Poorya Sabounchi

Poorya Sabounchi has a wealth of experience in the field of engineering and healthcare. Poorya began their career in 2000 as an Inside Sales Engineer at York International. In 2002, they took on a Graduate Summer Intern role at SUN Microsystems. From 2003 to 2005, they were a Graduate Student Researcher at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC). During this time, they also worked as a Part Time Consultant at Johnson&Johnson. In 2005, they became a Postdoctoral Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories, where they were part of an R&D team developing a bio-defense platform. In 2008, they were the Founding Engineer at Avantome Inc, which was later acquired by Illumina. Poorya also worked at Illumina from 2008 to 2017 as a Staff Engineer, where they were the recipient of prestigious Innovation Awards and inventor of over 10 novel portable DNA sequencing platforms. Finally, from 2017 to 2019, they were a Startup Coaching Business Consultant for the Illumina Accelerator.

Poorya Sabounchi obtained a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology between 1996 and 2000. Poorya then pursued a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, which they completed in 2007. In 2014, Poorya Sabounchi returned to the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from the Haas School of Business.