Fall 2022 Entrepreneurship Speaker Series with Suzanne Tabbaa
"Why you should consider being a scientist and a marketer ('the dirty word')"
When: Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 | 11 a.m. - noon
Where: Beetham Family Seminar Room at the Knight Campus
Suzanne Tabbaa
Please join us for the Knight Campus' Fall 2022 Entrepreneurship Speaker Series seminar, featuring Dr. Suzanne Tabbaa from SymplexBio Consulting, LLC. Dr. Tabbaa will share her unexpected career journey toward becoming an entrepreneur, discuss the importance of living in the commercial space, and offer lessons learned from working with F500-size companies to start-ups.
Previous Speakers
Andrés J. García
Georgia Institute of Technology
Executive Director, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience
Petit Director’s Chair in Bioengineering and Bioscience
Regents’ Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Michelle C. LaPlaca
Georgia Institute of Technology
Professor, Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Many Paths Across the Valley of Death
Professors García and LaPlaca shared their experiences in translation and commercialization through personal case studies of ventures that were successful as well as some unsuccessful ones. They also highlighted lessons learned.
Arlyne Simon
Biomedical engineer, author and inventor
Be Customer-Centric: How to Innovate in Academia and Industry
Arlyne Simon discusses lessons learned in commercializing immunoassays and designing medical devices like hypodermic syringes and ultrasound machines. Interestingly, these lessons of customer-centricity also apply when sparking an inventor’s mindset in K-5 students through the Abby Invents STEM picture book series.
Chris Gibson
Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion
The Serendipity of Failure: A Journey from Graduate Student to Biotech CEO
Chris Gibson highlights the serendipity of science and failure, and the role each played in the journey he took from an MD/PhD student to CEO of a multibillion-dollar public biotech company in seven short years.
Carolyn Bertozzi
Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University
Therapeutic Opportunities in Glycoscience
Carolyn Bertozzi discussed how her research in glycoscience could lead to new therapeutic strategies.
Samantha Zyontz
Fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences and Research Fellow of Intellectual Property at Stanford Law School
Mapping the Worldwide Research, Innovation, and Diffusion Activity of CRISPR
Samantha Zyontz discussed how CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) has profoundly influenced innovation in a range of applications around the world. Her analysis of CRISPR academic articles, patents, companies, and clinical trials highlights an explosion of innovative related activities since the technology’s introduction.
Michele Marcolongo
Drosdick Endowed Dean of the College of Engineering, Villanova University
Start-Up Campus: How to Translate Your Scientific Discovery to a Successful Product
Michele Marcolongo discussed the roadmap for translating technology to product launch, as well as how to execute the necessary steps to create and launch a start-up company. In addition to her extensive work in academia, Dr. Marcolongo is a successful entrepreneur who has co-founded three biomedical technology startup companies and is a co-holder of 15 patents/patent applications.
Jennifer Elisseeff
Director and Professor of the Translational Tissue Engineering Center, Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering
"Regenerative Immunology – the Role of Technology Translation in Guiding Discovery"
Jennifer Elisseeff discussed regenerative immunology and the role of technology translation in guiding discoveries. She is currently working to understand the role of the immune system and cellular senescence in the biomaterial response and repair across different tissues. This new therapeutic target serves as the basis for the design of regenerative immunotherapies.
Kate Rosenbluth
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cala Health
“What if Electricity Were a Medicine? An Entrepreneur’s Journey from Scientific Discovery to Category Creation”
Kate Rosenbluth shared the story of founding and building a growth startup from spin-out through product launch. She spun Cala Health out from Stanford on a scientific moonshot to deliver a new class of bioelectronic therapies that use wearable devices to deliver non-invasive neuromodulation for major chronic diseases.
Ken Gall
Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University.
“Translation of New Materials into Medical Implants”
Ken Gall discussed the translation of a diverse set of new material technologies into medical implants. In all the applications, the implementation of the new materials was accelerated by basic research leading to a new fundamental understanding of the relationship between processing, structure, and mechanical properties of the constituent materials.
