Marc Sedam, Vice Provost for Innovation and New Ventures and Managing Director of UNHInnovation, joined the University of New Hampshire in late 2010. Marc is an expert in the commercialization of deep technology with over 25 years’ experience as both a biotech COO and building multimillion dollar business units within existing organizations. He currently leads the innovation and commercialization enterprise of a major research university responsible for over 180 employees with an annual operating budget of $20MM.
At UNH he led the creation and execution (in under 100 days) of a nationally leading COVID screening lab which processes 100,000 tests each month and critical to continuing in‐person education and on‐campus operations for the university during the pandemic. Marc serves as the life sciences advisor to Ferocity Capital, an early‐stage VC fund, and collaborates on a yearly equity, diversity and inclusion initiative in partnership with BIO International. His deal sheet includes hundreds of intellectual property collaborations (licenses, research collaborations, business to business transactions, global strategic partnerships, etc.), and over 50 start-up companies (including two as a member of the founding team) with a total valuation over $5 billion dollars. This valuation includes the unicorn start-up Asklepios Biopharma, a seminal gene therapy company recently sold to Bayer for US$4bn. During his time at UNC‐Chapel Hill, Marc helped commercialize innovations from two Nobel Laureates—Dr. Oliver Smithies and Dr. Aziz Sancar.
In addition to his position with UNH, Sedam serves as the Executive Director of the New Hampshire Innovation Research Center, New Hampshire’s only translational research funding program; is the Immediate‐Past Chair of AUTM, a global nonprofit leader in efforts to educate, promote and inspire professionals to support the development of academic research; was the founding director of the Peter T. Paul Entrepreneurship Center; and is the Principal Investigator of UNH’s National Science Foundation ICorps Site. Sedam recently led the charge in launching a CLIA Certified COVID Testing Lab at UNH, which is critical to continuing in‐person education and on‐campus operations for the university during the pandemic.
Prior to UNH, Sedam was the Chief Operating Officer of Qualyst, Inc., the global leader in the study of pharmaceutically relevant drug transport interactions (acquired in 2017 by BioIVT). Sedam also served as the Associate Director for Life Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, helping make UNC one of the top US universities in start‐up formation. He worked at National Starch and Chemical Company as a food enzymologist and was an inventor on a patented product with peak sales exceeding $50MM/year. In 2003, the product won “Product of the Year” from the Institute for Food Technology.
Sedam has a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan‐Flagler Business School with a focus on entrepreneurship and new ventures. Sedam is internationally recognized as an expert in the fields of innovation commercialization, early‐stage start-up support, regional ecosystem development, technology transfer, and innovation policy.
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