Mike Carnes
Senior Director, Investments
Department: Emerging Company DevelopmentContact Information
About
Mike Carnes is Senior Director of Investments with the Emerging Company Development team at NCBiotech. In this role, he identifies and evaluates promising early-stage life science companies for NCBC loans. Mike provides business and financing strategy support to portfolio companies to help them raise follow-on investment capital and grow their business in North Carolina.
Mike has over a decade of experience providing business mentorship and training to support emerging life science companies with a focus on raising grant and equity financing. This includes his role at the NC Small Business and Technology Development Center where he contributed to over $200M in capital raised by client companies. As Equity Funding Specialist, he maintained connectivity with the investment community and participated in regional initiatives to enhance availability and access to early-stage investment capital. He also supported several university Technology Transfer offices where he participated in intellectual property management strategy as well as assisting with new university-based startup companies.
Mike earned a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology in 2006, a Professional Science Master’s in Microbial Biotechnology in 2012, and a Master’s in Business Administration with an emphasis in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in 2013 from North Carolina State University. Before that time, Mike used his scientific and analytic skills as a bench researcher at Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. and NCSU’s Department of Plant Pathology.