Michael Sismour is a nucleic acid chemist and biotechnologist with 20+ years spanning fundamental research, enterprise biotech, and early-stage startup founding. He is the founder of 5Bases Biotechnologies, a scientific and strategic advisory practice serving companies from pre-seed through post-IPO, and co-founder of Legomics, a Cambridge-based gene synthesis startup where he served as CTO. His scientific training began under Dr. Steven Benner at the University of Florida, followed by postdoctoral work in the George Church Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering — where he began consulting for startups commercializing early NGS and synthetic biology technologies. He subsequently served as Chief Scientist and Head of Genomics R&D at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences (Danaher), and most recently as Vice President of Research and Innovation at Ultivue, a spatial biology company. His domain expertise spans nucleic acids chemistry, NGS, diagnostics, spatial biology, and integrated wetware/hardware/software systems. At 5Bases, Mike works with early- and growth-stage biotech companies on scientific strategy, product development, R&D process design, and the operational leap from first product to scale. He has mentored more than 30 undergraduate and graduate students and brings particular depth to helping science-driven founders translate technical innovation into fundable, executable companies.