Thea Pham

Prior to OCV, Thea was cofounder and CEO of U-Defi, a consumer biotechnology startup that offers personalized skincare based on skin biomarkers and artificial intelligence. She was the winner of UCLA’s 2018 Knapp Venture Competition and featured in Los Angeles Business Journal “20 in Their 20s” entrepreneurs 2019. As a member of the UCLA Business of Science center and the only UCLA student to be nominated to the UCLA Technology Development Group Oversight Committee, Thea worked closely with UCLA leadership on strategic planning of the university’s IP portfolio management and commercialization. Thea conducted her Ph.D. research in the lab of Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, Chair of Neurology at UCLA; her work focused in mapping the brain perivascular cell connectome to promote neural repair. Prior to UCLA, Thea was a research assistant at the University of Oxford and completed research internships at Baylor College of Medicine and UC San Diego.

Thea is a Ph.D. Candidate in Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology at UCLA and holds a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences from Texas A&M University (summa cum laude). Thea is originally from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.