Dear UCSF Community,

‌I am glad to announce that David G. Morris, MD, has accepted the position of vice chancellor for business development, partnerships, and entrepreneurship with a start date of August 5, 2024.

Through his leadership, Dave will provide the vision and direction over strategic and business development, operations, and management of Innovation Ventures, a unit within the EVCP organization. His responsibilities will include developing and strengthening UCSF’s entrepreneurship in discovery and partnerships with industry, accelerating the commercialization of innovative therapies and technologies that hold the promise of advancing health worldwide.

This includes negotiating and identifying opportunities that benefit faculty investigators, as well as overseeing the Catalyst Program and the InVent Fund. These two programs provide crucial financial support, access to subject matter experts, and education for our translational research community, and their impact has been reflected in the quality of UCSF start-up companies.

‌Dave is a former UCSF associate clinical professor of medicine and is returning with more than fifteen years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Most recently, Dave was president of therapeutics and technology at Valo Health, where he was responsible for research and development from discovery through phase II. His depth of executive experience includes serving as chief medical officer of Enterprise Therapeutics, managing director of Novartis Venture Fund, global head of clinical operations for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and translational medicine leader for clinical research and exploratory development in inflammation disease biology for Roche Pharmaceuticals.

He earned an MD from University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and completed an internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School as well as a clinical fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Lung Biology Center and Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF.

Please join me in welcoming Dave back to UCSF. Read more about Dave’s career in a story on UCSF.edu.

‌I thank Harold Collard, MD, MS, for leading a rigorous national search for this important leadership position and am grateful to Peter Kotsonis, PhD, assistant vice chancellor and executive director of strategic alliances, for serving as interim lead of Innovation Ventures since January 2023.

Sincerely,

Catherine R. Lucey, MD, MACP
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost