Misha Plam
Deming Center for Entrepreneurship
Misha Plam presently is member of BiOptix, Inc Board of Directors and Senior Advisor to the BiOptix Management Team.
He was Founder, President/CEO and Chairman of the Board of BiOptix (former AlphaSniffer), LLC, from 2003 to 2009. He is an expert on commercializing research and building high tech entrepreneurial companies. He founded Sievers Instruments, Inc., in 1984 and served as its Chairman, President, and CEO. The company received a number of SBIR awards and develops chemical analysis instruments for scientific and commercial purposes. One such instrument measured the quality of recycled water on the Russian Space Station “MIR” and is presently being used on International Space Station (ISS).
In 1997 Plam was selected as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur-of-the-Year (Rocky Mountain Region), and the same year was awarded Entrepreneur of Distinction at Esprit 97 in Boulder, Colorado. In 2000 Plam was elected as an Academician, one of only 77 foreign members in the prestigious Russian Academy of Engineering based in Moscow. He has been widely recognized for his contributions to the American-Russian Space Program and the SBIR program in the USA. In 2002 he was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to teach entrepreneurship in Russia.
After receiving his advanced degrees from Moscow State University with a focus on glaciology, Plam became director of the Mountain Research Station in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia. He immigrated to the United States in 1977 and became Director of Mountain Research Station and Adjunct Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Plam left in 1980 to work as Manufacturing, Service and Research Engineer, then Marketing Analyst at Pure-Cycle in Boulder. He helped found several companies in Boulder, then founded Sievers Instruments, Inc., in 1984. The company was sold for $21 million in 1996 to Ionics, Inc. After its sale, Dr. Plam continues to manage the company and stayed on as President through 2001 and as Chairman of the Board of Directors until 2003. In 2002 he was asked by the Russian government and World Bank to introduce a SBIR program in Russia, where he delivered several presentations. Dr. Plam also co-authored a paper with Roland Tibbetts, “Roadmap for Russian SBIR Program,” which was presented in 2002 (proceedings of Third Russian Venture Capital Conference, 2002).The proposed American SBIR program was adopted by the Russian Government under the name ”START”. In June of 2004 Dr. Plam went to China with Government delegation led by Donald D. Evans, US Secretary of Commerce, where he successfully promoted US SBIR program for implementation in China.
Plam is now Limited Partner at Boulder Ventures, LLP, a venture capital firm, with more than $250 million under management, where he was Entrepreneur in Residence from 2000 to 2003. He has lectured on engineering and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, Stanford, and Plehanov Business Academy in Moscow, Russia and numerous research institutes in Russia. He’s a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and US Russia Center for Entrepreneurship.
In 2006 Dr. Misha Plam was appointed by University of Colorado as an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering to teach Entrepreneurship to Senior Design class. He is married to Olga Plam, a well-known, successful still-life artist.
