Caroline Kovac

Middle East

Dr. Kovac joined Burrill & Company after retiring from IBM, where she was responsible for the strategic direction of IBM's global healthcare and life sciences business. She led a team in developing the latest information technology solutions and services, establishing partnerships and overseeing IBM investment within the healthcare, pharmaceutical and life sciences markets. In more than 20 years at IBM, Dr. Kovac held a number of executive management positions, including vice president at IBM Research, where she was instrumental in launching the Computational Biology Center and the massive Blue Gene supercomputer project. Starting with only two employees as an emerging business unit in the year 2000, Dr. Kovac successfully grew IBM's life sciences business unit into a multi-billion dollar business, and one of IBM's most successful ventures to date with more than 1500 employees worldwide.

Her main focus at Burrill is developing and executing investment strategies for leading edge technologies that are contributing to the transformation of medicine and healthcare including: personalized medicine, the use of IT in healthcare, stem cell research, medical devices and diagnostics, and bio-nanotechnology. In addition, she works as part of the Burrill International Group team building the company's life science focus on emerging economies such as China, India, Malaysia and the Middle East.