Dr Darius Sankey
Managing Director
Ocean Tomo

N. Darius Sankey, Ph.D. is a Managing Director at Ocean Tomo, overseeing the Innovation Management Business Unit, which is composed of Venture Development, License Compliance and the Ocean Tomo Ratings™ System. Ocean Tomo’s Innovation Management practice allows operating company clients to capture and guide emerging third party solutions through an outsourced venture capital service platform specific to the client’s interests.

Prior to joining Ocean Tomo, Dr N. Darius Sankey was Senior Director of Portfolio Management at Intellectual Ventures where his responsibilities involved managing the Investment Strategy, acquisitions, divestitures and developing licensing programs for the Invention Investment Fund.

Prior to Intellectual Ventures Dr Sankey has served as a Managing Director at Zone Ventures, an affiliate venture capital fund of Draper Fisher Jurvetson based in Los Angeles. Dr Sankey led the Zone Ventures technology assessment efforts and managed its portfolio investments for over ten years, serving as a board member for several companies including Siimpel Corporation, Lumexis, Inc. and Microfabrica and Neven Vision (acquired by Google). He has led several transactions in the micro electronics, wireless telecommunications, media & entertainment, and business & consumer software sectors.

Dr Sankey has a strong interest in strategizing market applications for basic science research at the university level. This interest has led him to a position of visiting professor at the Rady School of Business at the University of California, at San Diego (UCSD), University of Washington Foster School of Business and USC Marshall School Business.

Before his tenure at Zone Ventures, Dr Sankey worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc., and held strategic planning, consulting, and R&D positions at RAND and AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr Sankey holds B.S. degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Optical Engineering from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester.