2024 MIT Startup Ecosystem Conference

Dr. Gayathri Srinivasan became Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations beginning February 15, 2024.

As Executive Director, Dr. Srinivasan leads the growth of the ILP and Startup Exchange, building on a roster of over 200+ member companies, and forging impactful connections between global business leaders and MIT faculty.

Dr. Srinivasan is a distinguished scientist, who received her PhD in Microbiology from The Ohio State University in 2004, where she contributed to the discovery of the 22nd amino acid, Pyrrolysine (2002). She first came to MIT as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Tom Rajbhandary’s lab, where her research focused on understanding protein synthesis mechanism in Archaea.

Dr. Srinivasan subsequently moved into the business development and technology licensing space, serving in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office where she helped commercialize technologies in medical devices and alternative energies. She then moved to UMass Medical School’s Office of Technology Management in 2009 and to Emory University in Atlanta in 2014, as the Director of Public and Private Partnerships for the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. In 2019, Dr. Srinivasan joined Emory’s Office of Corporate Relations as Executive Director, and, in 2021, she led the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.

Catarina Madeira joined Corporate Relations in May 2021 as Program Director, Startup Exchange.

Madeira has been working with the Cambridge/Boston startup ecosystem for the past 10 years and joins Corporate Relations with a solid network in the innovation and entrepreneurial community. In 2010, she joined the startup accelerator IUL MIT Portugal working in Lisbon and working with the Cambridge team on all aspects related to the accelerator’s launch. She held positions including Operations Coordinator, Program Manager, and Business Developer. The accelerator soon achieved steady growth in large part due to the partnerships that Catarina led with regional and global startup ecosystems. Most recently she worked at NECEC, leading a program that connects cleantech startups and industry. In this role, she developed and built a pipeline of startups and forged strong relationships with both domestic and European companies. She has also held positions in Portugal and France including at L’Oréal and Saboaria e Perfumaria Confiança as Pharmacist and Technical Director.

Madeira earned her Bachelor in Chemistry at the University of Porto and her Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She went on to earn her Master of Engineering for Health and Medicines at University Lyon 1 and EM Lyon in France.

Eugene A. Fitzgerald is the Merton C. Flemings SMA Professor of Materials Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Building upon his early experience at AT&T Bell Labs which included the invention of high mobility strained silicon, he has created fundamental innovations in stages from early technology to final implementation in the market. His research interests include novel thin film materials and devices. He is the founder, co-founder, or founding team member of AmberWave Systems Corporation, Contour Semiconductor, 4Power LLC (high-efficiency III-V solar on silicon), Paradigm Research LLC, and The Water Initiative. He is co-author of “Inside Real Innovation”, published internationally in January 2011. He is the recipient of the IEEE 2011 Andrew S. Grove Award, the IEEE 2004 EDS George Smith Award, and the TMS 1994 Robert Lansing Hardy Medal Award. He received a BS degree in Materials Science and Engineering in 1985 from MIT and his Ph.D. in the same discipline from Cornell University in 1989.

Dr. Gayathri Srinivasan became Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations beginning February 15, 2024.

As Executive Director, Dr. Srinivasan leads the growth of the ILP and Startup Exchange, building on a roster of over 200+ member companies, and forging impactful connections between global business leaders and MIT faculty.

Dr. Srinivasan is a distinguished scientist, who received her PhD in Microbiology from The Ohio State University in 2004, where she contributed to the discovery of the 22nd amino acid, Pyrrolysine (2002). She first came to MIT as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Tom Rajbhandary’s lab, where her research focused on understanding protein synthesis mechanism in Archaea.

Dr. Srinivasan subsequently moved into the business development and technology licensing space, serving in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office where she helped commercialize technologies in medical devices and alternative energies. She then moved to UMass Medical School’s Office of Technology Management in 2009 and to Emory University in Atlanta in 2014, as the Director of Public and Private Partnerships for the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. In 2019, Dr. Srinivasan joined Emory’s Office of Corporate Relations as Executive Director, and, in 2021, she led the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.

Lesley Millar-Nicholson is the Executive Director of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office (TLO) and was part of the Founding Leadership team of MIT Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT) formed in 2019. As TLO Executive Director, she leads a team of technology transfer professionals. Together, they manage MIT’s intellectual assets and technology transfer process involving over 11,000 unique pending and issued US and foreign patents, and hundreds of copyright and open source assets. The team engages broadly with stakeholders to facilitate engagements leading to licenses for qualified third parties to deliver on the TLO mission to have impact through technology commercialization.

