PASADENA, Calif.-- John D. Diekman, a founder and managing partner of 5AM Ventures in Menlo Park, California, has been named a member of the California Institute of Technology's Board of Trustees.
5AM Ventures is a seed and early-stage fund that focuses on creating and building biotechnology companies. The fund is designed to meet the needs of a burgeoning market in the life sciences, and focuses entirely on companies that are often too young to work with larger venture capital funds and need hands-on assistance.
Diekman has a long-running respect for Caltech that dates back to his days as a kid growing up in the Midwest.
"My mother, who did not go to college, always told me to go to Caltech to get my education," he says. "She read constantly, and envied people who could pursue a science education at a world-class university.
"But at the time we couldn't afford the long trips to California from Cincinnati. The East Coast was closer, and I was able to hitchhike back and forth between home and Princeton."
What he finds special about Caltech, Diekman says, is the quality of its teaching as well as its research. "So for me, it is truly an honor and pleasure to be associated with one of the best teaching and research institutions in the world," he says.
After receiving his ABin chemistry from Princeton, he went on to earn his PhD, also in chemistry, from Stanford University. Diekman is also a founder and former vice chairman of Bay City Capital, a general partner of the Aravis Venture, a European-based life science venture fund, and chairman of the Bio*One Capital Fund.
Besides Caltech, Diekman currently serves on a number of other boards, including Affymetrix Inc., which is engaged in the development and manufacture of systems for genetic analysis in the life sciences.