Dr. Andrea B. Cubitt, Ph.D, has been a Vice President of Product Protection at aTyr Pharma Inc since September 2011 and served as its Vice President of Intellectual Property since August 30, 2011. Dr. Cubitt co-founded AnaptysBio, Inc. (also known as Anaptys Biosciences, Inc.) in 2005 and served as its Vice President of Business Development and Executive Director of Corporate Development until 2009. Dr. Cubitt was a founding scientist for Aurora Biosciences Corporation and responsible for the development of fluorescent protein based assays. At Aurora, Andrew was responsible for generating improved green fluorescent mutants and also provided the technical support for the development of Aurora's intellectual property and licensing strategy for fluorescent proteins. Shortly after the acquisition of Aurora by Vertex pharmaceuticals in 2002, Dr. Cubitt joined X-Ceptor Therapeutics, Inc. where he was responsible for the management of X-Ceptor intellectual property. Dr. Cubitt then joined Ambit Biosciences Corporation as Director of Intellectual Property, where he was responsible for the overall management and worldwide prosecution strategy of all in-house and in-licensed patents. In 2004 he formed his own consulting firm, IPT Consulting, to provide intellectual property strategic analysis services for small and emerging start-ups and venture capital firms. He worked at UCSD in the laboratory of Richard Firtel, during which time he was also a visiting scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory. In 1994 he joined the laboratory of Roger Tsien where he worked on the use of rational design and random mutagenesis approaches to produce improved proteins and created the first yellow fluorescent protein. Dr. Cubitt did his postdoctoral training at Cornell University Medical College in New York. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Sheffield and his B.Sc. in medical biochemistry from the University of Birmingham.