Meet top emerging MIT-connected startups during this 2-day webinar featuring startups from MIT Startup Exchange’s accelerator program, STEX25. The format is fast-paced, exposing attendees to a broad cross selection of technologies and use cases applicable to many different companies and industries. Sixteen startups will be presenting ‘lightning talks’ followed by Q&A.
Of special note, there will be brief panel discussions on topics related to startup-corporate partnerships. This is a great opportunity for corporate executives and startups alike to learn about challenges that can emerge when the two sides collaborate, and how to create circumstances to improve chances of successful partnerships.
Day 1 (July 21) will feature eight startups related to Robotics, IIoT, Advanced Manufacturing, and AI, while Day 2 (July 23) will have eight startups in the fields of Sustainability, Energy, Advanced Materials, and Life Sciences.
Program Manager, MIT Startup Exchange
Ariadna Rodenstein is a Program Manager at MIT Startup Exchange. She joined MIT Corporate Relations as an Events Leader in September 2019 and is responsible for designing and executing startup events, including content development, coaching and hosting, and logistics. Ms. Rodenstein works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in promoting collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, as well as with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond.
Prior to working for MIT Corporate Relations, she worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York and London, in a few different roles in event management and as Director of Client Strategy. Ms. Rodenstein has combined her experience in the private sector with work at non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project, and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. She also served as an Officer on the Board of Directors of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in New York for several years. Additionally, she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University, with coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York.
Abhijit Ghosh is the VP of Engineering at Akasha Imaging. Prior to joining Akasha Imaging, Abhijit led the engineering team at autonomous vehicle perception startup Deepscale, which was acquired by Tesla. Abhijit's background is in Deep Learning, High Performance Computing, and Distributed Systems. Abhijit has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley.
Andy Wang is the founder and CEO of Prescient Devices, Inc., an MIT startup pioneering design automation technology for distributed and fragmented IoT systems. Wang was the cofounder and CTO of GTI IoT Technology, a leading supplier of low-power wireless IoT solutions, where he helped grow GTI from a two-person founding team to a profitable company with 150+ employees. Prior to GTI, he was a senior design engineer at Analog Devices, where he developed high-speed integrated circuits and systems. Wang graduated with a PhD degree from MIT.
Boaz Efroni Rotman is the VP of Marketing and Business Development at Lightelligence. He is a creative and forward-thinking professional with over 24 years of hands-on global technology in business development, product management, strategic marketing, and sales. Boaz oversaw operations to manage and lead over 20 semiconductor SoCs and products into Consumer, IoT, Cellular, Mobile, Media, Telecom, and Automotive markets through strong technical background and aggressive and innovative go-to-market strategies. Boaz holds a BS in electrical engineering from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel and an MBA from Netanya Academic College in Israel.
Tom Baran is Co-founder and CEO of Lumii, a Boston-based company focused on delivering deeply-engaging hologram-like 3D experiences to the world of printed media. Lumii was co-founded in 2015 along with MIT Ph.D.s Matt Hirsch and Daniel Leithinger, with the goal of using sophisticated algorithms and signal processing to empower designers to deliver hologram-like 3D experiences, using readily-available printers, media and ink. Tom’s Ph.D. and M.S. degrees are from MIT and his S.B. degree is from Tufts University. Tom is also co-author of the widely-used MIT-based MOOC 6.341x: Discrete-Time Signal Processing, available on edX.org.
Akasha Imaging: We see what others can't
Prescient Devices: Solving the fragmented IoT challenge
Lightelligence: Accelerating AI at the speed of light
Lumii: Holographic embellishments for packaging or security from any printing press
Daniel Theobald is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vecna Robotics. He’s been at the forefront of robotics R&D for over 20 years, partnering with DARPA, DoD, NASA, NIH, and USDA among many others to develop robust and agile autonomous systems for real-world applications.
Daniel’s deep industry knowledge and practice of continuous innovation has made Vecna Robotics a leading provider of autonomous material handling and workflow optimization solutions. Vecna Robotics offers a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and the Pivotal™ orchestration engine to optimize and orchestrate the movement of goods through industrial settings, including warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities.
Theobald is a co-founder and President of MassRobotics and holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He has received the Henry Ford II Scholar Award, NSF Fellowships, and a Hertz Fellowship award.
