Dr. Verena Kallhoff serves as Sr. Director, Global Life Sciences at the Greater Houston Partnership. She collaborates with local, state, national, and international players to spur and support the growth and development of the greater Houston region’s life sciences and synthetic biology ecosystems. A geneticist by training and given Houston’s leadership in many different industries, from energy and aerospace over manufacturing to life sciences, she sees particular opportunities for the cross-industrial impact of biotechnology in the region. Prior to joining the greater Houston Partnership, Dr. Kallhoff was VP for Omics and Precision Medicine at health startup Equideum Health and served at The University of Texas at Austin in various positions including leading The WorkSpaces at Texas Health CoLab the innovation initiative at Dell Medical School. There she developed and led programs to build an innovation ecosystem in the region and, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, became a founding member of TEXGHS, the Texas Global Health Security Consortium. Dr. Kallhoff has held positions with Houston-based Harris Health System, and Houston Methodist Research Institute, where she served as the Innovative Managing Director of CyBHOR, an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Kallhoff holds a PhD in Molecular and Human Genetics from Baylor College of Medicine and an MBA from University of Houston – Clear Lake.

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