Prior to arriving in Cambridge Ms. Millar-Nicholson had served for ten years as Director of the Office of Technology Management (OTM) at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign.

Ms. Millar-Nicholson is a past President Board of Governors of Certified Licensing Professionals Inc, a member of AUTM and the Licensing Executive Society, and a past Board Member of Cambridge Enterprise, UK. A native of Scotland, Ms. Millar-Nicholson has a B.Ed., M.Ed., MBA and is a Certified Licensing Professional.

Tom Holcombe is a Ph.D. chemist by training and currently leads the North America Collaboration & Scouting team for BASF’s central research division. As the largest chemical company in the world, BASF is active in research that touches many aspects of our daily lives, and we strive to create chemistry for a sustainable future. Tom helps to establish collaborations between BASF and external partners, primarily from the academic and startup ecosystems, that enable BASF research to thrive and address the challenges of tomorrow. He does this with the help of a talented team and strong global network throughout BASF, scouting for matches to existing technical challenges and maintaining a radar function for business and technology leaders within BASF – always on the lookout for opportunities where BASF can help advance a nascent technology effort and benefit our business segments at the same time. He likes to say, “An invention isn’t an innovation until it hits the market.” Tom completed his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, a Dean’s Honor graduate and Beckman scholar. He went on to complete his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley, a recipient of both the NSF IGERT and NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.

Thomas Collet is a serial life sciences entrepreneur with deep drug development expertise. He serves as President, CEO, and Director of Bilayer Therapeutics. Dr. Collet has founded and led several life sciences companies including ProNAi Therapeutics (subsequently went public, now Sierra Oncology); Neural Intervention Technologies (subsequently acquired by W.L. Gore); and Rubicon Genomics (subsequently acquired by Takara Bio). He also served as Vice President of Business Development at Integrated Protein Technologies, a unit of Monsanto Company that Dr. Collet helped start. Prior to entering the start-up space, Dr. Collet served as Vice President at Tullis-Dickerson & Company, a healthcare focused venture fund, and as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He earned a PhD in Biological Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed post-doctoral studies in Dr. Richard Lerner’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute.

Amy Nordrum is an executive editor of operations for MIT Technology Review. She joined the staff in July 2020 as a commissioning editor. Her career mission is to build profitable newsrooms that empower journalists to do their best work.

Amy previously worked as a news manager for IEEE Spectrum. For six years, she was also a regular contributor to the popular radio show Science Friday.

She recently completed her MBA with a focus on media management at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Amy holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Ohio University and a master's degree from the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) at New York University.

Tricia Dinkel comes to Corporate Relations with several years of experience in the innovation ecosystem and managing relationships with startups and corporates. Tricia previously worked as Director of Navigate (NECEC’s flagship innovation program) at the Northeast Clean Energy Council (NECEC) in Boston where she led all operations and partnership development for 400+ startups, 65+ innovation partners, and 200+ investors & corporates in North America and Europe. Prior to that role, Tricia held positions with increasing responsibility in program management at NECEC. Before that, her experience included Director of Data Analytics and Sustainability Reporting Manager at WegoWise Inc. in Boston, Associate Director at the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation in Cambridge, Senior Sustainability Coordinator at A Better City in Boston, and Assistant Director at The Green Alliance in Portsmouth, NH.

Tricia earned her B.A., in Environmental Studies/Natural Resource Policy at the University of Colorado, and her M.A., in Environmental Science Education at the University of New Hampshire. She served on the NECEC Diversity & Inclusion Committee and as a member of the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council), Massachusetts Chapter.

Alicia Chong Rodriguezis the Founder and CEO at Bloomer Tech, a companyaddressing sex-differences in cardiovascular care for women by using Tech-AugmentedGarments (TAG) for personalized healthcare. She graduated in Electrical Engineering &Computer Science from MIT along withthe MIT Integrated Design and ManagementProgram. Her research focused on sex-specific, computationally-generated, cardiacbiomarkers at the MIT Computational Cardiovascular Research Group. She receivedthe MIT Legatum Fellowship and the Biennial MIT Graduate Women of ExcellenceAward. Her TED Talk on A SMART BRA FOR BETTER HEART HEALTH has over 1.9million views.In 2023, Bloomer Tech was awarded as a Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.She has also been recognized as a TED Fellow, Medtech Boston 40 under 40Healthcare Innovator, and in the top 100 Female Founders across the U.S. by IncMagazine.

