Brandeis Innovation

Team: Deyaan Guha, Meng Yan, Jiahua Chen

PI: Isaac Krauss

Technical Lead: Kayla Cerri

Galectins are a family of 12 carbohydrate binding proteins with similar binding affinities to many lactose-based sugars. They are implicated in numerous biological diseases including fibrosis, cancers, vision impairment inflammation, diabetes, and related conditions making them a prime target for novel therapy development. Whereas traditional medicinal chemistry design, synthesis, and testing has been the predominant strategy for galectin inhibitor design, this drug development approach will use a directed evolution method that was developed in-house. Leveraging the mRNA display of glycopeptides, the team can design inhibitors with higher binding affinities and at least a 100-fold selectivity versus off-target galectins. The initial target will be galectin-1, which is implicated in liver, pancreatic, and pulmonary fibrosis, melanoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and lung, kidney, and bladder cancers.

Team: Sarah Baskin, Gerald Deng, Ivy Tran

PI: Liz Hedstrom

Technical Lead: Estheban Osorio

Nearly two million Americans were diagnosed with cancer in 2022, making it the country's second leading cause of death. Cancer is a disease caused by the aberrant replication of cells as a result of malfunctioning enzymes within the cell that eventually affect and recruit neighboring, healthy cells. Kinases are a well-studied group of enzymes associated with cancer-related illness and are involved in diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Dramatic shifts in kinase activity result in undesired, often harmful protein interactions. Here, we propose the development of a CaMKII kinase inhibitor as a potential cancer treatment. CaMKII kinase is an accepted cancer diagnostic marker with no current FDA-approved inhibitors available. This project aims to identify and validate specific CamKII inhibitor candidates for potential cancer therapy use.

Team: Zicheng Cai

PI: Margie Lachman

Technical Leads: Sara Motoyama, Bishal Baral

Nearly two million Americans were diagnosed with cancer in 2022, making it the country's second leading cause of death. Cancer is a disease caused by the aberrant replication of cells as a result of malfunctioning enzymes within the cell that eventually affect and recruit neighboring, healthy cells. Kinases are a well-studied group of enzymes associated with cancer-related illness and are involved in diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Dramatic shifts in kinase activity result in undesired, often harmful protein interactions. Here, we propose the development of a CaMKII kinase inhibitor as a potential cancer treatment. CaMKII kinase is an accepted cancer diagnostic marker with no current FDA-approved inhibitors available. This project aims to identify and validate specific CamKII inhibitor candidates for potential cancer therapy use.One in 9 Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). As a result of emerging symptoms being mistaken for mental health or sleep disorders, AD is frequently misdiagnosed. Sadly, treatment is less successful when a diagnosis is delayed. Due to the delay between noticeable changes in brain health and the onset of memory loss symptoms, recent advances in AD research are investigating the viability of a detection method at the preclinical stage to allow for early diagnosis and therefore treatments to slow or stop the disease. The importance of cognitive assessments in detecting early indicators of cognitive decline and AD is becoming more widely acknowledged.

The Stop and Go Switch Task (SGST), created by Dr. Lachman, uses reaction time in trials requiring attention switching and inhibitory control to evaluate executive function. It is the only test of its kind that is conducted over the phone. The goal is to develop a platform that automates this test to make it more adaptable. This tool will ultimately serve as a catalyst for research in cognitive aging and develop a diagnostic solution to assess AD risk, leading to early interventions and improved treatment efficacy.

Team: Alena Lohkmanenko, Divam Gupta

PI: Michael Marr

Technical Lead: Will Dahl

Synthetic single-domain antibodies function as an important weapon against infections and diseases. Currently, the production and screening of synthetic, single-domain antibody libraries often rely on animals, phage display or yeast-based platforms. Traditionally, these reagents are sourced from biological sources by injecting antigens into camelid (Alpaca) species and then harvesting the antibodies. All the current methodologies have biochemical and genetic limitations. This team seeks to develop a platform for synthetic single domain antibody production based on expression and selection in bacterial systems. Use of this approach is faster and more robust than existing approaches and is adoptable by any user that has experience in basic molecular biology.

