Episodes

Mehdi Kargar, Ph.D., is the CEO and Cofounder of Maxterial. They arecommercializing an affordable metallic coating to protect surfaces against extreme environments and to reduce the use of hexavalent chrome, and cyanides, known to cause cancers. This is the story about how Maxterial cracked the code to replacing Hexavalent Chromium without sacrificing cost, speed, or performance, and the decade of near-deaths, grit, and serendipity it took to build a deep tech revolution.Maxterial received see...

Doug Crawford, Ph.D., is the founder of MBC BioLabs and also a Managing General Partner of Mission BioCapital. Doug’s goal is to help entrepreneurial scientists create successful startups. His dream is that every entrepreneurial scientist with a dream be given a chance. Since its founding, this program has helped launch 500 companies and helped raise over $20 billion in capital.Robert Blazej, Ph.D., is a Partner at Mission BioCapital and Director at MBC BioLabs. He is a passionate biotechnolog...

Jared O'Leary, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of SirenOpt, and Ali Mesbah, Ph.D. is his cofounder and also his former PhD advisor. Ali is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley.SirenOpt is a Berkeley spin-out that is solving one of manufacturing's biggest blind spots.Their PlasmaSens platform uses cold atmospheric plasma and AI to non-destructively inspect thin films and nanomaterials in real-time—catching defects and inconsistencies that traditional methods miss entirely. They...

Yogev Debbi and Prof Avi Schroeder (Technion Israel Institute of Technology), co-founded Mana bio along with Dr. Kira Radinsky and Roy Nevo. They are leveraging data, machine learning and high throughput screening to design novel Lipid NanoParticles for targeted extrahepatic delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics and vaccines.Lipid nanoparticles are microscopic fatty bubbles that deliver genetic medicines into your cells—think of them as the FedEx trucks of molecular biology. Remember the mRNA ...

Dana Foss and Ross Wilson are the cofounders of Editpep, a biotech startup focused on developing CRISPR-based therapeutics. They are using a proprietary peptide-based delivery platform that enables targeted delivery to specific cell types, particularly for hard-to-reach areas like the brain.While Dana Foss is the CEO, Ross Wilson is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and also the Director of Therapeutic Delivery at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the Univers...

Chandana Haque is the Executive Director of Altitude Lab, a healthcare startup accelerator building a community of diverse entrepreneurs in Utah. Altitude Lab was cofounded in 2020 by Chandana and Chris Gibson, the co-founder & CEO of Recursion in...

Monica Rosoff, the founder and CEO of LBBAL™ Alianza. Prior to launching Alianza, Monica was a partnering executive with roles of increasing seniority at Genentech, Gilead, Kite and Exelixis. Over the course of over two decades, she had the...

Zack Schildhorn is a venture Partner at venture firm Lux Capital. He played multiple key roles that helped the firm scale from less than $100M to more than $4B in assets under management. After witnessing thousands of pitches, he saw that even the...

Corey Goodman, Ph.D., is the managing partner of VenBio, a venture capital firm he cofounded in 2011. VenBio already has 7 FDA approved drugs on the market, saving and improving lives. Corey spent 25 years as Professor of Biology at Stanford...

Abhishek Tripathi, is the Director of Mission operations of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Abhi is also the Chair of the Air and Space track startups at Skydeck, which is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator...

Richard Lyons, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer, at the University of California, Berkeley. Rich is an economist and the former dean of the business school. Rich will become the next...

Shahram Seyedin-Noor is the founder and managing partner at Civilization Ventures. Shahram received a JD from Harvard and worked at Wilson Solsinis and Cooley before going into investment banking at firms like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. He...

Leo Polovets is the Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Leo focuses on enterprise software and technical products at Susa. About two years ago, He also started Humba Ventures, a fund that invests in deep tech and critical national sectors...

Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck, a startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. SkyDeck started as a mentoring space in 2012 and soon translated into one of the leading startup accelerators in the...

Paul Grand is the founder and CEO; Ayelet Marom is the Program Director for BioTools Innovator, which focuses specifically on biotools; and Jim West is the Associate Director, BioTools Innovator, who was previously the Co-Founder and CEO of, Clara...

Kenichi Nogami is the co-founder and CEO of Metcela, a clinical-stage biotechnology startup pioneering the research and development of fibroblast and stem cell-based therapy for chronic heart diseases that currently have limited therapeutic options. ...

Caleb Bell III, Ph.D., is a venture partner at Corundum Systems Biology and also the President of Corundum convergence institute. We talk about the founding story of Bell biosystems; how they were able to work at various labs around the country with...

Chaeyoung Shin was the Co-founder and CEO of NAMUH, a startup focused on developing yeast fermentation technologies to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). HMOs are crucial, fiber-equivalent macronutrients that are currently lacking in...

Jenn Gustetic is the Director of Early Stage Innovations and Partnerships at NASA. In this episode of Lab to startup, we will learn about various funding mechanisms that NASA provides to support innovation, primarily to support NASA space missions....

Ryan Caldbeck, is the COO of Dune, a powerful analytics platform for blockchain research. It can be used to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data on the Ethereum blockchain. Ryan was previously the founder, and CEO of CircleUp, a...

Vickie Kloeris is a food scientist with an out of this world career. She worked at NASA in space food systems for 34 years. She served as the NASA manager of the Shuttle first and then the International Space Station food systems. She and her teams...

Jay Keasling, the CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). He is also a Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and also the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.. He’s also a...

Donna Rainone and Mike Rainone are the founders of PCDworks. PCDworks is a technology development company that helped develop hardware for over 50 big companies in the oil and gas, transportation, healthcare and several other industries; and now...

Jo Varshney, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of VeriSIM Life, a startup developing disease-specific simulation software designed to replace animal drug testing by using artificial intelligence. We talk about translational gap in drug discovery, the...