Christian Wentz is the founder and CEO of Gradient, a secure data infrastructure company developing a solution for protecting computing and sensor infrastructure from silicon up to software across edge-to-cloud devices.  Gradient serves enterprises broadly, with a focus on critical infrastructure, fintech, and defense intelligence applications.

Previously, Christian was the founder and CEO of Kendall Research Systems, a neural interface company acquired by Kernel. Co in 2017.   He was a member of the founding team at Misfit, Inc., which was acquired by Fossil Group (NASDAQ: FOSL) in 2015 for $270MM. Wentz received the inaugural Forbes’s 30 Under 30 award in Science & Innovation and was awarded the Hertz Foundation Myhrvold Family Fellowship to pursue a PhD at MIT. He earned an M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science under Profs. Ed Boyden and Rahul Sarpeshkar, and an S.B. in Electrical Science and Engineering, both from MIT.

Dr. Daphne Pariser has over 15 years in STEM, where she spent her postdoc at Harvard and MIT, focusing on bioinformatics to deep dive into infectious diseases. During this time, she started two companies; the most recent is HeronAI, which focuses on providing a 360-degree view of business analytics automatically in 5 minutes.

Jerry Shu has a passion for innovative fintech solutions with a focus on quantitative finance and risk management. Shu is in charge of product management, system architecture and the underwriting program. Before co-founding Lendica, Shu built a derivative trading platform for blockchain assets and worked as a quantitative researcher at J.P. Morgan. Shu is a full-stack engineer, a lover of spicy food, and, as he is known around the office, the company’s authority on data. Shu has a Masters in Finance from MIT.

Stwart Peña Feliz graduated from Cornell with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 2017. After graduation, Stwart went on to work in various engineering roles at ExxonMobil (including Exxon’s first recycling unit), Air Products and a hydrogen startup called Utility Global. He then went to earn his Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he found MacroCycle Technologies with his technical co-founder. After experience the reality of chemical recycling in industry, Stwart is now working to lead MacroCycle’s technology to become the largest producer of upcycled PET plastics through their upcycling, zero-emissions process.

Sujeesh Krishnan is the Chief Executive Officer of Kinnami and has over 25 years of experience leading strategy, sales, market development, and product management in the high-technology industry. His career spans the private sector, where he has brought new technologies to optimize supply chains and solve critical data management issues to market in the aerospace, defense, oil & gas, and chemical industries, as well as public sector organizations, including the Carbon Trust and the United Nations. Sujeesh serves on the Board of Directors for CLASP, a leading non-profit focused on improving energy efficiency globally as well as on the advisory boards of several early-stage technology startups. Sujeeshholds an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Saman Amarasinghe is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where he leads the Commit compiler group. His research interests are in discovering novel approaches to improve the performance of modern computer systems without unduly increasing the complexity faced by the end users, application developers, compiler writers, or computer architects. In addition to Venti Technologies, Saman was a co-founder of Determina, Lanka Internet Services Ltd., DataCebo, and Exaloop corporations. Saman received his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Cornell University in 1988 and his MSEE and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1990 and 1997, respectively. He is an ACM Fellow.

Irina Gaziyeva comes to Corporate Relations from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT where she worked 10 years as Administrative Assistant where she has supported four senior faculty members and their research groups (20-25 graduate students). Since 2018, Irina has acted as program coordinator, teaming-up with the program manager and program faculty lead for the MechE Alliance program. She has facilitated 45+ virtual seminars, workshops, and mentoring events in this informal role. Irina has also actively connected members of the MechE community to support student career development, mentorship, and networking opportunities with MIT alumni and industry. Before MIT, Irina held positions as Administrative Assistant and Member Representative at Brookline Dental and Tufts Health plan, respectively. Irina has also been a Community Organizer in Worcester, MA.

Irina earned her B.A., Management (with Innovation & Entrepreneurship track) at Clark University in Worcester, and her M.S., Program and Project Management from Brandeis University in Waltham. She has received many awards at MIT for outstanding service, and she has extensive community volunteer work to her credit.

John Greenfield is the head of business of development at Noya, an Oakland-based startup scaling the high-quality, permanent carbon removal that the IPCC has identified as necessary in order to limit global warming below 1.5℃. Prior to Noya, John held various executive roles while scaling Everactive, a startup at the intersection of renewable energy and industrial automation, from Seed Stage to Series C and beyond.

Throughout his career, he’s repeatedly earned the trust of founders, investors, and engineers, driven product-market fit, and scaled organizations from “0 to 1” and “1 to n.” Along the way, he has helped raise more than $125M from top-tier VCs and CVCs – including NEA, In-Q-Tel, and ABB. John holds a BA in Environmental Economics from Colgate University and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where he earned the William Michael Shermet Award. He lives in the Bay Area with his awesome wife and daughter, and enjoys spending as much time as possible moving (running, skiing, or biking) in the mountains.

