The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2025 MIT Research and Development Conference.
The year 2025 is unfolding with significant challenges. In the face of uncertainty, a clear vision of risks and opportunities is more important than ever. MIT offers a space for thoughtful engagement, networking, and collaboration where leaders from industry, academia, and the public sector come together to better understand the forces shaping our world—and to prepare for what lies ahead.
This November, join distinguished researchers and practitioners as they examine key developments in manufacturing and energy, supply chain resilience, life sciences, climate science and policy, entrepreneurship, space technology, advanced materials, cybersecurity, data analytics, and—unsurprisingly—artificial intelligence (AI), a topic central to research and application across MIT.
This is our flagship event of the year, featuring a full agenda of keynote talks, in-depth technical tracks, startup presentations, and moderated discussions with industry leaders—designed to foster learning, connection, and action. On Day 2, attendees can choose from six concurrent technology tracks, followed by tours of the MIT campus.
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.
Co-Founder & CTO, Diffraqtion
Dr. Christine Wang is Co-Founder and CTO of Diffraqtion, a deeptech startup developing next generation of machine vision sensors and processors that deliver ultra-sharp imaging, high inference speed, and strong energy efficiency.She has more than 20 years of R&D experience in the field of optics and photonics, especially quantum sensors, imaging systems and photonic integrated circuits. Prior to Diffraqtion, she was the Director of Optics and Photonics at Riverside Research, and prior to that a Principal Scientist at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.
She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University, and was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and EPFL in Lausanne.
Founder & CEO, Aperture Space
Dr. Zachary Kabelac is a two-time Founder and CEO of Aperture. He received his Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD from MIT in electrical engineering, specializing in radar and analytics. He’s spent the last 5 years building satellite systems and hydrology models to advance agricultural and irrigation practices with farmers. Before that, he successfully co-founded and bootstrapped his first company, Emerald Innovations, which sells a radar and insights platform for long-term health monitoring. With no external funding, it generates over $5 million in annual revenue with a team of 30. He presented Emerald to President Obama in the White House, has a Big Bang Theory episode, TedTalk, and received a Forbes 30 under 30.
Head of Engineering, Nominal
Andrew Dorne is the Head of Engineering and first employee at Nominal, a dual-use software company building a connected software suite for testing, validating, and operating complex hardware systems. His work at Nominal focuses on developing scalable data infrastructure and high-fidelity test and operations tooling that support advanced hardware programs. Before Nominal, he was an early engineer at Newfront Insurance, where he helped architect and scale the company’s core software platform and played a key role in growing the engineering organization during a period of rapid expansion.
Dorne began his career at Palantir as a Forward Deployed Engineer, where he led technical direction for several of the earliest deployments of the Foundry platform across major U.S. Government enterprises. His work spanned large-scale data integration, mission-critical operational tooling, and cross-functional leadership in high-stakes environments. He also previously built early-stage software in the medical technology space. He holds an S.B. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
Founder & CEO, DiploAI
Baptiste Bouvier is the founder and CEO of DiploAI, an AI-powered platform that is revolutionizing the way manufacturers manage legal and regulatory compliance. Recognizing the challenges companies face in navigating complex regulatory landscapes, Baptiste launched DiploAI to streamline the discovery, analysis, and distribution of critical legal and regulatory changes—empowering organizations to stay ahead of compliance requirements with unmatched efficiency. As CEO, Baptiste is dedicated to transforming regulatory risk management through advanced AI and real-time analytics. DiploAI has become a trusted partner for businesses seeking to simplify compliance processes and enhance operational decision-making. Baptiste earned his Computer Science degree from MIT and further enriched his expertise by studying Public Policy at Oxford, seamlessly bridging technical innovation with regulatory insight. Prior to founding DiploAI, he worked at organizations such as McKinsey, Microsoft, Facebook, and JP Morgan. Baptiste is based in New York.
Co-Founder & CEO, Fluent Metal
Peter Schmitt, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fluent Metal, a startup developing an innovative metal deposition technology designed to expand the possibilities of manufacturing with metals. Prior to Fluent Metal, Peter was the first employee and Chief Designer at Desktop Metal, a leading company in metal 3D printing. He holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and brings over 15 years of experience in additive manufacturing, encompassing prototyping, product development, and scaling technologies for diverse applications. Peter also holds several patents in the field.
Co-Founder & CSO/COO, BlueShift
Saket Bhargava is an experienced chemical engineer (PhD) with demonstrated leadership of several cross-functional and strategic process scale-up, circularity and sustainability, decarbonization, and process electrification projects from conceptualization to technology maturation and deployment. Proven track record of performing technoeconomic and life-cycle analyses, championing new technology platforms and business development opportunities, establishing collaborations internally and externally, tech scouting and due diligence for VC investments, and stakeholder management.
