Team

Michael S. Kim founded Octave Ventures (US) in 2018 to make venture investments in ​primarily biotech and deep tech companies. Michael has over 30 years of experience in principal investing and investment banking which he uses to help advise the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders.  Prior to forming Octave, Michael started his career as a mortgage trader in New York with Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. He has forged strong relationships with major corporations, institutional investors, and sovereign wealth funds. He sits on the board of eight of Octave’s portfolio companies​, including Cornami, General Radar, Osaro, and four start-ups founded through Johns Hopkins Medical School (D&D Pharmatech, Precision Molecular, ValTed Seq, and Plenary.AI). Michael is also the co-founder of Evia Life Sciences, which develops diagnostics and therapeutics in the area of exosomes with Takahiro Ochiya, Head of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at the National Cancer Center of Japan. Michael received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Josh’s career has included significant time both in private practice at international law firms and front office positions at global financial institutions. Josh has significant experience with fund formation, cross-border capital markets, structured finance and private equity transactions, including serving as the head of Japan for the Partner Asset Facility at Credit Suisse, a debt and special situations fund that grew investor equity to approximately US$1.9 billion. He has spent  the majority of his career in Asia across Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. Josh graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and Yale Law School.

Sung Hyun “Andrew” Kim served as a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School from June 2020 to

May 2022 upon completion of his visiting scholar position at Stanford University from 2019-

2020. Prior to that Mr. Kim served at the Central Intelligence Agency for 28 years. His last

position in the CIA was as first Assistant Director, Korea Mission Center, which was established

in April 2017 in direct response to a presidential initiative to defuse North Korea’s longstanding

threat to global security. In this capacity, he successfully secured the foundation for the

historical US-DPRK Singapore summit through unique skills, deep regional expertise, and

outstanding leadership. Mr. Kim served as the Chief of CIA Station in three major East Asian

cities, where he managed the collection, analysis, production, and distribution of information

that directly affected national security.  

Mr. Kim also held the position of Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Operations/Technology.

 He led and orchestrated efforts to update the CIA’s operational technology and incorporated

state-of-the-art doctrines into the CIA training curricula. He also established agency-wide

specific criteria to ensure top tier security for authorized usage of cloud technology as a

member of the agency’s Digital Strategy Steering Board.

In recognition of his many contributions, Mr. Kim was honored by the CIA with the Director’s

Award (2018), Presidential Rank Award (2012) and the Donovan Award (1990).

Dr. Takahiro Ochiya is an authoritative researcher of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and microRNA. He was the first to develop a method for producing liver stem/progenitor cells from mature liver cells. Dr. Ochiya is a professor at Tokyo Medical University and the former Chief of Molecular Cell Research at the Japan National Cancer Center. He has been credited by Web of Science, an authority on scientific databases, as one of the top 0.1% of researchers in the world, having authored more than 480 peer-reviewed publications and holding patents in Japan, the US, and Europe. Dr. Ochiya has served as President of the Japanese Society for Extracellular Vesicles (JSEV) as well as in leadership roles in the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) and is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Evia Life Sciences. Dr. Ochiya received the 49th Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Prize, an award established by the Imperial Family of Japan, for his work on the early detection of cancer by circulating micro RNAs.  He was also awarded the ISEV Special Achievement Award in 2019.  He received his Ph.D. from Osaka University and conducted post-doctoral studies at the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation (Sanford Burnham Prebys, San Diego, California).