Advisory Board

The ekoVenture advisory board, called ekoCouncil, is made up of nine of the best and brightest minds in adventure travel, online content management, entrepreneurship and technology.

ekoCouncil members range the spectrum from Silicon Valley's most well-respected technology entrepreneurs responsible for a collective market cap of well over $30 billion to CEO's of large multi-billion dollar publically traded companies. Adventure industry luminaries guide the overall vision and the remaining ekoCouncil members are either finance, technology, content or social networking gurus.

Brian Barth

Brian was the founder and initial Chief Executive Officer of Sidestep.com, a major online travel aggregator recently acquired by Kayak.com for $196M. As the CEO of SideStep, Brian was responsible for building and leading an outstanding team, communicating the company's vision to external audiences, and charting the company's future technical direction.

Prior to founding SideStep, Brian was CEO and Founder of DigiTV, a profitable consulting company whose clients included Sony, Sun/JavaSoft, C-Cube Microsystems. Earlier in his career, Brian was a Director of Marketing at Arithmos (acquired by STMicroelectronics), where he led the development of new products and managed strategic customer relationships. At C-Cube Microsystems, Brian was instrumental in the conception and marketing of the company's best selling products, application-optimized MPEG decoders. Brian spent the first five years of his career in research and consulting at Hewlett-Packard.

Brian holds an M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT.

Larry Bock

Mr. Bock is a Special Limited Partner to Lux Capital a $100M nanotechnology-focused venture capital fund. He is a Member of the Board of Directors of FEI Corporation (NASDAQ: FEIC), the leading supplier of tools for nanotechnology research. He is a General Partner of CW Ventures, a $100M life sciences venture capital fund. He is currently working with UCSD BioBridge to organize a major Science Festival in San Diego.

Mr. Bock was the Founder and former Executive Chairman and initial CEO of Nanosys Inc (Private – nanotechnology). Mr. Bock was the Founder and Initial CEO of Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ: NBIX – neuroimmunology), Pharmacopeia (NASDAQ: PCOP - combinatorial chemistry (which spun off Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL – computer-aided-drug and material discovery)), GenPharm International (Private – transgenic animals, acquired by Medarex for $100M and also spun off Pharming Group N.V.), Caliper Technologies (NASDAQ: CALP – lab-on-a-chip), Illumina Technologies (NASDAQ: ILMN – human genotyping), IDUN Pharmaceuticals (Private – apoptosis, acquired by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) for $200M)) Metra Biosystems (NASDAQ: MTRA – musculoskeletal disease diagnosis, merged with Quidel (NASDAQ: QDEL)), and FASTTRACK Systems (Private – accelerated clinical drug development). Mr. Bock was a co-founder of Argonaut Technologies (NASDAQ: AGNT – automated chemistry merged with Biotope (NASDAQ: BIOT)), ARIAD Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARIA – intra cellular signal transduction), Athena Neurosciences (NASDAQ: ATHN – molecular neurobiology, acquired by Elan Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: ELN) for $700M)), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX – rational drug design), and Onyx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ONXX – molecular oncology). He also helped found and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Conforma Therapeutics (Private – cellular chaperones)

Mr Bock was a seed stage investor in Acceleron Pharma (Private – metabolic and musculoskeletal diseases), Aurora Biosciences (NASDAQ: ABSC – high throughput drug discovery, acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals for $650M), Cambrios (Private – electronic materials), River Medical (Private – drug delivery, purchased IVAC from Eli Lily in an LBO and did a $700M merger with IMED to form Alaris Medical (NASDAQ: AMI – medical devices)), ekoVenture (Private - web portal for adventure travel) Genocea Biosciences (Private – vaccine development), Magen Biosciences (Private – dermatology and skin care), Plexikon Pharmaceuticals (Private – scaffold based drug design) Poland Partners (Private - a $62.5M venture capital fund investing in Central Europe), Sequana Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SQNA - genomics, merged with Arris Pharmaceuticals to form AXYS Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AXPH) and subsequently acquired by Celera Genomics (NASDAQ: CRA)), Sapphire Energy (Private – biofuels), Siluria (Private - biology assisted assembly of electronic materials) Sirtris Pharmaceticals (NASDAQ: SIRT – gene regulation), Software Transformation (Private – object based software programming, acquired by Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) for $25M), Surface Logix (Private – nano- imprint lithography), and Talarian (NASDAQ: TALR – real time, high content information processing over distributed networks merged with TIBCO (NASDAQ: TIBX)). He is also on the Scientific Advisory Board of Protia L.L.C.

Larry was also an early stage venture investor in Biosym Technologies (Private – computer-aided-drug discovery – acquired by Corning (NYSE: GLW) for $250M)) Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GNPR – DNA diagnostics, acquired by Chugai Pharmaceuticals for $180M), Gensia Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GNSA – cardiovascular drugs, merged with Sicor to become Gensia-Sicor and subsequently acquired by TEVA Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: TEVA)), IDEC Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IDEC – monoclonal antibody therapy, merged with Biogen to become Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB)), Oclassen Pharmaceuticals (Private - dermatology, acquired by Watson Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: WPI) for $180M), and Viagene (Private – gene therapy, acquired by Chiron Corporation for $100M).

Mr. Bock started his career as a Researcher in the early days at Genentech, Inc. in the field of infectious diseases, where he was on the team that received the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for demonstrating the world’s first recombinant DNA vaccine. He was a Venture Capital Associate with Fairfield Ventures (now Oxford Bioventures)

He has received several awards and honors. He was selected by Venture Capital Journal as one of the Ten Most Influential Venture Capitalists, by Red Herring as one of the Top Ten Innovators, by Forbes-Wolfe NanoReport as the Number One Powerbroker in Nanotechnology, by Ernst & Young as a Finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year, and by Small Times, as Innovator of the Year and Top 3 Business Leaders of the Year. He received the Einstein Award by the Jerusalem Foundation for lifetime contributions in the field of life sciences. He was one of a dozen individuals invited to the signing of the $3.7B 21st Century Nanotechnology Act by President George Bush in the Oval Office. In addition, Nanosys has received numerous awards including the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers Award, Red Herring Top 100, Scientific American’s Nifty Fifty, Science Magazine’s Technology Breakthrough of the Year and the World Technology Network’s Leading Company in Material Science.

He is involved in a number of government agencies. He is a Member of the Advisory Board and the Technology Advisory Board of the NanoBusiness Alliance. He is a Member of the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA) – pending final approval, a Member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group (NTAG) reporting to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a Member of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nanotechnology formed by Congressman Mike Honda and California State Controller Steven Westly. He is on the Advisory Board of the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He gave the Commencement Address at the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 for the graduates in the Chemical Sciences. He is n the Editorial Board of the Journal of Nano Education.

Larry and his wife, Diane, established the Larry and Diane Bock Chair in Nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley held by Dr. Paul Alivisatos. They also founded Community Cousins, a non-profit foundation focused on breaking down racial barriers, that was selected by former Vice President Al Gore as one of ten outstanding grass root efforts nationally. Larry is organizing the San Diego Science Festival with BioBridge of UCSD. Larry works extensively with the Sudanese and Burmese refugee’s networks in San Diego. Mr. Bock is a tutor in math and sciences for Sudanese refugee children in St. Lukes Sudanese Refugee Network and a Mentor for Burmese refugee families through Jewish Family Services.

Larry received his B.A. in Biochemistry (summa cum laude) from Bowdoin College and his M.B.A. from the Anderson School at UCLA.