Episodes

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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...

Manny Stockman is a Partner at Osage University Partners. OUP exclusively invests in startups spun out of university research. We talk about the investment thesis of Osage University Partners; technology readiness challenges; lessons learned from...

Debkishora Mitra and John Waldeisen are the co-founders of Lucira Health. Lucira Health, which was originally founded as Diassess, is the first company to get an FDA approval for at-home PCR based test for COVID. We talk about the story …

Nick Dorsey and Amanda Gold are partners at Cravath, Swaine and Moore, LLP. Cravath has been known as one of the premier law firms in the US for more than two centuries. We talk about a wide variety of topics …

Richard Wang, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of Cuberg, a startup building the world’s first aviation-certified lithium metal battery pack. Robert is also the CEO at Northvolt America, which acquired Cuberg in 2021. We talk about the current...

Vince Romanin, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Gradient. They are developing a new heat pump technology to address the impact that air conditioners impose on our climate. We talk about the problem with the current HVAC systems and …

Wesley Jackson, Ph..D., is the co-founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Valitor. Wes was the founding CEO and led the startup through its Series B financing where they raised over$30M to date. Valitor is a biotech startup that uses …

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III is the President Emeritus of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) who served as president from 1992 to 2022. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority...