UCSD - University of California - San Diego

07/16/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/16/2026 08:05

Bioengineering Alumnus Launches Venture Capital Fund Focused on San Diego MedTech Startups

Published Date

July 16, 2026

Article Content

Garrett Smith knows a thing or two about medtech startups. He founded his first company as a bioengineering PhD student at the University of California San Diego (PhD '12). Since then he has stewarded several technologies through FDA approval; led multiple startups to successful acquisition; directed early innovation partnerships for massive players like Johnson and Johnson Innovation; and overseen a corporate venture capital fund for MedeonBIO. Smith has worked across nearly every stage of the healthcare innovation ecosystem, including as a founder, operator, corporate innovation leader, venture investor, and advisor.

Garrett Smith

Smith is bringing these decades of experience across the innovation ecosystem back to San Diego, as founding managing partner of recently launched ReefHaven Ventures. The San Diego-focused venture capital fund is dedicated to early-stage medical technology startups, and, crucially, reinvesting back into the local innovation ecosystem.

"I've always believed and seen first hand that UC San Diego innovation rivals anything out of the Bay Area," said Smith. "San Diego lacks the same supporting ecosystem, especially when it comes to early stage investors."

ReefHaven Ventures is working to help bridge that gap, with a particular focus on startups at the convergence of medical technology, artificial intelligence and robotics. Already, the firm has made three investments in UC San Diego-affiliated medtech companies - KatoMed, Acurion, and Dragon Vascular - with more than two dozen investments planned in San Diego medtech companies in the next few years.

"UC San Diego consistently ranks in the top 10 universities nationally for startup creation," said Paul Roben, Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Commercialization. "This campus has launched more than 800 companies based on the bold ideas formed and tested right here, and roughly 60 percent of them are in the life science sector. I'm excited to see how we can further amplify our campus efforts to ensure the breakthrough technologies discovered at UC San Diego make it into the hands of those who need them, by partnering with investors like ReefHaven."

The name ReefHaven is no accident. Smith, an avid scuba diver, sees the reef as an appropriate metaphor for what he is trying to build.

"The concept of a reef is the ultimate ecosystem," Smith said. "We all need each other to thrive. That's part of the idea behind the name, and our firm's approach to supporting and reinvesting in the innovation communities we work in."

As a graduate student in 2008, Smith was part of a team of UC San Diego graduate students that won first place in a prestigious business plan competition organized at the University of Southern California.

Jacobs School roots: A spark for entrepreneurship

Smith arrived at UC San Diego for doctoral studies in bioengineering, an experience that proved to be formative in ways that went far beyond the laboratory. While working towards his PhD, and with the encouragement of his graduate advisors, Smith co-founded a startup spun out of his doctoral research. The startup, called Nasseo, developed a novel nanotube surface technology that he applied to dental and orthopedic technologies making longer-lasting and more robust implants. As an initial sign of success, Nasseo won first prize at the 2012 UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge. Smith led the company from inception through product development, FDA 510(k) regulatory clearance, clinical studies, manufacturing scale-up, and commercialization, ultimately bringing the implant technology to patients.

After completing his PhD at UC San Diego, Smith's entrepreneurial experience led him from orthopedics to ophthalmology. As a BioDesign Fellow at the Stanford Mussalem Center for Biodesign, he was part of the team that created Oculeve, a company that developed a non-invasive neurostimulator designed to treat dry eye disease by stimulating the nasolacrimal gland to increase natural tear production. The innovation went on to attract tens of millions of dollars in venture funding before being approved by the FDA and acquired by Allergan for $125 million with the product launched nationwide to treat patients.

The common thread woven into Nasseo, Oculeve, and now ReefHaven Ventures is: Where is the unmet clinical need, and where does it intersect with market opportunities?

Currently, Smith sees that need and opportunity at the convergence of medical technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. These three fields are accelerating rapidly and increasingly intersecting in ways that create transformational opportunities for patient care. They are also three areas in which UC San Diego has distinctive strengths, as evidenced by the firm's first investments.

