Team

Christina Niemeyer, PhD
Principal, Managing Partner

Christina Niemeyer PhD assumed ownership of i2 Grants Associates LLC in May 2020. She joined i2 Grants Associates in 2011. Since then, with Constance McKee, she has contributed to preparing numerous grants and White Papers for i2 Grants Associates clients; securing approximately $12M in funding.

 

Christina’s areas of expertise are cancer, nanotechnology, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, proteolytic pathways, animal models, and drug delivery. She has extensive project management experience on grants in several of these areas. From 2009-2012 she served as Director of the Smith Laboratory at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla. From 2002-2005, she served as Associate Director, Molecular and Cellular Biology at Salmedix; there she led testing of an in-licensed compound, from discovery of mechanism of action to verification of efficacy, through start of Phase III trials (Treanda®,Bendeka®, bendamustine HCl). At Structural Bioinformatics (1998-2002) she was awarded and managed a NIH/NCI Small Business Innovation Research Grant (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II. As an Editor to Medlogix Communications, she was a writer-editor of book chapters on epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Christina earned her PhD at Baylor College of Medicine in cell biology, and her BS from Texas A&M University in microbiology, where she graduated magna cum laude. She was a postdoctoral fellow at The Institute of Cancer Research, Surrey England and The Burnham Institute, La Jolla CA. Her professional affiliations include over 20 years as a member of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), where she has served on the board and is currently co-chair of their Leadership Network (ALN).

 

 

Constance McKee, MBA
Associate

Constance has been actively involved with starting and funding early-stage companies since 1990. As CEO of Cambridge Quantum Fund (1990-1994, Cambridge, UK), she sourced early-stage investments and acted as interim CEO for the Fund’s portfolio investments.

 

Since returning to the US in 1995, as founder and CEO she has submitted grants for her company Manzanita Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 1999 she wrote a successful grant to DARPA, then served as Co-Principal Investigator. She served as co-Principal Investigator on a funded SBIR Phase II grant ($2M, and currently serves as co-PI on a $1M grant from the US Army Medical Research & Material Command (2016-2019). She is a co-inventor on four Manzanita issued patents.

 

She founded i2 Grants Associates in 2008, handing ownership to Christina Niemeyer PhD in 2020. Since 2008, Constance and Christina have prepared Funding Opportunity Maps and written grants for > 25 nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies, including venture-backed firms for federal, Department of Defense, state (CIRM), and charitable disease foundations. Her areas of expertise are neurology, oncology, and infectious disease. She and the i2 team have secured about $12M in funding for clients.

 

Constance graduated with honors from Stanford University, and earned her MBA from Yale University. From 2003-2016 Constance returned to Yale to teach Business of Biotechnology. She is a member of the Yale Life Sciences Alumni Association, and a past President and co-founder of the bio-entrepreneurship organization BioE2E (2001-2010). Constance is a fierce advocate for better medical care and medical innovation for our nation’s military, and has volunteer taught at Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV UCONN) (2015-2019).

 

 

Other Associates

We can expand our capabilities quickly with other experienced writers with whom we have worked successfully since 2006.