Christie A. Canaria, PhD
Christie A. Canaria, PhD
Program Director
National Cancer Institute Small Business Innovation Research Development Center
Dr. Christie Canaria works at the intersection of science and industry to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in biotech. Currently, she is a member of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Canaria provides programmatic support to small businesses applying to the SBIR and STTR programs, and has areas of expertise in biological imaging, biosensors, and nanotechnology. In 2014, she played a leading role in launching the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) at NIH Pilot, a program designed to support training to help project teams at NIH-funded small businesses overcome key obstacles along the path of innovation and commercialization.
In 2013, Dr. Canaria was awarded the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship and began science policy work in Washington, DC. Previously, she managed microscopy facilities at DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Caltech Biological Imaging Center where she developed advanced, multi-dimensional and time-lapse confocal imaging techniques. Dr. Canaria also worked in industry, expanding and optimizing surface chemistry and imaging processes for genome sequencing technologies. Dr. Canaria earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego.