pharmaceutical company. The presentation will cover the development of intellectual property, the securing of venture capital funding, the evaluation of business models, the evolution of products, the development of a manufacturing facility and the creation of international marketing, sales and service teams.
Advances in miniaturized flow systems have lead to nanoscale high performance liquid chromatography (nano-HPLC) for proteomics and high throughput HPLC used for drug discovery. The presentation will focus on how fundamental chemical and physical properties of microscale systems allow superior performance over conventional scale HPLC systems. The development of precise microfluidic systems that have also lead to new medical devices for drug delivery will be discussed.