Alexandra de Paz, PhD
Associate Director of New Ventures
Phone: (847) 467-2348
alexandra.depaz@northwestern.edu
Alexandra is the Associate Director of New Ventures at the Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO) and the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS). Alexandra broadly supports faculty-led startups and commercialization of university research. She leads various commercialization education and entrepreneurial training programs and also manages a $10M university gap fund called the N.XT fund, which provides pre-seed and seed funding to promising early-stage faculty-based startups at Northwestern. Prior to joining INVO, she interned as a N.XT fund venture associate where she performed due diligence on Northwestern startup companies for N.XT investment. Prior to N.XT, she completed the INVO Practicum where she evaluated patentability, marketability, and commercialization potential for new Northwestern technologies.
Alexandra also received a certificate from Kellogg’s Management for Scientists and Engineers program. She completed her synthetic biology-focused Ph.D. in Keith Tyo’s lab at Northwestern as part of the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences (IBiS) graduate program. Prior to joining Northwestern, Alexandra obtained a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Florida.