Team: RJ Mita, Fabian Guirales, Melina Perez Torres

PI: Maria-Eirini Pandelia

Technical Lead: Trent Quist

Viral polyproteins contain embedded proteases that act as molecular scissors to release the mature non-structural proteins (NSPs) that sustain the replication and transcription of the viral genome. Therefore, these proteases have attracted attention as ideal antiviral targets at the early onset of infection. The role of these proteases is not restricted to the cleavage of viral polyproteins, but also to modulate activities that intercept the function of host proteins, ultimately derailing the host immune defense. Although approaches exist for inhibiting the catalytic domain of various viral proteases, current methods are of variable efficacy and can easily lead to the rise of resistance mutations. Furthermore, the exact molecular mechanism by which these inhibitors halt protein function is often sparsely understood. This project aims to use metallofactors and their effect on protease activities, allowing for therapeutic approaches with general applicability to develop antiviral drugs.

Team: Kapil Naidu, Nneamaka Jennifer Omo, Zijie Wang

PI: Grace Han

Technical Lead: Subhayan Chakraborty

Sustainable energy solutions and alternatives are becoming increasingly critical as the realities of climate change affect everyday life. This project proposes to leverage the sun as a renewable resource by using novel, photo-active materials to absorb sunlight and convert it into stored and usable heat energy: Molecular Solar Thermal Energy Storage (MOST). Our material sets a new standard in photoswitching organic materials due to its ability to change colors and even transparent when exposed to sunlight. Using MOST, one could coat everyday objects such as windows, creating not only aesthetic, customizing designs but also an energy-efficient method to store solar energy, convert it to heat, and emit it in absence of sunlight. This proposal aims to use MOST to facilitate efficient capture, storage, and release of solar energy: envision a color-changing window coating for both residential and commercial applications.

Team: Jimmy Liu, Tina Liu, Mariama Fatajo

PI: Sue Birren

Technical Lead: Josh Harrison

World-wide, cases of hypertension have increased from 594 million to 1.13 billion between 1975 and 2015, with 20% of cases being resistant to current therapies. This defines a major health crisis since uncontrolled blood pressure dramatically increases the risk for stroke, heart attack, heart failure, and even death. Heightened sympathetic drive, defined as overactivity of the sympathetic neurons that directly communicate with peripheral organs, precedes and drives the development of hypertension. Current drug treatments lower blood pressure by targeting a variety of specific pathways in organs downstream of these neurons. These treatments successfully lower blood pressure in 80% of the population; however, the remaining 20% is drug-resistant with no effective drugs to lower their blood pressure. This project proposes a new therapeutic product (for those 20% population) that inhibits the activity of the sympathetic neurons driving hypertension allowing for the treatment of drug-resistant hypertension.

Team: Tong Lin, Bhavya V. Kondamuri, Yaxuan Wen, Victoria Melbourne

PI: Jennifer Gutsell

Mood disorders and their treatments have been widely researched using neurophysiological methods such as (electroencephalography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). However, laboratory contexts do not reproduce everyday experiences. Laboratory research is also limited in sample diversity. For example, it is hard to recruit lower-income homebound older adults to the laboratories.

Using neural signals from mobile EEG in combination with machine learning (such as EEG-Based Emotion Classification) to assess emotions can provide reliable data on mood and mood dysregulation, opening the way to effective remote therapy for mood disorders. This invention aims to implement a multisensory system in a mobile health care app that assesses and tracks users’ emotion regulation ability.

Team: Michael Stehnach, Dante Sasso, Yichen Ma

PI: Seth Fraden

The present invention is an inexpensive, x-ray transparent microfluidic chip for protein crystallization which has applications in drug development and pharmaceutical engineering. This technology was further explored for other applications where its unique features can be more useful than the currently available solutions. Towards this, the team explored a water quality testing application. The team conducted interviews with the professionals involved in the town water departments who need to monitor water quality periodically. The team found that the current method of collecting water samples across the town/city and testing them in a central place is a cumbersome process and the current device can be developed towards this application in order to provide real-time, low-cost and more efficient water testing ability to customers.

Team: Yousuf Khan

PIs: Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, Pito Salas

Teachers are perennially looking for ways to engage better with their students. We try different pedagogies learned by experimentation and from colleagues. But it’s hard to know what is working and not working. With online learning, this concern takes on a new dimension. There are new opportunities for distraction, and it is harder for teachers to read the room. Engagement is critical because it affects learning success, student retention and completion, and the satisfaction of students (and alums). Better measurement and analysis of engagement can provide early-warnings to advisors, help with student retention, and improve the quality of online courses. Our technology offers a new level of reliable, objective, and detailed information about student engagement and participation in online synchronous courses. This information helps teachers engage students more equitably and effectively, and gives students actionable feedback on their performance.

