MIT Startup Exchange is convening a new installment of Demo Day on Wednesday, March 18 (12 PM – 1:15 PM ET). The event will feature several exciting industry-ready startups in brief lightning talks and Q&A. Breakout rooms will follow at the end of the event. Please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
This event is for ILP members.
Manager of Partnerships & Engagement, MIT Startup Exchange
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., Environmental Studies/Natural Resource Policy at the University of Colorado, and her M.A., 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.
Co-Founder, Oddness
Ariel Schilkrut, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and Board Member of Oddness, an AI and robotics company automating industrial logistics. An entrepreneur who has partnered with some of the world’s largest retailers and suppliers, he brings deep experience modernizing global supply chains. With a Ph.D. from MIT in Operations Management, Ariel bridges optimization with real-world deployment of autonomous systems, computer vision, and RFID to eliminate warehouse bottlenecks at scale.
COO, Silvis Materials
Shereen Shermak, COO of Silvis Materials, is a startup operator and founder with a successful track record of scaling early-stage ventures into impact-driven businesses. Two-time successful early-stage CEO and builder of three academic spinoutsfrom MIT, Duke and BU, achieving two exits to public companies (and counting). Passionate about innovation, strategic growth, and founder support. She started her career as an environmental engineer, and has held senior positions in the private, non-profit and government sectors. Active angel investor committed to empowering emerging entrepreneurs.She holds a BSE from Duke, an MBA from Sloan, and an MPA from the Kennedy School.
Founder, Malstrom Molecules
Bio coming soon.
VP, Business, Robigo
Founder & CEO, Owle AI
Founder & CEO, Rejuvenate Bio
Founder & CEO, Acorn Genetics
Ana Cornell is the Founder and CEO of Acorn Genetics, a company developing next‑generation genetic testing platforms designed to be faster, lower‑cost, and usable outside of traditional laboratory settings. She is a Thiel Fellow, a 776 Fellow, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, recognized for her work at the intersection of biotechnology, hardware, and systems innovation.
Ana studied biomedical engineering at Northwestern University before leaving to pursue Acorn full‑time as a Thiel Fellow. She founded the company after firsthand experiencing the fragmentation and inaccessibility of the genetic testing ecosystem while attempting to obtain testing herself following her father’s diagnosis with a genetically linked condition. Through Acorn, she is re-imagining genetic testing by enabling DNA to be tested anywhere, in anything—across people, plants, and pathogens.
Founder & CEO, Cosito
Andrea Diaz Baquero is the Founder and CEO of Cosito.ai, a startup building an AI-powered voice platform for frontline operations. She is an MIT alumna with a background in engineering and management.
Before founding Cosito, Andrea worked at AWS as a Senior Technical Product Manager focused on Industrial Internet of Things data modeling and large-scale connected systems. She also led IoT and chatbot initiatives at SAP across Southeast Asia and Latin America, partnering with major enterprises to design and deploy end-to-end digital and sensor-driven solutions across multiple industries.
Through these experiences, she saw how complex, costly, and slow IoT implementations could be for most organizations. That insight led her to launch Cosito with a clear mission: to democratize sensor technology and make operational data capture as simple as speaking. Cosito enables frontline teams in manufacturing, retail, food production, and logistics to log structured data through natural language and integrate it directly into ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics.
Andrea combines deep technical expertise with hands-on hardware prototyping and enterprise go-to-market execution. She is driven by a commitment to making advanced technology intuitive, accessible, and truly useful for real-world operators.
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.