Dr. Tairan Wang is co-founder & CEO of Sangtera, a spin-out company from MIT Lincoln Laboratory focused on building high throughput high precision advanced packaging systems to enable the production of next generation 3D AI processors. Prior to MIT LL, Tairan was the Chief Operating Officer of AFFOA, a manufacturing innovation institute for advanced fiber and textile. Before that, he held executive positions in operations and engineering for start-ups in medical devices, and integrated photonics. He holds dual Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and electrical engineering, and Ph.D. in physics from MIT, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School General Management Program.

Kanwar Singh is the CEO and Co-Founder of Skyline Nav AI, Inc. As a mission-driven company, Skyline Nav AI's goal is to keep the US and our allies competitive, safe, and resilient in the 21st century. We specialize in harnessing the power of computer vision algorithms and reference datasets to navigate and position effectively without relying on GPS, cellular, or Wi-Fi. Our solution allows you to confidently operate in urban canyons, and in environments where GPS may be degraded or entirely absent.  Our product, Skyline Match AI™️ gets you within five meters in urban areas with an unobstructed view, 95% of the time, with no GPS, cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity. Skyline Nav AI is backed by the US Air Force, NASA, US Army, National Security Innovation Network, MassChallenge, Draper Labs, and many other customers and partners. Join us in revolutionizing the future of AI-powered mobility and making navigation more resilient.

Chris Mannion is the founder of Meander (formerly Sonar Talent), an AI recruiting platform that improves hiring quality by using competitive talent intelligence to predict post-hire performance. He founded the company in 2021 after spending three years building the first recruiter enablement, analytics, and operations function supporting 400+ recruiters at Wayfair. After three years in supply chain analytics, Chris moved into recruiting to lead the 30-person campus and programmatic hiring team. He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Before his MBA, he was an aerospace engineering officer in the Royal Navy and served on various counter-piracy and counter-terrorism deployments across the globe.

Catherine O’Shea is COO & Co-founder at Narratize. With a focus on fostering sustainable growth and operational excellence, Catherine works to align people, departments, and processes within Narratize.  She empowers each person to lean into innovation, collaboration, and rapid learning, building a people-centered culture that expects leadership at all levels and recognizes our diversity in all facets. Prior to Narratize, Catherine served as COO at Untold Content, an Innovation Storytelling firm; led operations teams at non-profits; and taught technical writing at the University of Cincinnati.

Michael’s expertise and experience cover the spectrum of the key issues involved in high-tech businesses, particularly mobile devices and services and wireless networks, and business strategies for the digital economy. He has worked for nearly thirty years in the telecommunications and related industries with a particular focus on innovation in mobile devices, communications services and network infrastructure. His experience spans the design, development and deployment of mechanical, electrical, electronic and high-tech products; manufacturing; software coding; video; supply chain management; research and development; technology; and strategy.

Bill Aulet is changing the way entrepreneurship is understood, taught, and practiced around the world. He is an award-winning educator and author whose current work is built off the foundation of his 25-year successful business career, first at IBM, and then as a three-time serial entrepreneur. During this time, he directly raised over a hundred million dollars and, more importantly, created hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value through his companies.Since 2009, Bill has been responsible for leading the development of entrepreneurship education across MIT at the Trust Center. His first book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship,” was released in August 2013, has been translated into over 20 languages, and has been the content for three online edX courses, which have been taken by hundreds of thousands of people in 200 different countries. The accompanying follow on book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook,” was released in April 2017.He has widely published in places such as the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, the Sloan Management Review, the Kauffman Foundation, Entrepreneur Magazine, MIT Sloan Experts, and more. He has been a featured speaker on shows such as CNBC’s Squawk Box, BBC News, Bloomberg News, as well as at events and conferences around the world. He has degrees from Harvard and MIT and is a board member of MITEK Systems (NASDAQ: MITK) and XL Hybrids Inc.(privately held) as well as a visiting professor at University of Strathclyde (Scotland).On July 1, 2017, Bill was named a Professor of the Practice at MIT Sloan, the first at the school in the area of entrepreneurship since Alex d’Arbeloff received the designation in 2003. Bill has earned external recognition as well for his efforts, which include Boston 50 on Fire, 2017 Favorite MBA Professors from Poets and Quants, and 2018 Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. In 2019, Bill was awarded the Outstanding Contributions to Advancing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award by the Deshpande Foundation. In 2021, Bill was recognized by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) as the 2021 Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year.Disciplined Entrepreneurship has been translated to versions in Arabic, Audio (via Audible), Chinese Orthodox, Chinese Simplified, Croatian, Danish, German, Greek, Farsi, Japanese, Korean (where it was named one of the top Economics & Business books of 2014 by the prestigious Kyobo Book Store), Mongolian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. It has been a best seller in many countries including Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. It has also been the basis of a series of highly successful MIT edX online classes Entrepreneurship 101, Entrepreneurship 102 and Entrepreneurship 103 as well as the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamps which have been held at different locations including MIT, Seoul (South Korea) and Brisbane (Australia). He has also led the design and delivery of two other online edX courses, “Cultivating Entrepreneurship & Antifragility to Thrive in a Fast-Paced World” and “Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Finance: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know”.