Team: Emily Stadnicki, Khaing Hnin Hnin Oo, Ci Song

PI: Niels Bradshaw

p38 MAP Kinase regulates inflammation and is a major target for drug development for conditions including autoimmune diseases, myocardial ischemia, and cancer. Existing inhibitors of p38 have failed clinically because of on-target toxicity, indicating that tissue- and process-specific p38 inhibitors are needed. Previous efforts have focused on identifying inhibitors that are specific to particular downstream targets of p38 or particular upstream activating mechanisms. Here, we take an alternative approach, leveraging the native inactivation mechanism of p38 by protein phosphatases. This project exploits synergy between pharmacological p38 inhibition and inactivation by tissue- or condition-specific phosphatases to identify beneficial p38 inhibitors to potentially treat a myriad of diseases.

Team: Manny Glinsky, Omer Barash, Viraj Gandhi

PI: Paul Garrity

Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a powerful, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly strategy for controlling and even eradicating invasive species, crop pests, and vectors of disease. In SIT, sterile males are released into the environment to seek out and mate with wild females of the same species. A major bottleneck in implementing SIT is the difficulty of generating large numbers of sterile males (currently done using the irradiation method) that are otherwise competitive for mating. Genetic engineering can specifically inactivate genes required for fertility, leaving animals otherwise healthy and competitive for mating. However, identifying and propagating mutant strains at scale remains challenging, particularly for sterile phenotypes. To address this limitation, this project is a simple generalizable strategy to create and identify sterile individuals at scale. The lab has already successfully created identifiable sterile male and female individuals (among fruit flies and mosquitos) capable of inducing mating refractoriness in wild counterparts and plans to develop the tool further.

Team: Mingrui Qi, Scarlett Ren, Tianyu Gao

PIs: Grace Han, Xiang Li (graduate student)

According to a 2007 World Health Organization (WHO) report, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water supply; 88% of 4 billion annual cases of diarrheal disease are attributed to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene, while 1.8 million people die from diarrheal disease each year. In addition, treatment of oil spills and organic solvent pollution is an important issue for environmental science and technology.

This project is a wastewater treatment device that can complement the conventional pollutant adsorption methods for industrial and household applications by using state-of-the-art nanoporous materials that are capable of adsorbing organic pollutants and releasing them upon light irradiation. It makes wastewater treatment easier, more flexible, and more cost-effective.

Team: Nathan Wong, Post-Doctoral Student, Biochemistry | Liam Flynn, Undergraduate, Chemistry | Frank Asamoah, Brandeis International Business School, MBA | Aliyu Alghali, Undergraduate, Chemistry | Alena Thotam, Undergraduate, Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Hampton University

PI: Prof. Thomas Pochapsky

Cancer Fighters+ is an ambitious group of researchers, business strategists, and students of medicine working together to address unmet needs in the treatment of cancers such as breast cancer and prostate cancer! Their focus is to identify clinically significant Cytochromes P450 that technology developed in the Pochapsky laboratory can target, and then bring this impressive new tool to industry partners to enable its development into a novel therapeutic. They hope to bring selective, effective treatments to market that minimize side effects for patients, leading to simplified care and increased quality of life!

Team: Shayna Mazel, PhD Candidate, Heller | Cierra Matthews, Undergraduate, Sports Sciences and Wellbeing, Hampton University | Sonam Deki, Heller MA student (SID with a concentration in gender studies) | Manny Glinsky, Undergraduate, Neuroscience and Philosophy

Professor Kenneth C. Hayes is the main inventor of palm fruit juice (PFJ) from Brandeis & has held a patent outlining PFJ's prevention of diabetes and related metabolic imbalances since 2016. PFJ is a cost-effective source for dietary phenolics which are known to delay or prevent the onset of serious cardiovascular and metabolic diseases through their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. PFJ is generated as the water-soluble byproduct in the palm oil production process & can be used as a functional ingredient into foods for humans, pets and farm animals. It can also be further concentrated and delivered in pill, powder, gel or liquid formulations.

