Synaural

Northwestern University

The Synaural platform uses engineered acoustic probes to elicit specific neural activity within the brain. A robust, easy to use, non-invasive headset records the neural activity and patented algorithms extract unique metrics that provide objective insight to the subject’s neural health and can be used to guide treatment in a meaningful, measured way. To date, the metrics have demonstrated enough specificity to be correlated with various conditions e.g. concussion, learning disabilities (e.g. Autism, reading, dyslexia), and hearing.

AlvaHealth

Yale University

Getting immediate medical attention is critical after a patient has experienced a stroke. However, stroke symptoms are often not identified by the patient or family members until it is too late to administer treatment. There is currently no wearable-linked mobile app which specifically detects a stroke incident. AlvaHealth is pairing wearable devices with machine learning to detect a stroke incident immediately based on the activity in both arms of the patient. Early detection of stroke can improve the outlook for patient recovery.

POLQi Discoveries

Yale University

1 in 400 Americans carry a breast cancer gene (BRCA) mutation - such a mutation increases the likelihood of developing breast cancer from 12 to ~70% by age 80, and raises the lifetime risk of ovarian cancer from 1.3% to 44% (BRCA1) or 17% (BRCA2). Additionally, men with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations are also at increased risk for breast and prostrate cancers, and both men and women with either mutation are at an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. BRCA proteins are essential for DNA repair, making BRCA-deficient cells (i.e. those with a BRCA mutation) susceptible to synthetic lethality and providing an opportunity to kill cancers with the mutation. PARP-inhibitors invoke synthetic lethality to kill BRCA-mutated cells via PARP-trapped lesions, however cells can become resistant to this mode of therapy, creating an unmet clinical need for these cancers. Indeed, nearly 300,000 new cases of breast or ovarian cancer will be diagnosed in 2019, making the need for an improved synthetic lethality agent urgent.

Cache

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cache is a MIT startup from Prof. Mark Bathe’s lab is seeking an entrepreneur to help lead the next phase of customer discovery/hypothesis validation. Their technology enables massive and low-energy storage, up to millennium timescales, and random access of nucleic acid samples from broad sources including ecological, forensic, or archival DNA data storage. They are seeking a passionate, adventurous, and creative entrepreneur to join their early-stage venture to help launch this technology into the 21st-century biotechnology space. Their immediate aim is to recruit an entrepreneur who will be excited to mature their business plan using market discovery and research on product-market fit. They are ready to test the market’s appetite for this technology, developing partnerships along the way.

UniKey

Stanford University

Imposter theft is a $1 trillion global problem. Cybersecurity is especially important for banks and employers. Passwords and usernames are easily stolen, leaving biometrics as a secure alternative. However, biometric data is costly, risks privacy and can often be overridden by a password. UniKey Technology integrates biometrics and cryptosecurity to create secure, affordable biometric authentication which can be used across platforms.

Vine Robot Technologies

University of California, Santa Barbara

Soft robotics shows promise for creating robots which are better able to navigate narrow and variable environments. The vine robot is able to extend its length many thousands of percent its body length with an internal pressurized vessel, which can be manipulated to change the direction of the robot tip. In testing, the vine robot is able to navigate through small passages and can even autonomously navigate towards light source with the addition of a camera.

OptiCardio

Columbia University

Cardiac arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation, put millions of Americans at risk of heart failure or stroke. OptiCardia has a heart visualization system giving the surgeon the ability to assess the effectiveness of Radiofrequency ablation in real time. The technology can result in more effective RF ablation and improve patient outcomes after the procedure.

3rd Arm Inc

Stanford University

Articulated Wearables to enhance human productivity. 3rd Arm is prototyping a wearable, articulated robotic device that can be attached to a person at the hip or other location to augment human task productivity. This mechanical "third arm" has many uses such as assisting abled users (e.g. holding additional tools to enhance work), helping disabled users (e.g. providing support and lifting objects), and as a haptic interface for interaction with robotics systems and AR/VR experiences. 3rd Arm is incorporating the latest robotic technology with a newly designed 4-state brake mechanism in joints for advanced operations.

My Gene Counsel

Yale University

My Gene Counsel has created scalable, digital technology that pairs specific genetic test results with accurate, continuously updating information for clinicians and consumers. By helping patients and doctors become aware of the implications of genetic testing results, My Gene Counsel can help improve patients' lives and avoid unnecessary risky medical procedures.

Tharzen

University of Chicago

Relying on developers to do web app maintenance is expensive and time-consuming. Many content management system (CMS) operators like Wordpress claim you can 'do it yourself' visually, but after 20-50 plugins, visual interfaces fall short as many dependencies fail. Tharzen offers a visual editing interface for any live website under any CMS, even hard-coded and dynamic web apps.