Katie Rae is the founding CEO & Managing Partner of The Engine, a venture capital firm spun out of MIT with more than $670M assets under management. The Engine invests in early- stage companies solving the world’s biggest problems through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering and leadership. She has served in this role since March 2017. Katie serves as a Board Member at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, Via Separations, Lilac Solutions, Boston Metal, Sublime Systems and VEIR.

She founded Project 11 Ventures in 2014 and served as Managing Director. Prior to that, Katie held leadership roles at Techstars Boston, serving as Managing Director from 2011-2014 and Chairman until 2016. She has advised hundreds of founders and invested in more than 100 companies at the earliest stages of formation. Key investments include Flywire, Pillpack (acquired by Amazon for $1 billion), Bevi, GrabCad, and Synack.

Katie founded Equity Summit in 2018, an annual event bringing together female and underrepresented minority fund managers and world leading Limited Partners. She serves as the organization’s President.

In addition to her extensive investing career, Katie has more than fifteen years of experience in senior management and product positions at Microsoft, Eons, AltaVista, RagingBull, Zip2, and Mirror Worlds. She holds an MBA from Yale University and a BA in Biology from Oberlin College.

Throughout his career, Carmichael honed a unique business model of licensing university technology and commercializing it through targeted partnerships with Fortune 500 companies.

Carmichael also co-leads the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a mission-oriented group committed to changing the world by creating and building companies that address the threat of climate change and long-term sustainability of the planet.

Carmichael’s strategy as a venture investor is based on his successful career as an entrepreneur in materials innovation, blending a unique business model of licensing university technology and commercializing it through targeted partnerships with Fortune 500 companies.

Preceding his career as an investor, Carmichael co-founded several ventures in which he served as President and CEO or Chairman. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, he worked in business development at GelTex Pharmaceuticals, acquired by Genzyme for $1.3 billion, and in new product and business development at Dow Chemical (formerly Union Carbide Corporation).

Carmichael was elected to the Board of Trustees of Duke University in 2013, where he currently serves as Vice Chairman. He was appointed to the Duke University Health System Board of Directors in 2017 and currently serves on the Audit and Compliance Committee. He was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Consumer Technology Association in 2022 and he also serves on the boards for WGBH, and Massachusetts General Hospital Physicians Organization.

Carmichael was selected by the Aspen Institute to participate in the Finance Leaders Fellowship program as a senior leader in the venture capital industry and was recently selected as the Edison Achievement Award winner for his contributions to innovative technology solutions. He was ranked #1 on the Boston Globe’s Tech Power Players 50 list in 2022.

Catarina Madeira joined Corporate Relations in May 2021 as Program Director, Startup Exchange.

Madeira has been working with the Cambridge/Boston startup ecosystem for the past 10 years and joins Corporate Relations with a solid network in the innovation and entrepreneurial community. In 2010, she joined the startup accelerator IUL MIT Portugal working in Lisbon and working with the Cambridge team on all aspects related to the accelerator’s launch. She held positions including Operations Coordinator, Program Manager, and Business Developer. The accelerator soon achieved steady growth in large part due to the partnerships that Catarina led with regional and global startup ecosystems. Most recently she worked at NECEC, leading a program that connects cleantech startups and industry. In this role, she developed and built a pipeline of startups and forged strong relationships with both domestic and European companies. She has also held positions in Portugal and France including at L’Oréal and Saboaria e Perfumaria Confiança as Pharmacist and Technical Director.

Madeira earned her Bachelor in Chemistry at the University of Porto and her Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She went on to earn her Master of Engineering for Health and Medicines at University Lyon 1 and EM Lyon in France.