Gabriella Chan
Dr. Gabriella Chan is a lawyer, scientist, educator, and startup mentor.
Gabriella is the founder of Yocto Law® Professional Corporation, a boutique law firm that advises startups and other stakeholders in the life sciences and health technology sectors. Her diverse background and tangible business experience enriches her ability to empathize with her clients’ challenges and to tailor her advice to their immediate and long-term legal needs.
Gabriella honed her analytical skills working on toward her doctorate in molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases, particularly malaria and SARS-CoV. Her work was supported by the University of Toronto’s prestigious Connaught Scholarship and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Doctoral Research Award. As a post-doctoral researcher, she participated in the development of nanotechnology-based hand-held diagnostic devices.
While completing her scientific training, Gabriella began working with a University of Toronto biotechnology spinout and liaising with the company’s lawyers. In her role as Intellectual Property and Technology Manager, Gabriella identified a gap – scientists don’t speak legalize and lawyers don’t always appreciate the science behind their clients’ inventions and products. To bridge that gap, Gabriella pursued a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School with a focus in business and intellectual property and trained at a national Bay Street law firm in Toronto. Before founding her own law firm, she continued to hone her legal skills in her role as Vice President of Legal Affairs at another Toronto-area nanotechnology startup.
Driven by her goal to educate students about the importance of intellectual property and the arc of translation and commercialization of inventions, Gabriella became a core faculty member in the Translational Research Program at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. In that role she developed and teaches modules on topics ranging from intellectual property, licensing, contract negotiation, privacy, regulatory affairs, and commercialization.