Fund Advisor

Matt Bell is an Advisor to Cultivian Sandbox. Matt is currently a Managing Director at University of Illinois Discover Partners Institute, where he serves as theDeputy Executive Officer advising on strategic, administrative and operational needs of the institute and to establish and execute the strategic and business vision for DPI, while overseeing all of the institute’s managerial functions and operations.

Prior to DPI, Matt served as a Managing Director at Cultivian Sandbox . He helped raise Fund II and Fund III, participated in the investment process, and was on the Board of Directors for AbCelex Technologies.  At the University of Michigan, Matt was the Director for the Coulter Translational Partnership Fund based within the Biomedical Engineering Department, which provides close to a $1 million annually in translational funding to faculty-originated translational research projects.  Matt also was a member of Michigan’s Office of Technology Transfer, where he spent several years offering faculty intellectual property advice, regulatory guidance, business mentorship, and business development throughout the campus.

Matt earned a Bachelor’s degree in Crop Sciences and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.