Nima Shiva

Encode Bio, Inc. develops novel screening technologies to detect changes in protein conformations in response to pharmacological agents. The company was founded by Nima Shiva and is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.

Convergent Ventures LLC is a venture capital firm located in Los Angeles. The firm is headquartered in California.

ORFID Corporation is an organic electronics company with a unique technology that will enable the manufacture of new products such as light-weight and flexible displays, smart labels and intelligent packaging. Electronic products made with organic components will be dramatically less costly to manufacture and more versatile than today's silicon-based products. ORFID is developing a new organic transistor, the Vertical Organic Field Effect Transistor (VOFET), to replace the conventional silicon semiconductor transistor technology currently used to manufacture products such as flat panel displays and radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs). The Company's initial focus is to enable the development of fully organic displays that are thin, flexible, and inexpensive to manufacture. Conventional organic transistor technologies are woefully inadequate for use in the manufacture of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays. Other organic transistors do not have the current-carrying capacity required to power OLEDs. With its unique device architecture, ORFID's VOFET is a potentially disruptive technology that can provide one thousand times the current of competing organic transistors at significantly lower operating voltages. In addition, the VOFET's unique architecture lends itself to simpler manufacture. The VOFET's superior current-carrying capacity and its novel architecture give ORFID a distinct technical advantage for exploiting organic transistors to manufacture OLED displays. ORFID will also leverage its core capabilities to develop and commercialize organic RFID technologies. Organic electronics are expected to enable low-cost, high volume RFID tagging of items, 10 trillion a year by some estimates. The inherent printability of organic electronics means that the production of organic devices may one day be combined with conventional printing and packaging processes, allowing the fabrication of products such as smart packages, papers and textiles in the same pass. ORFID's organic electronic technologies and patent portfolio allow it to decisively enter this market place in the area of low cost printable electronics for the manufacture of RFID tags.

Neurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. provides pharmaceutical products. It develops novel molecule drugs for the treatment of central nervous system disorders such as schizophrenia, chronic pain, and Alzheimer's disease. The company was co-founded by Dr. Henry A. Lester, William L. Robbins, and Dr. Dennis A. Dougherty in January, 2002 and is headquartered in Pasadena, CA.

University of Southern California is a private research university that mainly offers undergraduate, graduate & other higher education. The university was founded in 1880 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.