Chairman and Chief Technical Officer Dr. New has over thirty years experience in the medical device industry. He was the co-founder and chairman of Nellcor Incorporated (developer of pulse oximetry) before founding Natus in 1989. In addition to serving on the boards of several corporate, academic and public sector organizations, Dr. New has been a member of the clinical anesthesia faculty at Stanford University Medical Center since 1975, and has chaired the Board of Visitors, Duke University Medical Center since 1994. Dr. New earned masters degrees in engineering and business at Stanford University, his medical degree at Duke University and a Ph.D. in physiology from UCLA. He has authored twelve papers and holds several patents.

Gordon Ringold, Ph.D., is Chairman and CEO of SurroMed, a start-up company developing technologies that will improve the development of new pharmaceutical products and enable the precise diagnosis and personalized treatment of disease. Before joining SurroMed, Dr. Ringold served as CEO of Affymax Research Institute, a wholly owned subsidiary of Glaxo Wellcome. During his tenure at Affymax, he was instrumental in nurturing the development of the DNA shuffling technology and interacting with key parties to establish Maxygen. Prior to Affymax, he served as Director and Vice President of the Institute for Cancer and Development Biology at Syntex, now a division of Hoffman La-Roche. Dr. Ringold received his B.A. in Biology from UC Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from UC San Francisco. He was on the faculty of the Dept. of Pharmacology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and is currently a consulting professor there. Dr. Ringold is also a Managing Director of Technogen Associates L.P., a private investment firm.

Dr. Sonntag has a strong background in biopharmaceuticals as well as finance. She was the first woman CEO of a publicly-held biotech company, SyStemix, and negotiated a $392 million investment in the company from Swiss drug giant Sandoz. Prior to joining SyStemix, Dr. Sonntag managed biotech investments as a senior vice president with E.S. Jacobs & Co., consulted with Adler & Co., and held management positions at Agrigenetics and Biotechnology General. She has studied at the Harvard Business School and at M.I.T.'s Alfred P. Sloan School of Managment. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Witwaterstrand in South Africa where she taught in the Department of Genetics, was a post-doc with Dr. Herb Boyer at U.C.S.F. and was a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute. She is currently serving on the Boards of Consensus Pharmaceuticals, Decibel Instruments Inc., where she was acting President, iFilm, Nextec, and Prolinx, a company she co-founded in Bothell, Washington. She previously served on the Boards of SyStemix and BIO, the biotechnology lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. and is a member of Young Presidents' Organization and the Health Alliance. She currently sits on the advisory boards of Utah Ventures and Viridian Capital. Dr. Sonntag works out of Axiom's San Francisco office.

Prior to founding Xavos, from 1994-1995 she served as Chief Executive of SynGenix Limited. At SynGenix she completed two early-stage development agreements with Nycomed A/S and Viagene/Chiron. From 1990-1994 she was Chief Executive of a seed venture fund at Cambridge University, Cambridge Quantum Fund I (CQF). At CQF she completed five investments, including SynGenix Limited, and acted as hands-on CEO for all portfolio companies.

In addition to founding Xavos, since returning to the US in 1995 she has advised or consulted to another ten technology and life sciences start-ups. From 1996-2001 Ms McKee has worked on a consulting basis for Philips Electronics on M&A, licensing and development agreements, IP-based divestments and venture capital assignments.

She graduated with honors from Stanford University and earned an MBA from Yale University in 1986. In 1986-87 she was awarded a Bosch Fellowship in Germany.

Ms McKee has been a member of Licensing Executives Society since 1990.