Singularity

Harvard University

In the future, the power grid will be a large-scale network of distributed energy resources (DERs), each introducing random and rapid fluctuations in power supply, demand, voltage and frequency. These DERs provide tremendous opportunity for sustainability, efficiency, and power reliability. However, a major issue is how intelligent devices and independent producers can achieve maximum and reliable efficiency for the power network. Singularity's hardware-agnostic algorithmic platform can provide the intelligent control for the smart grid of the future.

MyophonX

Cornell University

Solutions for silent speech production lack innovation, cultural acceptability, and often involve invasive surgery. MyophonX is cutting-edge wearable technology for silent communication, with applications to stroke and laryngectomy patients as well as voice searching.

CardinalSim

Stanford University

CardinalSim utilizes information from CT scans to create a patient-specific virtual reconstruction of the surgical site for simulation.

BCAM (Breast Cancer Attractor Metagenes)

Columbia University

Approximately 250,000 invasive breast cancer cases were diagnosed in 2019. Currently, the most commonly used definitive way to diagnose breast cancer is through a biopsy. Dr. Anastassiou's team has recently discovered attractor metagene markers as strong prognostic features for breast cancer survival and derived the BCAM (Breast Cancer Attractor Metagenes) prognostic model. This biomarker allows for a single universal prognostic assay applicable to all breast cancer subtypes and stages.

Nous Imaging

Washington University in St. Louis

Patient motion is the biggest obstacle for collecting high quality brain MRIs faster. Sedation is often used in clinical settings to reduce head motion but is not appropriate for children, compromised adults, or research participants. Nous Imaging's first commercial product FIRMM is a medical imaging software suite that provides real-time motion monitoring during MRI scans. Visual feedback is provided to both the scan operator and patient. In addition, FIRMM is able to identify the ideal scan time for each person based on actual motion, which can further reduce total brain MRI scan time and associated costs.

Exotanium

Cornell University

Exotanium is a startup created by two professors and one graduated Ph.D. student from the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. Exotanium is developing a new cloud-native application container platform that improves performance, security, and cost for both public and private clouds. The technology is based on cutting-edge research and is patent-protected. Exotanium recently won a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is actively raising more investments. The company is located in Ithaca, NY.

Milli-Radar

Stanford University

Many of the tools needed to control sensors and devices remotely already exist: the Internet can send commands around the globe, with computers and smartphones issuing the commands. What is missing is a wireless controller cheap enough so that it can be installed anywhere. Milli-Radar is a scalable, radio frequency (RF) antenna architecture that employs low-loss interconnects to achieve large millimeter wave (MMW) arrays for communication and radar applications. While conventional interconnects for MMW arrays suffer from high transmission loss and limited bandwidth, Milli-Radar solves those problems by using low loss interconnects to attain efficient signal distribution. The Milli-Radar team is focused on building the entire perceptual stack for autonomous driving and is in search of a CEO with a background in the automotive industry.

CertiK

Yale University

Blockchain ecosystems are not as secure as originally thought. The CertiK platform is a formal verification framework for building fully trustworthy smart contacts and blockchain ecosystems. Different from the traditional testing approaches to detect bugs, the CertiK platform mathematically proves that blockchain ecosystems are bug-free. CertiK has developed modular verification techniques to decompose such an otherwise prohibitive proof task into smaller ones that can be automatically solved in a decentralized style.

FatesEDS

Stanford University

FatesEDS is developing a compact, sensitive X-ray differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging system that improves field of view, increases fringe visibility and shortens imaging times. This system surpasses the performance of 3-grating DPC systems used today with a single grating that is combined with a specialized X-ray source and detector. By eliminating the two expensive grating components, the overall size and potential cost of the system is reduced along with enabling a single-step image acquisition with a field-of-view of ~35 degrees and fringe contrast ~25%. FatesEDS is focused on developing a next-generation baggage inspection system to identify hazardous materials, with a potential medical imaging application. FatesEDS is seeking an experienced entrepreneur to help lead the commercialization of this system.

Cry Baby Analyzer

Brown University

Infants can be born with diseases, such as neonatal opioid addiction, but they cannot voice their discomfort directly to their parents or medical practitioners. In 2014, 32,000 babies were born with neonatal opioid addiction. Testing for neonatal opioid withdrawal is very easy through urine or meconium (a baby's first bowel movement.) This technology aims to provide a non-invasive diagnose of this disorder through use of frequency analysis. Furthermore, they also aim to use this device to diagnose other infant developmental disorders.

