Rafi Hofstein
Board Member
Dr. Hofstein joined MaRS Innovation (aka Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners-TIAP) as President and, CEO in June 2009, the year of the organization’s inception. Under Dr. Hofstein’s leadership, MaRS Innovation has 1) incorporated over 50 startup companies and attracted over $300M in seed funding for these companies; 2) forged significant international strategic partnerships; and 3) was the successful recipient of a twice-awarded Federal grant under the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program. During all these years, Dr. Hofstein acted as a key leader in bringing global industry focus to Toronto as a place of burgeoning and increasingly important research and commercialization activities. As part of the effort, Dr. Hofstein was the cofounder of Clinical Trials Ontario and has been its chairman for the last ten years.
Prior to landing on planet MaRS Innovation, from 1999 to 2009, Dr. Hofstein held the position of President and CEO of Hadasit Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem and as the founding chairman of Hadaist Bioholding which has been listed on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange. He is also a co-founder and director of BiolineRx, Israel’s largest biotech company listed on NASDAQ.
Dr. Hofstein was a co-founder and director of Triphase, Canada’s largest Oncology oriented accelerator. In addition, he has been a member of the board of directors of CQDM (Montreal, QC) for over a decade focusing on paving the Innovation Corridor between Ontario and Quebec.
