The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2024 MIT Research and Development Conference.
MIT is empowered by its diverse research and development ecosystem to invent fundamental technologies and cultivate interdisciplinary collaborations. In this year’s annual flagship conference, we will showcase MIT's latest research and development in critical technology areas, including AI, mobility, life science, space tech, microelectronics, and quantum computing. Along with the latest technology breakthrough, we will offer invaluable insights and perspectives on creating coherent innovation strategies in implementing the technologies and achieving meaningful impact. We will especially feature the latest research at MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) this year in celebration of innovation and discovery at the 40th-anniversary of the MIT MTL.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from MIT's renowned researchers and faculty, MIT-connected startups from the MIT Startup Exchange, as well as global corporate representatives and speakers.
Join MIT’s global community at the Research and Development Conference on November 19-20, 2024, where MIT’s innovation meets industry revolution.
Day One Concurrent Tracks: Track 1 | Space Track 2 | Mobility Track 3 | Innovations
Day Two Concurrent Tracks: Track 4 | Healthcare Track 5 | Artificial Intelligence Track 6 | Quantum 2.0
Program Coordinator, MIT Startup Exchange
Irina Gaziyeva joined the Startup Exchange team on June 21, 2022, as Program Coordinator reporting to Catarina Madeira and working closely with the whole Startup Exchange and other Corporate Relations teams. Irina comes to Corporate Relations from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT where she worked 10 years as Administrative Assistant where she has supported four senior faculty members and their research groups (20-25 graduate students). Since 2018, Irina has acted as program coordinator, teaming-up with the program manager and program faculty lead for the MechE Alliance program. She has facilitated 45+ virtual seminars, workshops, and mentoring events in this informal role. Irina has also actively connected members of the MechE community to support student career development, mentorship, and networking opportunities with MIT alumni and industry. Before MIT, Irina held positions as Administrative Assistant and Member Representative at Brookline Dental and Tufts Health plan, respectively. Irina has also been a Community Organizer in Worcester, MA. Irina earned her B.A., Management (with Innovation & Entrepreneurship track) at Clark University in Worcester, and her M.S., Program and Project Management from Brandeis University in Waltham. She has received many awards at MIT for outstanding service, and she has extensive community volunteer work to her credit.
Co-Founder & CEO, Concerto Biosciences
A leader of scientific innovation and a winner of the Emerging Women Founder Award, Cheri co-founded Concerto to reinvent humanity’s relationship with microbes. Cheri led Concerto to raise oversubscribed Seed and Series A investment rounds, fueling the company’s development of transformative microbial treatments and industry partnerships. Cheri has built a strong company culture centered around rigorous science, intent listening, and compassion. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley (Hertz Fellow) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (NIH Kirschstein Fellow).
CEO, Advanced Silicon Group
Marcie Black’s passion is in solving important problems in the world including equitable health care, energy and the environment, and energy security. She is the CEO at Advanced Silicon Group (ASG). ASG is commercializing a silicon photoelectric sensor (Light Sense) which will lower the barriers of protein sensing so that everyone has access to good health care. Prior to founding ASG, Marcie was the President and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering, which focused on lowering the cost of solar electricity through black silicon solar cells. Marcie also was a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on a variety of nanotechnology and optical systems. She began at LANL as a prestigious Director’s Funded Post Doc, developing organic and nano solar cells. Marcie has a Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Institute Professor, Mildred Dresselhaus. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marcie was a device engineer at Motorola. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL. Marcie also was honored as one of the ten “Women-to-Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech. Marcie has over 30+ papers and more than 20 issued patents with many more pending.
Co-Founder, 2Pi
Dr. Juejun (JJ) Hu is a co-founder of 2Pi and is currently 2Pi’s Chief Scientist. He is also the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at MIT. His research focuses on integrated optics and metasurface optics. He is a fellow of Optica,SPIE, and the American Ceramic Society, and has co-founded two companies besides 2Pi to commercialize photonics technologies developed from his lab at MIT.
Founder & CTO, Mobi Systems
As Founder and CTO of Mobi, Peng Yu is the technological visionary behind our Human Collaborative AI Platform. In addition, he oversees Mobi’s research and development, guiding a group of PhDs in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when applying advanced technologies to real-world problems. Peng earned his PhD from MIT working in the CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence) and MERS (Mobile-Enables Robotic Systems) labs and histhesis on using AI for decision assistance forms the backbone of Mobi’s solutions.
