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Westbrook Weaver

   

Westbrook Weaver, M.S. ’11, PhD ’13

FOUNDER AND CEO OF TEMPO THERAPEUTICS

I started Tempo Therapeutics with fellow researcher Don Griffin, professor Dino Di Carlo, biomaterials researcher Tatiana Segura, and physician-scientist Dr. Philip Scumpia.

I actually met Don on UCLA’s bioengineering intramural soccer team. He worked in a lab down the hall. He did tissue engineering, I did microfluidics – two subsets of bioengineering that don’t normally talk to one another.

The two skill sets came together to create the technology that our company is founded on.

My advisor, Dino Di Carlo, is very entrepreneurial in general. He constantly asks, “What can we develop that can go into the clinic and be used by a person?”

There’s a commitment to entrepreneurship that I was definitely able to pull from. I ended
up taking a class at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. I began to learn the difference between a research project and a business venture, and I was able to make valuable connections with professors there.

At UCLA you have the world of research at your fingertips. The labs are right there. Often all you have to do is send someone an email and you can go work there. You can do cutting-edge research.