The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2022 MIT Health Technologies Conference, running from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, EST.
The pharmaceutical industry is under growing pressure from patent expirations of major drugs, cost-constrained health care systems, and a demanding regulatory environment. A focus for the industry is to tackle these challenges while increasing the output and quality of cost-effective, new medicines without incurring unsustainable R&D cost. Through new technology and new approaches there is an aspiration to make such improvements while also bringing ever-improved therapeutics to patients faster. In this conference, we will lay out many of the challenges the industry is facing and explore potential solutions coming from academic research and startup endeavors, from early discovery through manufacturing technologies, to clinical studies and beyond.
Ariadna joined MIT Startup Exchange in a new role as Events Leader in September 2019. She has responsibility for the development and execution of events featuring startups, and for helping to promote collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. She works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), also within Corporate Relations, and with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond. Prior to this, Ariadna worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York City and London in a few different roles in event management and later became a Director for client strategy. She has combined her experience in the private sector with work in non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at the New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Ariadna also served on the Board of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in NY for several years. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University (NYU), also doing coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York (CUNY).
Paulo Garcia is a Biomedical Engineer that co-invented the Flowfect™ technology to realize high-throughput, automated, and scalable non-viral cell engineering. His professional career has been centered around impacting the life sciences and healthcare via engineering innovation as demonstrated through 27 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 7 issued US patents, and several more pending patents. There is nothing that motivates Dr. Garcia more than knowing that the ongoing efforts will help patients suffering from devastating diseases worldwide. At Kytopen, we exist to accelerate the translation from the bench to the clinic and ultimate impact patient’s lives. Prior to being CEO & Co-Founder at Kytopen, he was a Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Energy and Microsystems Innovation (Prof. Buie’s laboratory) in Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
Marinna Madrid is a co-founder at Cellino, a venture capital-backed early-stage biotech company. Cellino is making personalized regenerative medicines economically viable at scale for the first time. Marinna received her PhD and MA in Applied Physics from Harvard University, where she co-invented laser-based intracellular delivery techniques. She received her BSc in Biophysics from University of California, Los Angeles, after transferring from Riverside Community College. She is the recipient of the Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship, the Catalyst Accelerator Grant from Harvard Medical School, and is on the Forbes 30 Under 30 2019 list for Healthcare.
Gopi Shanker is the Chief Scientific Officer of Tevard Biosciences. He has over two decades of broad drug discovery experience and a strong background across multiple drug modalities including small molecules, biologics and gene therapies for various CNS indications including schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain and migraine as well as several rare neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases.
Prior to joining Tevard, Gopi was at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), where he most recently served in the capacity of Head of Neuroscience with responsibility for strategic oversight of the Novartis neuroscience portfolio, including psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders. At Novartis, Gopi advanced multiple new therapeutic programs through late preclinical and clinical development and was responsible for expanding Novartis’ portfolio in psychiatry as well as developing a portfolio of gene therapy programs targeting neurodevelopmental disorders. Prior to joining Novartis, Gopi led several drug discovery programs at Amgen and Regeneron.
Gopi completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He earned his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Fred (Federico) Parietti is specialized in the control and design of advanced robotic systems. Since 2016, Fred has served as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Multiply Labs. Multiply Labs is an advanced Series-A startup based in San Francisco developing the first demonstration of fully-automated robotic manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry to produce personalized therapeutics. The company has raised over $20M from top investors and is engaged with top pharmaceutical customers around the world. Fred earned his PhD from MIT, where he worked on robotic exoskeletons advised by Dr. Harry Asada. He strongly believes that robotic technology will help humankind transcend its limits - making us smarter, stronger and healthier. Prior to obtaining his PhD, Fred developed advanced robotic systems as a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, ETH Zurich, and Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino where he earned his M.S. and B.S., respectively. Fred has co-authored over 35 articles with a total of 1424 citations and was awarded over 10 patents (with an additional 15+ provisional patents filed). His work has been featured on New Scientist, Fortune, Fox News, IEEE Spectrum, The Verge, The Smithsonian, MIT News, Tech Crunch, Endpoint News and Fierce Pharma.
Floris Engelhardt is CEO of Kano Therapeutics which she co-founded with her former PostDoc advisor Prof. Mark Bathe (MIT). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biochemisty and Molecular Biology from the Friedich-Schiller University in Jena, a master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology and a Doctoral Degree in Physics from the Technical University of Munich. Her work has been focused on single-stranded DNA production and Nucleic Acid Nanostructures for gene and cell therapy.
Udayan Umapathi is the co-founder and CEO of bioautomation company Volta Labs, Inc. Drawing from over a decade of industry and research experience at the MIT Media Lab, Hasso Plattner Institute, Cypress Semiconductors and other startups, Umapathi holds a depth of expertise in engineering, molecular biology, human-computer interaction design, and entrepreneurship. Prior to starting Volta, Umapathi was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. His work at the Lab has led to several patents and publications leading up to commercialization by Fortune 500 companies. Umapathi holds multiple Master's degrees from the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and Purdue University. Prior to the Media Lab, he has been part of several early stage startups and the semiconductor industry and shipping and consumer-focused products.
Daniel Meyer is the CEO of CellChorus. He is the former Chief Operating Officer and was a board member of Genospace, which was funded by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate and acquired by HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA), the largest private hospital company in the United States and one of the largest oncology clinical care and clinical trial organizations in the United States, having led more than 450 first-in-man clinical trials and having been a clinical trial leader in the majority of approved cancer therapies over the last ten years.
Mr. Meyer was also a member of the early stage healthcare and life sciences investment teams at Arboretum Ventures and PJC.vc, where he focused on investments in life sciences, medical devices, health care information technology, and health care services. Mr. Meyer holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA from Middlebury College.
Liz Maida is the co-founder and CEO of Fathom and was previously the co-founder and CEO of Uplevel Security (acquired by McAfee in 2019). Uplevel applied graph theory and machine learning to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations teams. Prior to McAfee, Liz served in multiple executive roles at Akamai Technologies focused on technology strategy and new product development. Liz holds a BS from Princeton University and dual MS degrees from MIT. Her graduate school research examined the application of graph theory to network interconnection.
Exhibit only startup
LiquiGlide: Friction-reducing coating technology to enhance cell/gene delivery performance
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.