Founder& CEO, Wellsite Navigator
Josh Adler is a successful serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and public speaker who has founded energy, logistics, robotics, real estate, medical technology, and internet companies, and served as chief speechwriter for the U.S. Treasury Secretary. He is a graduate of Yale and MIT and the lead inventor on 19 granted U.S. patents in the fields of energy intelligence and geoscience. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Wired and The Economist.Josh is currently the Founding Chief Executive of Wellsite Navigator, an energy logistics SaaS platform based in Houston that is the most widely adopted software in the North American energy industry, with over 500,000 installations at over 2,000 companies. Adler previously founded and led Sourcenergy, which he sold to Bison Energy Services. Sourcenergy detected upstream energy and water activity and infrastructure earlier, more accurately and more completely than other sources by applying novel A.I. and data fusion methods to satellite, geolocation, geoscience, regulatory and other big data. Sourcenergy earned 22 U.S. patents and was honored by CERAWeek as an Energy Innovation Pioneer, Frost & Sullivan as the Supply Chain Technology of the Year, TPH as an Energy Disruptor, the CleanTech Open with the first CTO Water Prize, ImagineH2O, SxSW Eco, NREL and others. The company appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, Bloomberg, and the Midland Reporter-Telegram. Sourcenergy’s hundreds of customers included some of the world’s leading energy companies such as ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Shell, Ovintiv, and Schlumberger.
Co-Founder & CEO, qBraid
Kanav Setia is the co-founder and CEO of qBraid. He earned a PhD in Physics from Dartmouth College in 2020, where he worked on quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, with a particular focus on fermion-to-qubit encodings. Dr. Setia’s work on the Bravyi-Kitaev Superfast (BKSF) algorithm was the first to apply BKSF to quantum chemistry simulation. Collaborating with IBM, he developed the Generalized Superfast Encoding (GSE) for quantum simulation. This work was the first to show presence of inherent error-correcting properties within the fermion-to-qubit encodings. During his PhD, Dr. Setia interned at IBM twice, contributing to IBM’s open-source quantum chemistry software, Qiskit-Chemistry, and Google’s OpenFermion. He was a co-author on the initial releases of both. Dr. Setia also holds a B.Tech in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Astronomy and Planetary Sciences from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. After graduation, he worked for four years at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in the MEMS division of the Semi-Conductor Laboratory, focusing on the design and development of accelerometers and gyroscopes.
CEO & Co-Founder, Jaxon
Scott Cohen is the Co-Founder/CEO of Jaxon, an AI platform that helps users build custom AI systems with confidence. Jaxon ensures AI is predictable for use cases where the accuracy has to be trusted. Prior to Jaxon, Scott founded and led BigR.io, a deep learning consultancy, that he grew to acquisition. Before BigR.io, Scott was a pioneer in the wireless imaging industry, having created one of the first systems able to send images from mobile devices. Scott holds a BS from Union College, an MBA from Northeastern University, and a Master’s from ASU with coursework performed at MIT.
Co-Founder and CEO, Delineate
Emily Nieves is Co-Founder and CEO of Delineate, an AI copilot for computational pharmacology. Delineate empowers pharma and biotech companies to make faster, evidence-driven decisions, de-risking development across all departments. Nieves is a Ph.D. Candidate in Biological Engineering at MIT where she focuses on the intersection of AI and pharmacology. She has previously worked at large pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer where she built models to assist in answering various questions along the drug development process. Nieves is passionate about enabling scientists to make the best evidence-based decisions possible.
CEO & Co-Founder, Lunar Station Corporation
Blair DeWitt is the CEO and Founder of Lunar Station Corporation.The company has created a lunar intelligence platform called MoonHacker™. MoonHacker™ helps organizations have the best outcomes for missions on the Moon. While earning his master’s at MIT, joined the student led Astropreneur and Space Industry Club.He was part of the student team that created and organized the first annual MIT New Space Age Conference in 2016.Passion for innovative technologies has steered Blair to leading edge technology organizations like IBM, NASA, TIBCO, EMC, and Psion (to highlight a few) mastering an expansive range of technologies and business use cases.Something most people don’t know about Blair is that he is an experienced horseback rider. Blair has volunteered his expertise by teaching special needs children how to ride horses and helped train the Massachusetts State Police Horses for their mounted division.
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.