Winter 2021 Entrepreneurship Speaker Series with Chris Gibson:
From Grad Student to Pioneering Technology- Enabled Drug Discovery
Tuesday, February 16 at 9:00am | Virtual Event
Chris Gibson, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion, will serve as the featured speaker during the Knight Campus Winter 2021 Entrepreneurship Speaker Series. Gibson pursued dual degrees in bioengineering and business during his undergraduate work at Rice University before completing his PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Utah in the lab of Dean Y. Li, MD/PhD (currently President of Merck Research Labs), as part of work towards an MD/PhD dual-degree. Recursion grew out of that work, and after licensing the technology from the University of Utah, Recursion was founded a few days after Chris defended his dissertation during a leave of absence from medical school.
Chris serves on the Board of BioUtah and is the Chair of BioHive, the public-private partnership driving expansion of Utah's life-science ecosystem, the fastest growing in the nation. Chris enjoys cycling on both the road and the trails that cut through Utah’s great wilderness, as well as spending precious time with his family.
Spring 2021 Entrepreneurship Speaker Series with Carolyn Bertozzi:
Therapeutic Opportunities in Glycoscience
Tuesday, April 27 at 10:00am | Virtual Event
Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Baker Family Director of Stanford ChEM-H. She is known for developing innovative technologies that open new avenues for biological discovery and therapeutic development. Carolyn launched the field of bioorthogonal chemistry, which has enabled many new experimental approaches in biological research including imaging methods, chemoproteomics, and in vivo drug targeting. Several of her inventions have been translated to commercial settings, including a technology for site-specific protein modification that is now used in antibody-drug conjugates that are in human clinical trials, antibody-enzyme conjugates that are in preclinical development for cancer immune therapy, and a platform for tuberculosis detection in patient sputum samples at the point of care.
Carolyn's research focuses on mechanistic studies of glycan/receptor biology and applications of this knowledge to new therapeutic strategies. Her recent efforts center on pathogenic glycans in the tumor microenvironment and new therapeutic modalities based on the concept of targeted degradation.
Previous Speakers
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.
