The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2025 MIT AI Conference: AI Unpacked - Transforming Industries and Driving Innovation.
For over 80 years, the digital revolution has redefined how we work, learn, and collaborate, reshaping societies and economies worldwide. Today, the rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are accelerating this transformation, pushing the boundaries of what humans and machines can achieve together.
The 2025 MIT AI Conference will analyze the latest AI trends, groundbreaking developments, and their profound implications for the future of knowledge, work, skills, and intelligence.
Director, MIT Startup Exchange
Catarina Madeira joined the Office of Corporate Relations as Program Director of Startup Exchange, in May 2021. She was promoted to Director of Startup Exchange in December 2022.
Catarina has been working with the Cambridge/Boston startup ecosystem for over 10 years and joined Corporate Relations with a solid network in the innovation and entrepreneurial community. Prior to MIT, she was part of the team that designed and launched the startup accelerator IUL MIT Portugal later rebranded to Building Global Innovators. She was based in Lisbon and worked in direct relation with the Cambridge team. 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. After that, 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 Saboaria e Perfumaria Confiança and L’Oréal as Technical Director and Pharmacist.
Catarina 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.
Founder & CEO, Eva
Murat Onen is the founder and CEO at Eva, a company developing next-generation AI training processors powered by a breakthrough class of semiconductors. Dr. Onen has received his MSc. and PhD. degrees from MIT in EECS, where his doctoral dissertation received the prestigious MIT Best PhD Thesis in Electrical Engineering Award. By leveraging an unprecedentedly deep hardware-software codesign approach, the company is now building 1.65 ExaFLOPS Outcomputers™—single-rack μ-datacenters—offering 72x higher throughput-per-TCO compared to NVIDIA B100-equipped servers. His research spans semiconductor device engineering, nanofabrication, mixed-signal processor architectures, and novel AI algorithms, resulting in 17 publications and 16 patents to date. Currently, he is leading Eva, where the company is building the deepest technology stack ever attempted to enable advanced AI applications that are far beyond current reach.
Founder & CEO, Blue Sarah
George Manley, CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Sarah and SOULER, is a graduate of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. George worked at ABC News, WTOP in Washington DC, and Adweek Magazine before moving onto enterprise sales and management roles in the fashion industry in New York City for over 13 years. For the last decade, George has launched and/or operated several companies in digital media, ecommerce, and artificial intelligence where he has become a leader in strategic thinking, change management, c-suite communication and presentation, fundraising, and long-term planning.
Founder & CEO, SafeMode Mobility
Ido Levy, Founder and CEO of SafeModeMobility, is an award-winning entrepreneur recognized for his work in using Behavioral Science and Artificial Intelligence to develop cutting-edge solutions for the transportation industry, especially the notable SafeMode driver engagement platform. He has received several accolades, including being named a "top young entrepreneur" by the European Union, "Rising Star of the Year -under 30" by TU-Automotive, "Inspiration of the Year under 30" by Informa Tech, and winning the SAE WCX Connected Cars Challenge. Prior to starting SafeMode, Ido served as an officer in a counter-terrorism unit in the military.
Co-Founder, Tinfoil
Sacha recently completed his PhD from MIT CSAIL where his research was focused on cryptography and privacy-preserving systems. Sacha cofounded Tinfoil to tackle the increasing privacy and security issues associated with AI applications.
Co-founder & CEO, Assure AI
Jeff Feldgoise is a Co-founder and CEO of Assure AI,a company that is helping vendors grow their revenue in the healthcare market more quickly and efficiently. Previously, he led software engineering and data science teams in the health tech industry, building AI products that reached over 100,000 patientsand 1,000 clinicians in more than 60 countries. Earlier in his career, Jeff was a product leader in fintech, where he launched ground-breaking online trading platforms and robo-advisory services for millions of individual investors. Jeff holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT, where he studied architecture and computer science, blending design with engineering to create user-focused solutions.
Founder & CEO, Vocadian
Yujie Wang is an AI product leader, Human-Computer Interaction researcher, and a serial entrepreneur. He has a background in Human-Computer Interaction from MIT and Harvard, focusing on wearable computing, Brain-Computer Interfaces, voice/digital biomarkers, and sleep/circadian science. Yujie has research experience at MIT Media Lab and Harvard Medical School, and professional experience building category-defining products across diverse industries, including preventative healthcare, smart home, supply chain, precision agriculture, and autonomous driving. His expertise spans PM, engineering, and UX, honed at global innovators like Philips Healthcare, IKEA Home Smart, Maersk, and FaunaPhotonics. Yujie takes innovation from ideas to commercialization. He shapes human relationships with machines and the environment, building products that cultivate empathy, trust, and care.
CEO, Displaid
Dr. Lorenzo Benedetti, 30, was born in a small village in the centreof Italy. In 2013 he moved to Milan, where he currently lives, to study mechanical and management engineering at Politecnico. Following graduation, he obtained a PhD working between Politecnico and MIT, with a focus on bridge monitoring. Since 2023, Lorenzo is the CEO of Displaid, a startup born to guarantee the safety and efficiency of transportation networks through a scalable bridge monitoring solution. When he is not talking about technology and bridges, you can find him watching a football match, exploring the world or cooking something.
CEO, Unbox AI
Rickard Brüel Gabrielsson is an AI researcher from Stanford and MIT, a lecturer for MIT’s Foundation Models & Generative AI course, and co-founder of Unbox AI.
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.