Dr. Yves Fouron
Morning Keynote: "The Cow, Darwin, Breakthrough Technologies, and the Engineer"
Born in 1943 in Martinique, the son of a French Naval Construction Engineer, Dr. Yves Fouron received a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry) degree from Aix-Marseilles University in 1967 and his Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from IPSOI (Institut de Pétroléochimie et de Synthèse Organique Industrielle), also in Marseilles, in 1969.
He came to Canada in 1970 and, after a few months as a Research Associate in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Alberta, he switched to the Department of Chemistry; he received his Ph.D. under Prof. M. J. Robbins. In 1975, he became a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then a Research Associate with Prof. R. U. Lemieux. With him, he cofounded CHEMBIOMED LTD. in 1977, one of the first biotechnology companies in Canada. He was promoted to Vice-President Marketing and Business Development in 1982.
After working with several very successful start-up companies around the world, Dr. Fouron went to Massachusetts to another start-up company, COLEY PHARMACEUTICAL GROUP, as Vice-President Corporate Development. COLEY had its IPO on NASDAQ in 2005 and was acquired in 2008 by PFIZER, the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world.
Additionally, Dr. Fouron has helped raise over $500 million invested in over thirty start-up companies and helped many publicly-traded entities. This has resulted in the creation of wealth for investors, but, more importantly, it has concomitantly created new and exciting career opportunities — in his estimate over 1000 — for university graduates in Science and Engineering.
Dr. Fouron's achievements were recently recognized when he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree at the University of Alberta 2009 Spring Convocation.
