How The RI Life Science Hub and Brown Engineering Collaborate

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The Rhode Island Life Science Hub is a new catalyst for innovation in New England. Today on the Angel Nest, we talk with Dr. Tejal Desai at the Brown University School of Engineering to see how these two institutions are collaborating to bring new ideas to market. Welcome back, I’m David Hemenway.

I’m a five-time founder and now an active angel investor, and in this series of episodes about the Rhode Island Life Science Hub, we’re exploring how they’re helping innovation get to market faster and more efficiently. We’ll get the investor take on their impact a little bit later, but right now we want to talk to Dr. Tejal Desai. She’s the Sorensen Family Dean at the Brown School of Engineering.

There, they encourage collaboration between engineering disciplines in fields like medicine, computer science, and the social sciences. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the Angel Nest, Dr. Desai. Thank you so much for joining us today.

It seems like there’s so much more emphasis now on startups in the area and bringing great ideas to market more quickly. What do you think has inspired all of that? Well, I’d actually say, you know, there is a long tradition of innovation, but you’re absolutely right in that the entrepreneurial ecosystem has accelerated. And, you know, I think as engineers, we are in a really important spot right now.

I mean, ultimately, we are interested in solutions to a number of pressing problems. And so there’s sort of a translational mindset embedded in our faculty. I came back to Brown about three years ago, having been in the Bay Area.

I’m excited about the potential to bring the solutions to those outside of Brown into our ecosystem and really help accelerate that pace of change. And it seems that one of the things that’s happened the last few years is the evolution of the public-private partnerships. Absolutely.

I mean, we are really invested in thinking about it’s not just the academic sector that needs to bring things out into the market, but to really partner with our local ecosystem as well as places both nationally and globally. I mean, the Rhode Island Life Science Hub is one of those examples where they are bringing together academic partners and industry partners as well as our local ecosystem to think about supporting and nurturing and really cultivating that entrepreneurial ecosystem. One of the things we’re excited about is the fact that we now have a place where our aspiring faculty entrepreneurs and innovators can see their ideas come to fruition and we have the right partners to do so.

And it’s really exciting, some of these additional resources that are being brought to bear. I know there’s some more lab space coming, right? Absolutely. I mean, there is the Ocean State Lab Incubator that’s really coming online.

And I think this is a perfect example of that public-private partnership, where you have the Rhode Island Life Science Hub, you have Brown University, you have a private company, Portal Innovations, right, that is really helping to bring in different companies. And that’s going to create, again, synergies that previously weren’t available for our community. And I love your interdisciplinary approach.

I think it makes so much sense. Tell us about some of the really exciting things that are happening at Brown. Yeah, so let me maybe just spend a moment to talk about engineering at Brown.

We are really in a unique school of engineering because we’re focused on interdisciplinary approaches and solutions. We don’t have conventional departments. And I think because of that, we have innovators who want to work across boundaries.

They want to think about innovative solutions, and they like to collaborate, whether that’s with others at Brown or outside of Brown. Examples of this really include areas such as health technologies, all the way to sustainable energy and autonomous sensing and types of materials and methodologies. But I’ll give you an example of this in a couple of our faculty.

So one is Professor Kamani Sasant. He’s our actually associate dean, senior associate dean for research, but also does innovative work in creating devices and technologies that can help in solving some of the challenges in human health. One of the areas that he’s been really well known in is developing a new type of pulse oximeter where he’s able to use his knowledge in optical engineering to create systems that are more accurate for all people and really being able to look at oxygenation levels, but also use it in all sorts of diagnostic settings.

With that knowledge, one of the things we just launched, and this is something that happened just a couple of weeks ago, is a new health innovation technology sandbox where we can bring together startups, government, end users, clinical partners to come together and say, what are the challenges facing health technology and how can we solve that? And so that’s something that Brown Engineering is doing under his leadership and with partners across our faculty group to really go after cutting-edge health technologies. It’s going to be hard to estimate how much time this will shave off of the traditional method to market, right? It just seems like it’s going to be an exponential benefit for everybody. I think you’re absolutely right.

I mean, I think one of the things that we’ve often seen is that you develop a technology potentially not with the end user in mind, and then there’s a whole bunch of regulatory and adoption challenges, whereas if you can bring both the clinical stakeholders and the patient stakeholders and also industry together and really map out the solution space together, you can both accelerate that development but also come up with the most innovative, cost-effective solutions. And so that’s something that we’re really excited about, these living labs that really bring people together, but also we’re bringing people who are expertise in electrical engineering or materials or AI all together with those that are in the biomedical and life sciences space. Yeah, and I think it’s so smart that the ecosystem is willing to bring people from outside and just make sure that it’s the right person doing the right job, right? That’s really the way to maximize efficiency and get things to market.

Absolutely. And I think the other thing is that we have a number of faculty who are excited to move solutions forward, but they just need a little bit of both expertise and support that might not be already in-house. And so having the Rhode Island Life Sciences Hub, having the incubators and accelerators at our disposal, and then having expertise, right? A lot of what Rhode Island Life Sciences Hub does is bring in the mentorship and bring in those that have done it before to help our innovators launch their companies and endeavors.

Just great. So what does the next year look like for the Rhode Island ecosystem, doctor? Any ideas? I think it’s an exciting time. As you know, we have a new building going up that is the life sciences, will be the life sciences laboratory.

And so that will have engineers, but it will have biomedical scientists and neuroscientists together co-located. We’re really working hand-in-hand with our partners in the School of Medicine, as well as the School of Public Health to accelerate solutions. But importantly, I’m excited about the prospect of having new companies and industry come into the local environment.

