Fifth Annual Three Minute Thesis Competition

Alan Belicha is the director of business development and industry engagement in UB's office of Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships (BEP), where he leads the Buffalo Institute for Genomics and Data Analytics (BIG).

Before coming back to Buffalo, Belicha worked in the business development team at Mount Sinai Innovation Partners. His primary responsibility was to engage with the biotech and pharma industry to increase sponsored research activities for the evaluation and partnering of early-stage technologies in the life sciences. During his time at Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, he contributed to the licensing of approximately $850M of preclinical stage assets.

Prior to his transition into a business development role, Belicha earned a PhD in molecular tumor immunology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Additionally, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in reverse genetics of RNA viruses at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Here, he also worked as a consultant in an early-stage venture fund for several years.

In addition to his current role in BEP, Belicha is a consultant supporting startups and other academic institutions in the U.S. and South America. He is the co-founder of MitoPath LLC, a biotech company developing a gene-therapy for an extremely rare genetic disease called Mitochondrial NeuroGastroIntestinal Encephalomyopathy (MNGIE).