TigerStone

Princeton University

With an alarming rate of high profile cyber security breaches each year, individuals and organizations are actively seeking solutions that protect their privacy and keep their data secure. Unfortunately, the most secure options such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) on a server is still insecure due to user errors and management overhead is inherent in current models. TigerStone's Nimble Computing Infrastructure (NCI) achieves new levels of maintainability, security, and user experience for all systems by bringing the merits of virtualization to all computers.

bioProtonics

University of California, Santa Barbara

Many diseases can only be diagnosed properly by looking at sections of the tissue post-mortem or from invasive biopsies. Imaging of subtle textural aspects of tissue is not possible due to low resolution in magnetic resonance (MR) images. bioProtonics has developed a method to measure tissue texture using MR data without the need for rendered images. In many diagnostic workflows, the bioProtonics technique could replace biopsies. Such applications include neurodegenerative disease, liver disease, osteoporosis, cancer, lung disease, prostate disease.

AdjuDx

Yale University

Adjuvant therapeutics are therapies given after the initial or primary treatment of a disease or condition, for example, therapeutics given after a surgery to maximize its effectiveness. Pharma companies make diagnostics for the metastatic setting, to enrich the population that will benefit from the drug. However, the big prize for Pharma is the adjuvant setting, which sees at least double and up to 10 times more patients than the metastatic setting. Despite this, pharma companies rarely make diagnostics for the adjuvant setting. For example, in the immunotherapy space, 1 in 5 lose thyroid function and 1 in 100 die from the drug used to treat the condition during the course of treatment.

Powernet

Stanford University

Stanford researchers have developed an architecture and control scheme for the coordination of distributed energy resources (DER), such as solar and storage, to minimize operation cost, enhance network reliability, and provide DER aggregation. The availability of electric load and generation data in electric grids varies both spatially and temporally due to: the random nature of loads and renewable generation; distributed locations of the loads and DER; and communication delays. Stanford researchers have found that control schemes that utilize local information (within the firmware of the storage unit, or in a home automation appliance) and delayed information to a global controller (e.g., collected from smart meter readings) perform near the ideal, but unimplementable, theoretical limit of performance.

Surgical ai

Harvard University

Operating rooms are often not efficient and are costly to hospitals. Solutions to increasing efficiency neglect to monitor errors in real time which can be stopped and improve efficiency from the time of the incident. This technology pairs artificial intelligence with real time monitoring of operating room procedures to increase efficiency of hospital operating rooms.

Actualize Therapy

Northwestern University

Actualize Therapy is leveraging mobile technology to improve life for those with depression and anxiety. This tech-enabled service for depression and anxiety is generating improved patient engagement and care management. Actualize's research-backed mobile tools borrow from an eclectic array of in-person therapy techniques such as CBT and positive psychology. These tools are quick, lightweight, and designed with a patient's individual needs in mind. Actualize's NIH-funded field trial resulted in a 50% reduction for symptoms of anxiety and depression - results equivalent to in-person therapy. Actualize Therapy is actively searching for a CEO to lead business development and fundraising.

qPathology

Harvard University

Lung cancer is common and often deadly. Accurate diagnosis is key to forming an optimal treatment plan, but pathologists often disagree on diagnosis after visual inspection of patient pathology images. Dr Yu and colleagues have developed a machine-learning technique that processes lung images and makes an accurate and automatic diagnosis.

IPF-ML Diagnostics

Yale University

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a deadly chronic lung disease with median survival of 3 years and with a worse prognosis than lung cancer. 6 million people worldwide are affected - 200,000 in North America are affected with 45,000 dying each year. The progressive decline of lung function characterizing it is interspersed with unpredictable disease flares called acute exacerbations of IPF (AE-IPF) that accelerate lung function loss and increase morbidity and mortality. The annual incidence of AE is up to 20% with a mortality ranging from 35-90%, demonstrating the severity of IPF disease progression and the importance for active disease monitoring (ER visits and hospital stays can amount to >$11,500 per case). Current therapeutics are unable to predict how an individual patient will progress and whether they will respond to available interventions. The market size for biomarker chip detection of PIF is ~$3B, underscoring the need for a more robust treatment for PIF.

