Vice President and Head, West Coast Innovation Center at Bayer HealthCare
Dr. Chris Haskell leads Bayer’s West Coast Innovation Center, located in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif. The West Coast Innovation Center supports Bayer’s Drug Discovery activities by developing and managing partnerships with U.S. academic research institutions and life science companies. Haskell is also responsible for cultivating life science startups within the CoLaborator, a biotech incubator space adjacent to the West Coast Innovation Center. The CoLaborator, which houses a number of startup life science firms, fosters collaboration between Bayer and emerging innovators.
Haskell is also board chair emeritus and current board member of the California Life Science Institute, the San Francisco Bay Area industry trade organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship, science education and workforce development in the region.
After his graduate work at the University of California, Davis and a postdoctoral fellowship at The Gladstone Institute in San Francisco, Haskell joined the Immunology group at Berlex Biosciences. Since joining Bayer in 2007, Haskell has served in various scientific leadership roles, including the Acting Head of Applied Research, the unit responsible for hemostasis research and drug development. In late 2009, Haskell was named head of Bayer’s Science Hub. In 2017, he assumed oversight for the West Coast Innovation Center.