Joshua Salafsky

Founder of Skylight Discovery, Inc. and Adjunct Professor at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).I'm the inventor of the second-harmonic generation (SHG) technique, a nonlinear optical phenomenon, for measuring conformational changes - changes in structural shape - of biomolecules in real time. The technique is used for drug discovery and basic research, to better understand how structure, and in particular its changes, determine biological function.

I also founded and was CSO at two VC-backed companies in the SF Bay Area, Quanta Therapeutics and Biodesy.Biodesy developed SHG instruments, which were acquired by Pharma, biotech companies and universities.

Quanta Therapeutics is using these instruments to discover and develop allosteric inhibitors of Ras, a protein that when mutated drives nearly 30% of all human cancers. They credit the SHG platform for driving their success.