MIT-Northpond Program created to advance innovation in engineering and life sciences | MIT News

MIT-Northpond Program created to advance innovation in engineering and life sciences | MIT News

MIT University of Engineering and Northpond Ventures these days declared the start of the MIT-Northpond Program — Advancing Existence Science and Engineering Innovation. The 5-year engagement is funded by Northpond Labs, the study and improvement-concentrated affiliate of Northpond Ventures. The program aims to generate thoughts in the life sciences by connecting Northpond’s skilled venture funds investors with MIT’s scientific business people, advancing commercialization by near mentorship and collaboration.

Centered inside of the Office of Organic Engineering, the software will determine MIT scientists engaging in evidence-of-principle analysis assignments in the spots of diagnostics, R&D alternatives, platforms for therapeutic alternatives, biomanufacturing, and synthetic intelligence and program for remedy range, all with the objective of commercializing their suggestions.  

“This distinctive program was set up with the intent to few remarkable enhancements in engineering and biology with modern entrepreneurial and company alternatives. There is tremendous likely for the MIT-Northpond Application to affect human overall health by accelerating and commercializing visionary breakthroughs in engineering and lifestyle science,” claims Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT Faculty of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science.

The MIT-Northpond Application will help postdocs doing work at the intersection of engineering and everyday living science, in addition to providing mentorship for school and pupils. The program will also offer funding to the Faculty of Engineering for its get the job done in the life sciences. 

“We are honored to be a element of this incredible collaboration and to have the option to provide our college, postdoctoral fellows, and learners functioning at the intersection of engineering and biology, with the probability to push fundamental adjust and impression,” says Angela Belcher, head of the Division of Biological Engineering, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Organic Engineering and Resources Science, and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Investigate.

The MIT-Northpond Program will involve:

  • funding of up to five translational research jobs for every year, moving from evidence-of-principle to commercialization
     
  • assistance of two postdocs in the Department of Organic Engineering just about every 12 months via the Faculty of Engineering’s Postdoctoral Fellowship System for Excellence, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups, together with women, though two college mentors also acquire support and
     
  • discretionary guidance to the Faculty of Engineering for critical operate and advancements in the daily life sciences.

“We have a shared mission and eyesight to boost and progress science and engineering and to make a marked impact on humanity. We see ourselves as a aspect of an ecosystem with the likely to progress engineering, science, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” says Michael Rubin, founder and CEO of Northpond Ventures, who will also serve as a visiting scholar in the Division of Biological Engineering.

Ernest Fraenkel will serve as college guide for the MIT-Northpond Program. Fraenkel is a professor in the Division of Biological Engineering and a member of the Computer system Science and Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The system will also involve a joint steering committee, comprised of associates from both MIT and Northpond, the place Belcher and Rubin will provide as co-chairs.

“Through this plan, we can deliver transformational entrepreneurial and organization prospects to MIT’s unbelievable engineering and science talent,” says Sharon Kedar, co-founder and lover of Northpond Ventures. “Together, we will be ready to impact humanity.”