Alicia Loffler
Alicia Löffler, Ph.D
Dr. Löffler is an Adjunct Professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Strategy Department, and the Healthcare Program. She is also co-founder and CEO of ENCUE Inc, a biopharmaceutical company that treats cognitive diseases. Before these positions, she served as Northwestern’s Associate Provost for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, founding Executive Director of the Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO), and Associate Vice President for Research. Dr. Löffler founded INVO in 2010 to accelerate the transfer of Northwestern innovations to the market. Previous to INVO, she served as Director of the Kellogg Center for Biotechnology.
At INVO, Dr. Löffler oversaw translational, transactional, and commercialization activities. Dr. Löffler fundraised and launched several programs, including The N.XT Venture Fund and NUseeds venture fund, and for the creation of two incubators - The Garage, a tech incubation space for students, and the InQbation Lab, an incubator space for deep science technologies. She also established many partnerships, such as Lakeside Discovery, a $135M partnership with Deerfield Management to accelerate the development of therapeutics. As Executive Director, Dr. Löffler supervised the management of over 200 inventions/year, 250 active licenses, 3,200 patents, and more than 90 Northwestern startups, 80% of which are in the biomedical space. From 2010 to 2021, INVO generated more than $1.8 Billion in net income and launched more than 90 startups, two-thirds of those in the healthcare space.
Dr. Löffler served as an advisor on multiple profit and non-profit boards for biotech/medical device organizations, including the Biotechnology Institute, Washington DC, the Biopharmaceutical Center at the WHU in Koblenz, the Midwest Heart Foundation, BiotechLogic, and multiple biotech spinouts. She also served as a board member and past chair for the Council for Biotechnology Centers (BIO) and a board member of Emerging Companies in the biotechnology industry: Baird Ventures Partners Fund II, the Illinois Growth Innovation Fund (IGIF), and Agent Capital.
Dr. Löffler received a BS from the University of Minnesota, a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and post-doctoral training at Caltech. Crain's Chicago Business named her one of the Tech 100 stars.
Healthcare Entrepreneurship Lab (HCAK-937-0)
The Healthcare Entrepreneurship Lab offers a unique opportunity for students to be part of a local early-stage healthcare company. Students apply the foundational learnings from Kellogg's strategic training to address real and complex entrepreneurial challenges in healthcare. Students are guided by the Kellogg instructors and the company's executive. Instructors bring extensive experience as investors and entrepreneurs in the medical device, health IT, and pharma/biotech areas.
Students work with a startup (medical devices, digital health, biotech/pharma, services) on a mutually agreed project and work plan. The project will be strategically important to the company and will benefit from the students' knowledge and broad perspective gained from their studies at Kellogg.
All projects are selected and uniquely designed to expose students to the challenges of an early-stage health care company and at the same time provide a unique learning experience not fully available in other courses at Kellogg. It is geared towards students with a serious interest in entering the world of early-stage health care companies either as an entrepreneur or early-stage investor and who are seeking real life experiences and industry contacts.
Field Study (HCAK-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member. This course is for 1 credit unit.
