Founder and Director of Stanford University’s SPARK program, Daria Mochly-Rosen helps academics navigate the so-called “valley of death” between drug discovery and development. Daria founded The SPARK Program at Stanford in 2006 after having to leave academia to start a pharmaceutical company to translate her groundbreaking protein kinase C research into cardiovascular therapeutics. Challenging the academic dogma of how scientific discoveries should reach the pharmaceutical industry, the SPARK model has been implemented internationally and has resulted in a book about drug development from academia. Currently a Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford, Daria is originally from Israel, where she received her doctorate in chemical immunology.