Dr. David Wentzloff founded Everactive, along with Dr. Ben Calhoun and Brendan Richardson, in 2012. The two currently serve as Co-CTOs, sharing overall responsibility for the company’s continued technological innovation. Dr. Wentzloff earned his PhD at MIT in 2007 under Prof. Chandrakasan. Since August 2007, Dr. Wentzloff has been with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests include ultra-low power RFICs for energy- and volume-constrained applications, clock generation and IC techniques to improve synchronization of sensor networks, wireless body area networks, channel modeling, and all-digital phase-locked loops for precision frequency generation. Dr. Wentzloff has numerous publications in the areas of ultra-low-power circuits and body sensor nodes.
John Wass is CEO of Profit Isle. He is the former Senior Vice President of Staples and CEO of WaveMark, an RFID company recently acquired by Cardinal Health. Wass was also a key senior executive during Staples? growth from three stores to over 1,000 nationwide. He is a graduate of Princeton and MIT.
Jason Barton is Chief Commercial Officer at Realtime Robotics, and has 20+ years of sales and marketing leadership experience selling high-tech disruptive products and solutions into global markets. At Rethink Robotics, he helped create the collaborative robot category building a sales and support network that served manufacturing plants across the globe. Prior to this he has served as COO of EnergyHub, a leader in connected home energy management solutions. He also ran sales and marketing at Segway, and for Palm’s US Enterprise business. Jason earned a BA Honors Degree from the University of Wales in the UK.
Vecna Robotics: Autonomous mobile robots for bulk materials handling
Everactive: Self-powered insights for the physical world
Profit Isle: Uncover hidden profits that are invisible to company
Realtime Robotics: Motion planning for autonomous robots & vehicles
Eli Paster is Chief Executive Officer of PolyJoule, an energy storage startup that is currently working with two global utilities to pilot 1MW of PolyJoule’s non-lithium energy storage over the next 24 months. At PolyJoule, Dr. Paster oversees research efforts, reconciles R&D schedules with commercialization targets, and provides foundational information for business and manufacturing strategy. He holds an S.M. and PhD from MIT, in the fields of electrochemistry, high-throughput instrumentation, and entrepreneurship. He is the author several US and international patents, and has published monographs in chemistry, engineering, biology, literature, and advocacy.
Mr. Best is the founding CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics. Before starting Syzygy, he worked for Baker Hughes. There he steadily progressed into management, where he gained expertise in quality assurance (Six Sigma Black Belt), regulatory compliance, technology development management, project and personnel management, supply chain management, internal/external communications, and business process architecture. With Syzygy he has successfully raised two funding rounds and is currently focusing on bringing this revolutionary photochemical technology to market.
PolyJoule: Building high-power, low-cost, organic batteries for the grid
Syzygy: Illuminating the future of the hydrogen industry
Uncountable: AI Platform for Material Development
Stable: Writing the blueprint for intelligent EV fleet charging
Michael Schrader is the CEO of Vaxess, an NIH and VC-backed company bringing healthcare out of the clinic and into patients’ lives with the MIMIX Smart Release platform. The MIMIX patch combines ease of administration with dramatic efficacy enhancements enabled by the "mimicry" of natural infections. The company has a pipeline of immunotherapies and vaccines, both in-house as well as through partnerships. Prior to Vaxess, Michael spent time at Google and Honda where he helped bring a range of products to market and earned fifteen patents. Michael received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and his M.B.A. from Harvard.
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.
Jack Baron co-founded Sweetwater Energy as Chairman and CEO in March of 2009, and now serves as the company’s President. Prior to Sweetwater, Mr. Baron served as President of PAETEC Holding Corp., a Fortune 1000 telecommunications company acquired in 2011 by Windstream Corp. (NASDAQ: WIN), one of the largest national telecom carriers. Mr. Baron co-founded PAETEC in 1998 with Arunas Chesonis. Mr. Baron currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sweetwater Energy and he is Chairman of the Board of Directors for Onestream Network Services. Mr. Baron is an active volunteer with a number of youth groups and schools, including BSA, Greentopia and Habitat for Humanity. Mr. Baron is an active musician in the Rochester, NY area, playing guitar and singing in his rock band, “Don’t Know Jack”.
Adam Behrens has spent his career developing and translating technologies in the areas of food, agriculture, healthcare, and nutrition. Previously, he was a postdoctoral associate in the Langer Lab at MIT where he managed several projects focused on improving healthcare and nutrition in the developing world. He was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017. Adam holds a BS in chemical engineering and a PhD in bioengineering from the Kofinas lab at the University of Maryland.
Vaxess: Unlocking the power of our immune system with MIMIX™
Kytopen: The future in cell therapy discovery and manufacturing
Sweetwater Energy: Green no longer comes at a premium
Mori: A New Kind of Protection for All Kinds of Foods
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.