Misti Ushio is CEO of TARA Biosystems.  Prior to TARA Biosystems, she was Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director of Harris & Harris Group, which she joined in 2007.  Prior to joining Harris & Harris Group, she worked for Merck & Co. for over 10 years in the BioProcess Research & Development group, which focused on vaccines and biologics development.   She also worked as a Technology Licensing Officer at Columbia University.

She currently serves or has served on the boards of Accelerator-NYC, AgBiome, Enumeral Biomedical, Lodo Therapeutics, Petra Pharma, OpGen, Senova Systems and SynGlyco.  Her past investments include BioVex (acquired by Amgen), TetraVitate (acquired by Eastman) and Ancora Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Corden Pharma).

She serves on the Executive Oversight Committee for the Columbia University Coulter Foundation Grant, the Executive Committee for the American Heart Association’s Health Sciences Innovation Investment Forum, the Executive Board for the NYC Venture Fund, and review committee the Robertson Fund at Rockefeller University.

She was graduated from Johns Hopkins University (B.S., Chemical Engineering), Lehigh University (M.S., Chemical Engineering) and University College London (Ph.D., Biochemical Engineering).