Susan Froshauer

Dr. Susan Froshauer has over thirty years of biotech and biopharmaceutical research and development experience. Most recently, Susan joined Yale Office of Cooperative Research as an Entrepreneur in Residence, returning to one of her drivers, connecting entrepreneurs to know-how, funding and approaches that ultimately identify cures to improve our quality of life. Susan also is a leader of the BioCT (“CURE”) Commons accelerator program, assisting with Thames River Innovation Places community entrepreneur outreach as part of a CTNext Innovation Places funded program, Ignite. She stepped-down from her role as President and CEO of BioCT (“CURE”) to better focus her time as a tech/biotech start-up executive and mentor, and to spend time on local community activities connected to science and policy education. Susan has been involved on multiple start-up boards, the CTNext funded group, SECT Tech, the Creative Arts Workshop and the Angel Investor Forum. Prior to BioCT, Susan was Director of the Technology Exchange Portal at the University of Connecticut’s Office of Economic Development. In this role, Susan assisted Connecticut-based entrepreneurs and organizations with initiatives that train students, create jobs and contribute to economic development. She connected ideas with business expertise, business plans with investors and industry with scholars. Until 2010, Susan served for 11 years as the founding President and CEO of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals (now Melinta), which she co-founded in New Haven in 2000. Under her leadership, Rib-X raised more than $160 million in private equity, bridge financing and government grants and started to build a pipeline of antibiotics to treat serious hospital infections. Now a public company, Melinta recently has launched its first product and has several other products on the market. Before starting Rib-X, Susan served as a member of Pfizer’s Strategic Alliance Groups where she was part of a team who created a $200 million technology investment portfolio established to transform the Pfizer global research and development strategy. She received a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University and a B.A. in Botany from Connecticut College. She performed post-doctoral research at Yale Medical School in the Department of Cell Biology as a Jane Coffin Child’s Fellow.