2026 MIT Korea Conference - Startup Exchange Lightning Talks

Harshit Gupta is Head of Business Development and Operations at Foundation EGI, where he drives growth and strategic partnerships. He brings 15+ years of experience in designing innovative products and scaling businesses. Before joining Foundation EGI, he was Head of Business Development at Mercari US, where he launched multiple new business verticals and revenue streams. Harshit has held several key roles at Samsung, most notably leading Global Business Development for AI services and advising top executives on strategic initiatives across products and geographies. He began his career at Apple as a hardware engineer, designing and setting up manufacturing processes for the inaugural iPhone and iPad lines. Harshit holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS from Stanford University, and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. 

Scott Nill is the CTO and co-founder of LineLab. He has more than a decade of experience in advanced manufacturing and production system development. His work spanning aerospace, biopharma and biomanufacturing, green technologies, and consumer products, among other verticals, seeks to bridge engineering, operations, and finance to scale innovative products. He holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Operations from MIT.

Ed Chung, M.D. is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Black Mesa, a Boston-area startup building AI-enabled tools to transform QA processes, automate data extraction from paper records, and improve sponsor-manufacturer relationships in biomanufacturing. He has degrees in biology and chemical engineering from MIT and an M.D. from the Duke University School of Medicine. His career path has taken him through roles in clinical leadership, the healthcare C-suite, and technology startups. In addition to his work at Black Mesa, Dr. Chung remains active as a pediatric hospitalist and is also a medical officer for the MA-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team. 

Marcie Black’s passion is in solving important problems in the world including equitable health care, energy and the environment, and energy security. She is the CEO at Advanced Silicon Group (ASG). ASG is commercializing a silicon photoelectric sensor (Light Sense) which will lower the barriers of protein sensing so that everyone has access to good health care. Prior to founding ASG, Marcie was the President and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering, which focused on lowering the cost of solar electricity through black silicon solar cells. Marcie also was a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on a variety of nanotechnology and optical systems. She began at LANL as a prestigious Director’s Funded Post Doc, developing organic and nano solar cells. Marcie has a Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Institute Professor, Mildred Dresselhaus.  Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marcie was a device engineer at Motorola. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL.  Marcie also was honored as one of the ten “Women-to-Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech.  Marcie has over 30+ papers and more than 20 issued patents with many more pending.

Alex O’Brien is co-founder and CEO of AtoMe. He earned a Ph.D. in nuclear science and engineering from MIT, where he advanced research in extreme-environment metallurgy and additive manufacturing for applications in nuclear fusion and aerospace. Alex is passionate about overcoming the limitations of today’s metals, believing that the materials advancements we unlock today will define the boundaries of our technological leaps tomorrow. At AtoMe, he now leads the mission of pushing those boundaries to their extreme, developing next-generation metals reinforced by nano-materials to achieve the durability and reliability required to make additive manufacturing feasible in critical industries. 

Ken Sullivan is the CEO and Co-founder of Bay Compute, an AI company dedicated to solving one of the most urgent challenges in technology today: the rising power, energy, and environmental demands of modern data centers. Bay Compute’s intelligent operating system unifies power, cooling, and compute management to unlock additional sellable capacity and enable more efficient, sustainable AI infrastructure. Ken’s approach to mission-critical infrastructure was shaped early in his career as a Marine Corps Special Operations officer, where he led the design, build, and deployment of data centers in remote, resource-constrained environments to support real-time operations. Prior to founding Bay Compute, Ken led national security initiatives at Hebbia, an applied-AI platform, and previously worked as a financial analyst. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Michael Alexander is the Co-Founder and CEO of Addis Energy, a Boston-area startup using the earth as a chemical reactor to make ammonia. Addis Energy is developing a novel, net energy-positive pathway for ammonia synthesis to decouple ammonia production from natural gas supply, unlocking new production geographies to make ammonia production abundant and cost effective. Prior to founding Addis Energy, Michael built a decade-long career in the energy sector. He held key leadership roles at Marathon Petroleum Corporation, where he managed large-scale operations, optimized refinery processes, and implemented strategic workforce initiatives. Earlier in his career, he worked as a process engineer at Shell, specializing in financial analysis, emissions control, and capital project management. Michael earned his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, graduating with distinction, and holds a magna cum laude degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University where he was captain of the wrestling team.

Ian Seiferling (PhD, MSc.) is the CEO of Adaviv. With a background in biology and environmental science, Ian has worked extensively in domains such as plant science, urban agriculture, and climate adaptation. He has developed widely-used computer vision-based tools to measure and monitor the health of urban trees, and has led research on the spatially-explicit modeling of urban agriculture potential to feed urban populations. Ian's entrepreneurial and technological expertise enables him to bridge plant science, sensing, image processing, and data science in order to creatively put into practice cutting-edge methods that better understand crop plants. His research has been published in numerous high-impact academic journals, including Ecology, Conservation Ecology, and Nature Sustainability, and has been featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. Originally from the prairie grain belt provinces of Canada, Ian is passionate about using his skills to make a meaningful impact on the world.

Marco Ganouna is the Founder & CEO of Chronos AI, a defense-tech company pioneering decentralized 3D location and communication networks that operate without GPS, cell towers, or the internet. With a track record of anticipating future market needs and building breakthrough technologies, Marco leads Chronos AI’s mission to redefine positioning, navigation, and communication for defense, public safety, and smart infrastructure worldwide.

Arturo Deza is the Co-Founder & CEO of Artificio, a Self-Driving Car start-up that is working on a more computational & data efficient way to train self-driving cars, taking advantage of out-of-distribution data starting with emerging markets such as Latin America. Prior to running Artificio, Arturo was an Assistant Professor at UTEC in Lima, Peru; and prior to such appointment, he was a PostDoctoral Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (MIT-CBMM), and Harvard University’s Department of Psychology where his work focused on developing robust models of vision that are biologically inspired. He holds a PhD in Dynamical Neuroscience from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has a Bachelors in Robotics from Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria (UNI) in Lima, Peru. Arturo has published his scientific research at NeurIPS, CVPR & ICLR.