Lab Rats to Unicorns

Dr. Lishan Aklog 's journey to entrepreneurial and professional success was not an easy road. As a teenager Dr. Aklog fled political violence in Ethiopia, which led him to become especially active in philanthropic organizations later in life. Dr. Aklog is a member of the NY Executive Committee, the Africa Advisory Committee , and the Human Rights Watch serving on its Board of Directors. In additio...

In episode 013, Dr. Omer Inan shares insight on academia and entrepreneurship –– for example, how do they interact…and can a person pursue both?  Omer earned his B.S., M.D. and Ph. D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. During his studies, he worked at ALZA Corporation in the Drug Device Research and Development Group, then Countryman Associates, Inc. as the chief engi...

Dr. Derrell Porter is a physician-entrepreneur with years of experience in the business of medicine, and one of the few experts with dual capabilities in developing and commercializing rapidly evolving cell therapies. Before founding his first startup, Cellevolve, Dr. Porter was the Head of Commercial at Atara Bio, a leader in off-the-shelf T-cell immunotherapy. Dr. Porter has held roles of increa...

Kristen Holmes is the star of episode 11. She is the Vice President of Performance at Whoop , your personal digital fitness and health coach. She’s also a science and medical advisor to several companies and organizations including Liminal Collective , Arena Labs , Evolve and Levels . 2021 Hall Fame Inductee, 3x All American, 2 x Big 10 Athlete of the year at the University of Iowa competing in bo...

Episode 10 absolutely loves Lindy Fishburne. We are big on early-stage startup experts here at LRTU, so if John’s voice gets shaky, you just gotta know why: Lindy is the founder of Breakout Labs - a hugely innovative grant-making body operating as part of the Thiel Foundation - and managing partner at Breakout Ventures…like dang…she’s a person who needs only a sentence to impress. She is the execu...

Episode 009 is ambitious; by interviewing Barry Ticho , John has the opportunity to discuss and share a more comprehensive description of the relationship between entrepreneurial, R&D and clinical experience at both large pharma and emerging biotech companies.  Barry is the Chief Medical Officer at Stoke Therapeutics ––a company addressing the underlying cause of severe diseases by upregu...

Episode 008 dives into the life, career and personality of Dr. Charles Polsky: the Executive Chairman of Bolden Therapeutics, Inc and the CEO of William Harris Investors ; as well as a corporate board member of nearly a dozen companies and a member of the Investment Committee for the University of Chicago’s Innovation Fund. From Mathematics at Yale to Medicine at the University of Chicago, Charlie...

We've talked a lot about Chicago here at Lab Rats to Unicorns. e.007 is the time to really describe that setting–and dive into why Chicago is an exciting place to be for a life sciences startup company (or, say, a life sciences podcast lol). Leave it to Chicago's Deputy Mayor, Samir Mayekar, as well as World Business Chicago's President and CEO, Michael Fassnacht, to teach us about Chicago and its...

Episode 6 teaches us about Dr. Stacy Lindau (Founder), Rachel Kohler (CEO) and NowPow: a platform designed to “Engineer Self Care.”   Dr. Stacy Lindau is a practicing physician and tenured professor at the University of Chicago with esteem in the internation scientific research community – specifically for her published work on women’s and population health. Rachel brings over 30 years of bus...

This episode is all about Anna Lisa Somera – Co-founder and CEO of Rhaeos, a Northwestern University spin-out developing wearable flow monitoring devices. Anna Lisa is an experienced life science start up entrepreneur and executive, venture capitalist, NIH grant writing expert, technology transfer specialist and biomedical researcher specialized in early-stage, cutting edge technology businesses.

David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University), the Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Kellogg and the Faculty Director of the Zell Fellows Program.  During the pandemic, David and his colleague, Loran Nordgren, wrote The Human Element: a book centered around their original concep...

Lindsay Androski is the President and CEO of Roivant Social Ventures (RSV): a 501(c)(3) social impact organization started by leaders from Roivant Sciences. RSV takes a venture philanthropy approach to investing in and incubating promising health initiatives. Prior to her initiation into the life sciences industry, Lindsay utilitized her degrees from M.I.T. as a trial lawyer and an Assistant U.S....

Nathan Gianneschi is the Jacob & Rosaline Cohn Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science & Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and the Associate Director for the International Institute for Nanotechnology. Nathan is the co-founder of Grove Biopharma: a revolutionary platform biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of a new class of biot...

Through UChicago’s Polsky Center, Jennifer Fried started Explorer Surgical: a developer of software for surgical teams to use in the operating room; by improving communication, their tools/platform reduce disruptions and wasted disposables. In mid-October, in fact days after the recording of this interview, Explorer Surgical was aquired by Global Health Exchange. In this episode, under the guidanc...

Follow John Flavin as he describes Lab Rats to Unicorns–a show about building people and building companies in the life science industry.