Dr. Michael Flavin is a Research Professor at the UIC College of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences. Dr. Flavin received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Notre Dame and his Ph.D. degree in medicinal chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship in synthetic organic chemistry at Harvard, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Baxter. Until recently, Dr. Flavin was the Interim Director of the UICentre for Drug Discovery at UIC. UICentre is a campus-wide drug discovery initiative that utilizes existing resources to leverage the expertise of scientist and clinician teams across campus in collaborative engagement in translational research in drug discovery and development. Currently, Dr. Flavin serves as the Special Advisor to the Executive Director of the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) at the University of Illinois, focusing on the commercialization of DPI R&D science team technologies, building the ventures group at DPI and assisting with the real estate aspects of the project. Dr. Flavin also leads the College of Medicine Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program called COMassist, an initiative to support academic entrepreneurship within the College. In his role as Entrepreneur in Residence, he has mentored Dr. Jain since the inception of Selagine, Inc. At Selagine Inc., Dr. Flavin advises regarding various high-level decisions surrounding corporate governance and oversees FDA IND and CMC strategy.

Dr. Flavin is also Managing Director of Flavin Ventures, an early-stage venture creation firm focused on creating, financing and developing biotechnology companies. Established in 2002, Flavin Ventures has significant experience in the management of commercial R&D programs, product development, commercialization and alliances, capital raising, legal and governmental affairs and company management including start-up processes, M&A transactions and IPO financings. Dr. Flavin has also been CEO of Shamrock Structures, a drug discovery services company he founded in 2003 to provide pharmaceutical researchers with access to technologies and expertise in protein crystallography, medicinal chemistry and cell biology to accelerate their lead compound discovery programs. Dr. Flavin has also been Chairman & CEO of Advanced Life Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company he founded in 1999 and built to a team of 35 professionals focused on developing new drugs to fight infection, inflammation and cancer. Advanced Life Sciences completed a $35M IPO in 2005.