A Connected Ecosystem

Innovation to Impact: Funding Avenues for Emerging Biotechs
Steve Tregay, Ph.D., Managing General Partner at Mission BioCapital, and Deborah Palestrant, Ph.D., MBA, Head of 4:59, Partner, 5AM Ventures, spoke to a room of Harvard postdocs, graduate students, and aspiring entrepreneurs about avenues available to support emerging startups, what piques the interest (and concern) with investors, and where they see opportunities in the biotech ecosystem.

Innovation to Impact: Launching from the Bench @ Blavatnik Life Lab Longwood
Harvard's Office of Technology Development and Harvard Medical School hosted a fireside chat with Manny Simons, founder and CEO of Akouos, Inc. and Kush Parmar, managing partner at 5am Ventures, and discussed their journey from research bench to a successful start-up.

Guppy Tank: Elevate Your Pitch
Harvard's Office of Technology Development and LabCentral co-host the Guppy Tank series, where Harvard life-science innovators pitch their early-stage concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive, in-depth feedback. In 2023, Dr. Erik Aznauryan from the Church Lab presented Xera Bio and Dr. Jeffrey Way from the Silver Lab presented General Biologics.

OTD Bench-to-Business Bootcamp
The Bench-to-Business Boot Camp, hosted by Harvard's Office of Technology Development, is a multi-day workshop for Harvard graduate students and postdocs, designed to teach you the skills to recognize and convey the value of scientific and technological innovations to the world of industry, business, and entrepreneurship.

Harvard Quantum Initiative
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development hosted the “Realizing Impact Through Translation and Startup Formation” workshop at Harvard Quantum Initiative’s Open House. The event included opening remarks, a panel discussion, and a fireside chat with serial entrepreneurs, faculty members, industry leaders, and startup founders.

Biomedical Informatics Entrepreneurs Salon
Hosted by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development and the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the Harvard Medical School, the salon facilitates a discussion on the intersection of medicine and computing through the story of entrepreneurs’ personal and professional journeys. At the 2023 salons, Professor Isaac “Zak” Kohane, MD, PhD, the inaugural chair of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, had candid conversations with: Anne Heatherington at Takeda, Atul Butte at UCSF, Ann DeWitt at The Engine, Dr. Bill Lotter at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Howard Jacob at AbbVie, Linda Avey at Precise.ly and 23andMe, Daniel Dat at Meta, and Iris Grossman at Eleven Therapeutics.

Harvard Grid Tough Tech Start-Up Bootcamp
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development ran a workshop at Harvard Grid’s Tough Tech Start-Up Bootcamp on translational research and protecting intellectual property.

Advancing Research and Innovation

Harvard Grid Accelerator Funds 5 Touch Tech Research Projects
Five teams of Harvard researchers will work to de-risk promising ideas, with the aim of eventually launching startups, thanks to funding announced today from the University’s Grid Accelerator. Harvard’s Office of Technology Development manages the Harvard Grid Accelerator.

Harvard Announces Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund to Advance Solutions for Global Impact
Harvard Office of Technology Development and the Salata Institute launched a fund to support research in climate and sustainability. The Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund will propel climate and sustainability-related innovations towards startup formation for global impact.

Harvard Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator Funds 13 Research Projects
In labs across Harvard University, 13 innovative research projects received new support from the Office of Technology Development managed Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator in 2023. BBA funded investigators are advancing crucial translational work in the areas of, inflammatory disease, maternal health, neuroscience, oncology, organ preservation and other areas.

Harvard enters into Collaboration with Novo Nordisk and Evotec to launch LAB eN², a translational drug discovery accelerator
Harvard University joins Mass General Brigham, Yale University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as the initial four academic institutions to participate in LAB eN².

Citadel Securities and Google Cloud Announce High Performance Computing Study with Harvard University to Advance Heart Disease Research
Professor Petros Koumoutsakos Leading Study to Replicate Supercomputer Resources in Public Cloud.

Harvard’s Wyss Institute and Collaborative Fund cofound research lab to fund technology to combat climate change
Collaborative Fund commits $15 million to create a Laboratory for Sustainable Materials Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute.

Wyss Institute’s Lab-on-a-Molecule Drug Discovery Project Receives Funding from Northpond Labs
Northpond Labs supports Wyss Institute's Lab-on-a-Molecule project, the third Wyss project to receive support from Northpond Labs as part of a strategic research collaboration.

Societal Impact

Harvard Startup Aims to Prevent Workplace Injuries with Wearable Robotics
Verve Motion has announced it has reached a significant milestone by securing $20 million in Series B funding.

Rubber that doesn’t grow cracks when stretched many times
Multi-scale approach improves the fatigue threshold of particle-reinforced rubber.

Engineers from Harvard Use Data Science to Accelerate Drug Discovery
The convergence of semiconductor technology and drug discovery holds great promise in the pursuit for new medications and therapies.

Researchers create first logical quantum processor
Harvard researchers have realized a key milestone in the quest for stable, scalable quantum computing, an ultra-high-speed technology that will enable game-changing advances in a variety of fields.

Obatala Sciences Announces Commercial Launch of Its ObaCell® Obesity-on-a-Chip Service
New technology will enable improved development of obesity and diabetes treatments.

Engineered Serendipity
Two electrical engineers took a fresh approach to drug discovery, merging semiconductors with cellular biology.

E-nose sniffs out harmful molecules
AI-enabled portable sensor can be used to manage hazardous waste, monitor air quality, identify spoiled food, and diagnose diseases.

Building robust optical structures made of darkness
Two studies report new methods for using metasurfaces to create and control dark areas called “optical singularities”.

A first-of-its-kind integrated optical isolator
A device that protects optical systems from unwanted reflections with dramatically enhanced performance.

Metalenz Launches its Metasurface Optics on the Open Market in Partnership with UMC
Metalenz has won several 3D depth sensing designs for its metasurface optics with leading OEMs in Asia. First commercial end-product shipments from OEMs begin Q3’23.

Turning Cancer on Itself
New thinking about cancer could lead to a paradigm shift in the way doctors treat the disease.

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