And I just recently saw an announcement of many new companies that are actually coming into the Rhode Island ecosystem that I think we will be great partners with in accelerating their approaches as well. That’s fabulous. Dr. Tejal Desai, you are the Sorenson Family Dean at the Brown University School of Engineering.

Thanks so much for spending some time with us, and we’ll be checking back in with you frequently. Wonderful. It’s been a pleasure, and I look forward to seeing everything we can accomplish together.

Now we want to get the investor perspective on what’s happening with the local ecosystem. David Uffer is a life science operator and investor with a history of supporting innovation in Rhode Island. He specializes in business development, crucial to every ecosystem, as well as M&A, otherwise known as the ultimate destination for investors, right? He’s also very active in licensing and partnering.

Welcome, David. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, David.

Let’s talk about the Rhode Island Life Science Hub and some of these other initiatives that are happening in the area. It seems like it could just potentially change the whole game. I’m a huge fan of what the governor has gotten behind in funding Rhode Island Life Science Hub.

The leadership there through Mark Turco is stellar. I have history with Mark from my previous corporate world at Covidian slash Medtronic. So he’s really driving to build what we call an ecosystem and bring this hub to fruition in that we can bring so many different companies.

We have so many local players in life sciences, and bringing them together is a true hub where it’s centrally located and you can access any one of those helpers, if you will. I call everybody a helper. You could be investing, but you’re helping the company move to that next stage where we have so many different constituents that advance technology in our ecosystem, and it does take all hands to build these.

Are there particular areas that you see ready for explosive growth? I see it across all areas. We look at from an investor standpoint, we look at ebbs and flows. Biotech was insanely hot for the last 8 to 10 years.

Last year was a little bit of a challenge, and we see that in Cambridge. They’re having difficulty with the financing of all the innovation. Right now, we’re seeing a rebound.

I follow the stats every quarter. We’re seeing a nice rebound in Medtech, which is my area of specialty. We were in the penalty box for a little bit, and a little bit less of the investment coming through.

But they ebb and flow. I think we do see, regardless, a very steady pace across healthcare and life sciences. Each of the sectors takes their hot year and a little bit of cold periods.

Some of these areas are so expensive to develop. It seems like the public-private partnerships are really key. For sure.

It all starts with research. You have somebody with a great concept, but you have to research. We don’t launch digital games that aren’t tested because these are important in affecting people’s lives and it’s healthcare.

We want to ensure that they go through the proper channels. But a lot of times, it’s base research to start. That’s where we get a lot of support from the academic institutions, from the public funding that we have in the form of grants and non-equity funding.

We have to have that to do some of that base research. For the investors, we do have a pretty good community. Everything from Angel, the family and friends, and Angel Networks that we have coming in on the pre-seed and the seed stage.

But that’s really not enough. We do rely a lot on some research funding. We do have good communities that sponsor that at each of the stages as you go along.

But it does take a long time. It takes a lot of money. We are a regulated industry, but it doesn’t happen overnight.

And talk about these academic institutions that we have right here in our own backyard. It’s kind of an unmatched powerhouse. It really is.

When you look at the concentration here and the capabilities that you have, whether it’s through the School of Pharmacy, Biomedical Engineering, the Bio Departments, and all of the research that goes on. We have medical schools. We have such a great concentration.

I say concentration because we’re not scattered. You don’t have to be two hours away. You have it right there within 15 minutes of each other.

And you can access these departments, these individuals, these leaders, even the students. I have a friend that started a company, and he went and took undergrad students that were working as interns to help do some of the engineering. And it’s a win-win.

Now, I know you’re involved in some companies that you’re bringing to Rhode Island, and Rhode Island Life Science Hub’s playing a role in that. Tell us about that, would you? I have the good fortune in my role to get to see between 600 to 800 companies a year. That’s what I need to do for my current role.

And then the ones that I have a great appreciation for, I’ll either take an advisory role or sometimes a formal board of directors role. One company that I was quite fond of, we just brought to Rhode Island actually through a grant through RILS. We had the ribbon cutting yesterday as part of Startup Week Rhode Island.

And they are now, while they’re still domiciled in Perth in their headquarters in Australia, they’re now a Rhode Island company, and they’ll be hiring out a lot of talent here to bring the technology commercial. The same thing with another company out of Ireland that I’m on the board of is applying for this grant. And I think it would be a wonderful company to bring to Rhode Island to expand their commercial presence, because it’s hard to do this from overseas where you have to go after the single largest healthcare market.

If that’s part of your commercial plan, they need to be located here, and why not Rhode Island has been our attitude. That’s fabulous. And we have now the support systems in Rhode Island to take care of these companies.

You’re right, David. It’s just not land here, take an office, and then throw a sales leader out there. We have a company that is working with contract developers, developing their technology from their core research and their initial engineering, and design for manufacturing.

And then we’ll go into early stage manufacturing, which we have right here in Providence. They’ll also be working with advisors to go through regulatory process where they’re not going to understand that from Australia, but people here that are expert in bringing companies through the FDA to get approval to then go launch the technology. That’s what they’re finding here right in Rhode Island.

That’s great. David Huffer, operator, life sciences investor, friend of the local ecosystem, and big booster of Rhode Island Life Science Hub. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, David. You can get contact information for today’s guests, and you can learn more about the Rhode Island Life Science Hub and connect with Dr. Mark Turco and the rest of the team at RILifeScience.com. You can also reach me at TheAngelNest.com, where I hope you’ll get in touch if you know of an interesting story or a company that we should be talking about. We produce The Angel Nest with help from Rob Higley and Mike Bognar at the controls of CDM Studios in the historic Art Deco Film Center building just west of Times Square in New York.

I’m David Hemingway. Thanks for listening. So long until next time.