FindOA

University of Pennsylvania

Osteoporosis affects 50 million Americans and over 200M people worldwide. 50% of hip fracture sufferers lose ability to walk and 20% of suffers dye from it. Over 2M fractures and 300,000 hip fractures occur annually in the U.S. resulting in $20 billion and $12B in annual healthcare expenses, respectively. Currently, greater than 50% of the individuals with osteoporosis are not detected by bone density testing, the standard-of-care diagnostic test. This technology is a high-resolution MRI & CT analysis tool evaluating 3D bone structure and allowing for accurate assessment of (i) bone strength and health, (ii) osteoporosis development risk, and (iii) hip fracture risk. This imaging-based early diagnostic and prognostic for osteoporosis and hip fracture risk has data from over 1000 patients.

AirViz

Carnegie Mellon University

Airviz works with Fortune 500 companies who are typically struggling with air quality problems in safety, employee wellness, product quality control, and decreased manufacturing yield. Air quality sensing is a $240MM market, with a 14.3% CADR above $500 M by 2024. There is a global, growing need for affordable sensor networks in homes, office spaces, urban and rural communities to capture actionable air quality data and predictions. Airviz builds air quality sensors and sensor networks, including 24/7 pollution mapping and real-time alerts to help decrease regulatory fines, increase yield, improve safety metrics, and address employee wellness for low-turnover and high satisfaction. Many of the air quality sensors on the market now do not have IoT capability and require a safety engineer to walk around and spot check air pollution with expensive instruments. With our smart calibration techniques, managers can use automated air quality sensor networks that give smart, actionable information and help save money.

Prostate DHI

Washington University in St. Louis

Non-invasive, accurate diagnosis and monitoring of prostate cancer through diffusion histology imaging. The technique has been validated with patient samples, demonstrates >95% agreement with pathologist-identified tumor stages, and can distinguish protest cancer from prostatitis or benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Parallel Works

University of Chicago

Parallel Works is a web-based platform that simplifies and automates the complex workflow of parallel computing. They speed up simulation and analytics campaigns across industries by making parallel computers from hybrid clouds and clusters easier to use. Their platform is built on the Parsl and Swift parallel scripting technologies developed over the last decade by Argonne National Laboratory, and is designed to run simulation and analytics on the world's largest computing resources.

Vesselon

Columbia University

The vast majority, 95%, of drugs developed by companies to treat pancreatic cancer do not end up being approved. Vesselon's strategy for developing cancer therapies is not by finding new drugs, but by increasing the efficacy of existing approved drugs for cancer, starting with pancreatic cancer.

AI-MI SPECT

Yale University

Artificial Intelligent Medical Imaging: Safer, Faster, Cheaper Medical Imaging Enabled by AI and Deep Learning. The clinical challenges in radiology frequently highlighted are the large radiation doses, long imaging times, expensive hybrid imaging equipment, and expensive room shielding. AI-MI combined with SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) aims to provide equivalent diagnostic accuracy without CT, at lower doses, at lower cost, and faster - allowing for higher throughput through radiology.

NeuroProbe

Yale University

Neuro-ICUs are faced with frequent shortcomings in maintaining brain care. Access requires one large or multiple smaller access points and devices require multiple external interface devices & monitors that frequently face challenges in the synchronization, analysis, and interpretation of data. The NeuroProbe System is a portable multimodal implant (EEG, temperature, oxygen, pressure, blood flow) that offers equal or better sensitivity via a single point of access along with synchronized sensor data via a single output connection. NeuroProbe has completed FDA pre-submission and developed prototype NeuroProbe and NeuroMonitor devices, with a system prototype demonstration ongoing in Summer 2019.

Tendo Technologies

Princeton University

Tendo Technologies, founded in 2017, is a spin-off from the Marcus Hultmark research lab at Princeton developing a novel flow sensing/measurement technology. This unique technology achieves extreme sensitivity (for both gases and liquids) through the nanoscale conductive ribbons that will deflect when placed in flow. The nanoribbons are manufactured with standard semiconductor-based techniques, resulting in high scalability and low unit cost for the sensing chip. As a highly versatile technology (flow measurement is ubiquitous), Tendo envisions that their tech can be applied in many industries for various applications, when equipped with appropriate "wrappers" around it. For example, the Tendo chip plus communication package would be appropriate for IoT applications such as real time air measurement in HVAC ducts; alternatively, more sophisticated housing with control would bring benefits for flow metering and control during industry manufacturing processes.

OptoVibronex

Rutgers University

The current standard for distinguishing between benign and cancerous skin legions require an invasive skin biopsy followed by a waiting period for lab results for diagnosis. OptoVibronix is eliminating the need for invasive skin biopses to diagnose a skin legion as cancerous or benign. The technology scans the skin legion and results in a diagnosis in just 15 minutes. By avoiding skin biospy, it improves the patient experience and efficiency of diagnosis and reduces healthcare costs.