ReefHaven Ventures' first investment was in KatoMed, which developed a navigation tool for spine surgery that could result in safer, less costly procedures and improved surgical workflow. KatoMed has deep ties to UC San Diego, including licensing intellectual property developed in the laboratory of Michael Yip, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and participation in the UC San Diego MedTech Accelerator program. The MedTech Accelerator is one of the commercialization programs offered by the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur, a joint program between the Jacobs School of Engineering and Rady School of Management. The MedTech Accelerator prepares promising teams for strategic partnerships and investment.

Smith, with fellow UC San Diego bioengineering alumni Erik Engelson and Art Wong at the Shu Chien - Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering's 60 anniversary celebration. Smith has returned to campus frequently to support various entrepreneurship programs; Engelson is on the department's Board of Trustees; and Wong is on the department's Alumni Board.

ReefHaven has also invested in Acurion, which offers an AI-powered oncology precision medicine technology at the biopsy stage and was co-founded by Ludmil Alexandrov, a professor of bioengineering and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego; and Dragon Vascular, which has developed a single-pass technology engineered for immediate clot removal in acute ischemic stroke patients, and is led by Jacobs School of Engineering bioengineering alumnus Erik Engelson (microbiology BA '82, bioengineering MS '84), who is also a Board of Trustees Emeritus for the UC San Diego Foundation.

"Garrett Smith is the real deal," said Engelson. "I watched him have rapid success at Oculeve. And his translational work in bioengineering at UC San Diego has been inspiring. Reef Haven Ventures has captured my imagination. I can't wait to see the start-up acceleration that will result". Engelson is also a Board of Trustees Emeritus for the UC San Diego Foundation.

When evaluating whether a company is ready for early-stage capital, Smith applies a clear framework: "If it's not moving the needle in the clinical outcome, that's a deal breaker," he said. "That is our north star - to make sure that anything we invest in has transformative opportunities for patient care."

Supporting the campus innovation ecosystem

UC San Diego offers many programs to support technology transfer and entrepreneurship education on campus, and Smith has been involved - and even led - several of them. As an alumnus, Smith served as founding program director of UC San Diego's first biomedical accelerator, Blue LINC. Now operating as Health Link, the student-run program continues to inspire and inform future medtech founders.

As a student, Smith was engaged with the Von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the Jacobs School of Engineering, which helped connect researchers with the tools and networks needed to commercialize their work. Much of this kind of entrepreneurship work at the Jacobs School now runs through the UC San Diego Institute for the Global Entrepreneur (IGE).

At IGE, Smith has served on the MedTech Accelerator Executive Board for the past three years, and is an active mentor to the program's Stage 2 startup teams. During that time, he has advised and evaluated more than 50 emerging medtech companies, helping founders refine their commercialization strategies, fundraising plans, and go-to-market approaches. That same philosophy now guides ReefHaven Ventures. Beyond providing capital, the firm works closely with founders to refine clinical value propositions, evaluate market opportunities, navigate regulatory and reimbursement pathways, and build companies capable of creating lasting impact.

Building on this longstanding partnership with the MedTech Accelerator, Smith and Nicholas Mourlas, investment partner at ReefHaven Ventures, now host weekly office hours at the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur. The sessions provide UC San Diego faculty, students, clinicians, alumni, and startup teams with direct access to experienced investors, offering strategic guidance at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

This collaboration between ReefHaven Ventures and the MedTech Accelerator reflects the program's broader mission to connect promising UC San Diego innovators with experienced mentors, investors, and industry partners, accelerating the commercialization of breakthrough technologies.

"Garrett's personal story of using the engineering skills he gained at the Jacobs School to bring needed innovations to improve lives is representative of exactly what we do here on a large scale," said Albert P. Pisano, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering and Special Adviser to the Chancellor. "As the largest engineering school in California, we train the innovation workforce for the economy of the future, with a goal of transferring discoveries for the benefit of society. I'm pleased to deepen our collaborations with Garrett through this partnership with ReefHaven, and I am grateful for the many ways he is mentoring our students, faculty and alumni."

ReefHaven's first investment was in KatoMed, which was in the UC San Diego MedTech Accelerator program run by the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur. Here, KatoMed CEO Albert Hill demonstrates the company's technology in the UC San Diego Center for the Future of Surgery.
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