Chief Operating Officer, The Surpluss
Khalisah Stevens is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at The Surpluss, a multi-award-winning, certified B-Corp climate-tech company that helps businesses unlock hidden value by trading their excess resources — materials, assets, and space — through a US-patented, AI-powered platform. Khalisah acts as the strategic project manager and one of the commercial faces of The Surpluss. She also spearheads The Surpluss business operations in Malaysia. She brings extensive experience from Dubai’s tech startup scene (Namshi.com, Seera Group, web team at Dubai Economy and Tourism) and has a proven track record of supporting global clients in sustainable tourism, notably managing sustainability assessments for major Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) in Europe and Asia. She has delivered a TEDx talk on aligning destinations with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and excels in project management, sustainability standards, and stakeholder engagement. Khalisah holds a Master's in Sustainable Tourism and Natural Resource Management from EAE Business School in Barcelona and is based in the UAE.
CFO and Interim COO, Lab0
Felipe Collares is a highly accomplished Chief Financial Officer and strategic financial executive with over two decades of extensive experience across global public, private, and startup environments. His career is distinguished by a proven track record of driving financial excellence and leading companies through complex transformations, turnarounds, and restructurings, particularly within the robotics, medical technology and healthcare sectors.
With deep expertise in financial planning, analysis, and mergers and acquisitions, Felipe is a trusted advisor to CEOs and Boards of Directors. He has a history of building and leading high-performance finance teams to support scalable growth and maximize shareholder value.
His professional journey includes pivotal leadership roles, he is currently serving as COO and CFO for Lab0. As Vice President of Finance at Biofourmis, he was instrumental in the company's sale and drove significant cash preservation initiatives. At GE Healthcare, he lead the global FP&A function in preparation for its planned IPO, where he established best-in-class processes to meet public company standards. Earlier at GEHC, he led the financial oversight and strategy for $2 billion free cash flow generation, consistently exceeding targets and increasing cash generation by 25% year-over-year. He also managed the integration of a $1B oncology lab and supported adjacent acquisitions.
Felipe holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Irvine, and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and International Business from the University of South Carolina. His diverse experience and strategic financial acumen make him a leader in navigating complex corporate landscapes.
Co-Founder & CEO/CTO, American Boronite Corporation
Dr. Pavel Bystricky is a leading global expert in advanced materials with in-depth knowledge of nanotube-based nanotechnology, composites, metals, and smart materials. He is founder and CEO/CTO of American Boronite Corporation, where he has raised over $14mn in contracts to fund development of nanotube-based materials and applications. Together with a talented team of PhDs, engineers, and technicians, Dr. Bystricky has developed state-of-the-art automated production systems for nanotube fabrics and continuous nanotube fibers. The Boronite team belongs to a select group of researchers and companies working on the synthesis and characterization of carbon and boron nitride nanotubes and their structural, mechanical, and electrical properties.
Over his career, Dr. Bystricky founded the startup Mat-IQ, directed and worked in advanced materials R&D at multiple corporations, and researched advanced materials in academia. Prior to Boronite, he held the position of Director of Advanced Materials at KaZaK Composites where he technically managed over $10mn in development contracts for advanced composite manufacturing. He was also a research scientist at École des Mines and Électricité de France (EDF), where he developed a general quantitative model of stress corrosion cracking in nuclear power plant cooling systems, and at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, where he designed a water purification system for a neutrino detector. Dr. Bystricky earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science from MIT and holds 9 composites and nanomaterials-related patents. He has presented his work at numerous conferences around the world, including at the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on the Science and Applications of Nanotubes and Low-Dimensional Materials, which took place at MIT in June 2024.
Co-Founder & CEO, Zifino
Sanjay Manandhar is a Cambridge, MA-based tech entrepreneur who brought Internet to Nepal in 1994 where he remains actively involved in entrepreneurship and promotion of the arts.
Currently, Sanjay is CEO and co-founder of Zifino (zifino.com), an AI-native platform for continuous compliance for highly regulated environments from the Defense Industrial Base (CMMC & DFAR) to Finance, Industrial & Healthcare. Prior to Zifino, Sanjay co-founded and was CEO of Wicket (wicketsoft.com), a computer vision company for opt-in-based facial biometrics for access control, payments, and ticketing.
Sanjay was founder and CEO of Aerva (aerva.com), a enterprise software platform that managed content on 10,000 digital displays in 6 countries, for advertising, employee communications or entertainment, from Times Square billboards to thousands of Anheuser-Busch 7-foot digital cooler doors, displays in 33+ US Naval bases, universities, convention centers, airports and transit hubs. Sanjay founded, grew and sold Aerva in 2015 without raising any outside capital.
From 1996 to 1999, Sanjay picked technology stocks in London for a fund with GBP 12 billion under management. Sanjay’s early career as a software engineer was at Sun Microsystems and Olivetti in Silicon Valley, NYNEX and Siemens in Cambridge, MA, USA.
Sanjay has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and Master’s from MIT Media Lab and MBA from INSEAD. He holds four patents in computer vision and one patent in content management system.
Sanjay serves on the Advancement Committee of UWC in New Mexico and is also an avid mountain biker and a trekker in the Himalayas and around the world.
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.