Betsy Alberty has 28 years of experience in the biotech research tools and clinical diagnostics markets, holding various positions in research, applications management, marketing, sales and business development. She has worked with a broad range of small and large companies, gaining exposure to marketing and sales in the clinical diagnostics market with three companies: Flow Laboratories, Calbiochem-Behring, and Bio-Rad. She was the first marketing person at Clontech Laboratories, instrumental in their early growth (to $5M in sales), and drove the initiation, negotiation and acquisition of the first license for research PCR products from PerkinElmer / Cetus for Clontech. She then established and ran a consulting firm for 11 years, assisting startups, small companies, and multinationals such as Hitachi Chemical with new product introduction (instruments, reagents and software) for research and molecular diagnostics.
Dr. Purdie is a native of Scotland where he completed the PhD degree in chemistry from Glasgow University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, LINY, from 1962-63. He returned as a Research Fellow to Glasgow but after two years emigrated to the US when he was hired as an Assistant Professor in Inorganic Chemistry at Oklahoma State. He is now a Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry. His research interests changed from Physical Chemistry to Inorganic Chemistry to Analytical Chemistry where the focus has always been to develop methods of analysis that require no separations. He was recognized as the Oklahoma Scientist of the Year in 2000 and the Oklahoma Chemist of the Year in 2005.
LipidX Technologies, Inc is a startup that focuses on rapid, direct quantitation of major unsaturated lipids in biological specimens using a chemical – spectrophotometric technique. This new technology is able to provide direct quantitative values for cholesterol, three major omega-3 fatty acids, and three major omega-6 fatty acids in a single 15-minute reaction without tedious specimen preparation or extractions. The technology has multiple research applications.
Betsy Alberty will describe the genesis of the company, and the technology transfer process from academia into a commercial setting. Dr Neil Purdie, the chief architect of the technology, will present a technical description of methodology and present data from a number of diverse biological specimens that illustrate the major applications.
