2022 MIT Startup Showcase in Seoul - Startup Exchange Lightning Talks

Patrick Teyssonneyre is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and accomplished senior executive with over 20 years of global experience in Deep Tech Ventures, Climate Tech and General Management of Innovation and Technology, having led the development of numerous Technologies, Products and Applications into successful commercialization in the Chemical and Materials Industries. Teyssonneyre has a B.S. in Materials Engineering, earned an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Dr. Catherine Havasi is the Chief Product Officer at Basis Technology, which has been providing AI-powered identity resolution and text understanding for mission-critical industries such as finance, legal, insurance, and the public sector for 10 years. She taught machine learning and go-to-market strategy at MIT, where she ran the Digital Intuition Group and has been a pioneer in human and AI collaboration. She is also a two-time entrepreneur founding both Luminoso and the regtech company Dalang. She has been working on helping computers understand Japanese for over fifteen years. 

Kota Weaver is a co-founder and CTO of Skylla Technologies, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, and a spin-off from Prof. Harry Asada’s lab at MIT. Skylla is transforming the manufacturing industry with its Jetstream Controller, a robot intelligence platform that features human-aware navigation and exceptional endpoint positioning accuracy. Skylla can help customers quickly and cost effectively deploy mobile manipulators and other vehicular robots for a wide range of applications in manufacturing, construction, and public service.

Kota has prior experience at Neurala and Boston Incubation Center, working on various AI/ML, computer vision and robotics projects. He has a BS degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Vishal (‘Vish’) is the CEO and co-founder of SoWork - the 'Workplace Metaverse' - founded at Harvard's iLab. SoWork started off as a more human way for his team to internally communicate, and now Fortune 10 companies and thousands of companies and startups alike enter the SoWork Metaverse to work, socialize, build communities, and host events. Besides being a CEO, Vishal is a medical doctor, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, a Mentor at the Oxford Foundry, and Alumni Advisor at MassChallenge Boston. In his prior life, Vish worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva, and became one of the highest rated Teaching Fellows at Khan Academy in Health and Medicine. Vish likes traveling, playing videogames and hockey, and building things with smart people.

Ali Merchant is the co-founder and CEO of iQ3Connect. He has worked and published in the aerospace industry in the area of numerical simulation and design optimization of gas turbines. Design methods and tools he has developed are used for gas turbine design in universities and industry. He brings 15 years of experience and knowledge of CAD, CAE, and multi-disciplinary product design to the iQ3Connect team. Ali holds a Masters and Ph.D. from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sean Mihm is Director of Mechanical Engineering at CATALOG where he is responsible for leading CATALOG’s storage efforts through hardware and process development of DNA Writing, platform advancement, and supporting the drive toward commercial readiness. As part of the team for nearly four years, Sean has been instrumental in the development of the world’s first automated, high throughput DNA Data Storage Writer, Shannon, which was awarded Time 100 best inventions in 2019.

Previously, Sean co-founded a point-of-care blood based diagnostic device leveraging protein engineering and novel microfluidic strategies to offer personalized blood thinner recommendations to patients. Sean is passionate about the unique utilization of biology to solve the world’s most complex problems, innovative design, and sustainability. Sean holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Adam’s career has spanned over three decades advancing new battery and fuel cell products for energy storage, consumer electronics, military and industrial markets.  Adam led Duracell’s OEM sales and consulting group.  He was president of Millennium Cell and CEO of Acumentrics, fuel cell technology developers and manufacturers.  Most recently as the Chief Commercial Officer of NEC Energy Solutions, he led the capture of grid scale energy storage projects for that leading energy storage integrator over a four-year growth period.

Adam’s experience in the introduction of new battery products has been instrumental in guiding Ambri towards energy storage markets and partnerships.

Dr. Lynn Frostman is Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility at Syzygy Plasmonics, where she is developing and implementing Syzygy’s strategy on safety, sustainability, diversity, equity & inclusion, employee development, community engagement, and corporate governance. She previously served as Syzygy’s VP of Engineering, leading the team developing novel photocatalytic reactors that will electrify the manufacturing of chemicals, fuels, and fertilizers, thereby reducing both cost and emissions. Prior to joining Syzygy, she spent 23 years in the oilfield services industry, including a variety of technical, strategic marketing, and operational roles at Baker Hughes and Newpark Fluids Systems. She holds both B.S. & Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota, respectively.  She also serves as Chair of the External Advisory Board for the Chemical Engineering & Materials Science Department at the University of Minnesota.

