Dan O’Connell has over 15 years of early-stage venture creation an investment experience, with a particular emphasis on working with start-up life sciences companies and their scientific and entrepreneurial founders.  He is a founding member and managing partner of NeuroVentures.  At NeuroVentures, Mr. O’Connell has evaluated over 2,500 early-stage opportunities, invested in 15 companies and participated in financing rounds approaching $1.0 billion.  Mr. O’Connell currently serves on the boards of Acumen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Ammonett Pharma LLC and serves as a board observer at Naurex, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company working novel therapies in psychiatry and neurology. 

Mr. O’Connell also co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Functional NeuroModulation Ltd., a start-up medical technology company established to advance deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other conditions of impaired memory.  Mr. O’Connell is also a co-founder and acting CEO of Direct Spinal Therapeutics, Inc. a company developing a novel spinal cord modulation product platform with technology licensed from the University of Iowa and University of Virginia. 

Mr. O’Connell currently serves as a Business Advisor to The Epilepsy Therapy Project and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and on the external advisory board of the Brown Institute for Brain Science.  He holds a B.A. from Brown University and M.B.A. from the University of Virginia.