Shoji Nishiura has over thirty years of experience architecting and selling solutions for BSS/OSS, Big Data, and Cloud financial management across many verticals. Shoji's past experience includes working 15 years at HP, working at Vodafone/SoftBank, and a management consulting firm. He graduated with a masters in opto-electronics and bachelors in solid state physics/electronics engineering from Tokushima University in Japan.

Joel is above all an advocate for climate action and is the co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, a CA-based startup developing next-generation perovskite solar cell technology. Before founding Swift in 2017, he served as Executive Director of the Tata-MIT GridEdge Solar research program, which focuses on scale-up of new solar photovoltaic technologies for India and other developing countries. As an NSF Fellow at MIT, Joel developed ultra-lightweight and flexible solar cells that were recognized by the 2017 Katerva Award. He was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Fellow in Energy and one of Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Clean Energy. He co-authored the MIT Future of Solar Energy Study and has worked extensively on emerging PV materials and devices, techno-economic analysis, and energy and climate policy. Joel holds a PhD and SM in electrical engineering from MIT and a BS with distinction from Stanford University.

Roy has over 20 years of computational drug discovery experience, including 5 years as co-founder and CEO of Modulus Discovery, and prior to this, 10 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Connecticut, 2 years at Variagenics, a personalized medicine company formerly in Cambridge, MA, and 4 years at Schrodinger, Inc. where he was responsible for launching collaborative research projects with global pharmaceutical firms and top academic laboratories. Roy also previously served as Visiting Associate Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology where he lectured on drug discovery and biotechnology entrepreneurship. Roy received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Boston University and completed his post-doctoral studies at MIT.

Andrew A. Radin is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aria Pharmaceuticals, a preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company discovering and developing novel small molecule therapies for complex and hard-to-treat diseases. Andrew created the company’s first drug development algorithms as part of his studies in biomedical informatics at Stanford University in 2014. Since co-founding Aria, Andrew was named an Emerging Pharma Leader by Pharma Executive magazine, was invited to give a TEDMED talk, and was named a Top 100 AI Leader by Deep Knowledge Analytics.

Prior to co-founding Aria, Andrew served as Chief Technology Officer at several successful internet startups. His prior projects have reached tens of millions of people in telephony systems, advertising networks, video games, and geographical mapping systems. Andrew studied Biomedical Informatics in Stanford University's SCPD graduate program and holds Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ms. Kerin Perez Harwood, Director of Business Development at Nano-C, has 10 years of global industry experience in bringing new materials and chemicals to market. She has a diverse professional background spanning commercial, operations, and development roles. Ms. Perez Harwood leads all business and strategy-related activities for the Semiconductor and Optical Semiconductor materials business at Nano-C and is an active member of the executive management team. She also works with small local businesses as a business planning and marketing consultant primarily focused on upgrading business technology systems and marketing strategy. Prior to joining Nano-C, Ms. Perez Harwood was Business Development Manager for Merck KGaA / EMD Performance Materials (now EMD Electronics) covering Lighting, Photovoltaics, Display Technologies, and related materials for printed electronics. She successfully built and managed relationships with customers and strategic partners with major U.S. solar and lighting manufacturers, leading U.S. technology companies, and high-tech startups. With a focus on driving multi-million-dollar sales growth and market expansion, Ms. Perez Harwood led and executed commercial agreements driving the diversification of Merck’s product pipeline. With her years of corporate experience, she brings a unique and valuable perspective to Nano-C, as she views negotiations through the corporate lens.  Ms. Perez Harwood managed all commercial activities related to customer programs from the early stage to mass production, including communications strategy, price negotiation, and forecasting. Prior to Merck, she was with Siemens HealthCare Diagnostics (now Siemens Healthineers). She also has a personal interest in health and wellness and has pursued several related entrepreneurial endeavors. Ms. Perez Harwood holds an MBA from F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.

A former Senior VP at Samsung Networks, Jungah has been leading inception, strategy and technology at Aura Intelligent Systems.

She is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience leading advanced technology at Samsung and Altiostar. She is the inventor of more than 40 US and international patents in wireless technology and radar imaging.

Jungah is an expert in 3G/4G/5G systems and Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging. A former Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology at Samsung Networks, she is an industry veteran with 25 years of technology leadership at Lucent Technologies, Samsung, and Altiostar. She led development of an award-winning LTE technology with Centralized-RAN (C-RAN), mobile Edge Computing and real-time analytics and technology strategy. She successfully took virtual radio access network (vRAN) architecture to 5G standard and industry initiatives on open RAN. She holds BS and MS degrees in Electronics Engineering from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Electrical Engineering.