Team: Riste Lazarov, Teamlift Intern | Meri Ushitkova, Teamlift Intern | Peizhao Li, PhD Candidate, Computer Science | Jingnu An, Masters Candidate, Computer Science | Yizheng (Darren) Deng, Brandeis International Business School, MSF

TeamLift is building the missing infrastructure for the skills economy through the first skills wallet. The skills wallet is a validated representation of a user’s skills and abilities on the blockchain. TeamLift has built superior human-centric AI that turns passive unstructured data from meetings, emails, productivity tools into real-time validated skills. Instead of relying on self-reported experience or skill assessments, the skills wallet serves as a ledger of what people have actually done. TeamLift’s tech is disrupting a process that is costly and highly manual and simply has no space in the dynamic post-covid work environment.

Team: Michael Sennett, PhD Candidate, Biochemistry and Biophysics | Roshni Ray, Undergraduate, Neuroscience | Lah Soukkaseum, Heller, MA, Sustainable International Development | Guilherme Gatti, Postdoc, Biology

NextZyme is a sustainable biotechnology company that upcycles single-use plastics into new plastic material. The PET, polyurethane, and polyamide plastics industry is expected to grow 10% from a $29 billion dollar industry to $32 billion dollar industry in 2025, and yet the production of a key starting material, benzene, has declined by half in the past 20 years. We can meet this market demand by giving single-use plastics a second life by engineering proteins to efficiently degrade polymers into their pure monomeric form and then upcycle those monomers into new polymer materials.

Team: Adrianna Shy, Alexandra Gershman, Rachel Jin, Bundie Kabanze

PI: Prof. Bing Xu

iPSCs can be differentiated into different cell types, having enormous potential for cell therapy, but the risk of tumor formation from undifferentiated cells (cells that stay the same) remains a major obstacle. This project will develop a molecular method to eliminate undifferentiated iPSCs.

Team: Xiwen Zang, Andrew Hirsh, Chieh-Ju Kuo

PI: Dr. Christopher Doona

There is a critical need for self-decontaminating, self-deodorizing, self-disinfecting, and/or self-cleaning surfaces, particularly for textiles used in individual protective garments, especially so during the current global pandemic.

This invention uses a novel chemical method to functionalize various surfaces with a stimuli-responsive hydrogel polymer that responds to external stimuli by taking up, storing, and controllably releasing gaseous or aqueous chlorine dioxide (ClO2) for the purposes of inactivating harmful microorganisms, neutralizing odors, and eliminating pathogenic virus.

Team: Audri Bhowmick, Skye Li, Ayushi Bhanushali, Kunal Deore, Nurudeen Lamidi

PI: Associate Prof. Olga Papaemmanouil

OptMark is a toolkit that quantifies the quality of a query optimizer, independently of any other component of the database management system. This toolkit is able to accomplish this by two ways: first, by decoupling the quality of an optimizer from the quality of its underlying execution engine; and second, by evaluating independently both the effectiveness of an optimizer and its efficacy. 

OptMark’s approach for evaluating the effectiveness of an optimizer involves reporting the three effectiveness metrics absolute performance factor, relative performance factor, and optimality frequency. OptMark is able to report the relative and absolute performance factor of a given profiling query by generating and executing a sample of plans compared with the optimizer chosen plans.

Team: Vernon Clarke, Alex Park, Shai Dinnar, Bibi Najma, Zahra Zarei

PI: Associate Prof. Suzanne Paradis

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects 3.4 million Americans with an associated direct cost of to the US of $28 billion per year. Underlying seizures are due to local imbalances between excitatory and inhibitory connections within neuronal circuits causing abnormal hyperexcitability within specific areas of the brain. This novel therapeutic intervention involves resetting such imbalances.

Team: Yavuz Ceylan

PI: Assistant Prof. Rebecca Gieseking

Hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel that can reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions for a sustainable future. However, most hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels because it is difficult and energy-intensive to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. State-of-the-art platinum catalysts are expensive and can be poisoned by contaminants. This project promises to harness solar energy, efficiently producing hydrogen from water at a lower cost by reducing the amount of expensive metal required.

Team: Christopher Doona, Florence Feeherry, Edward Ross, Kenneth Kustin, Frida Petersen Albert, Maneesh Ramanadham, Kelly Zheng

This invention is a MATLAB based food safety management tool that utilizes a mathematical predictive model for microbiology evaluation of microorganisms. The technology will be particularly beneficial for food shelf life safety analysis within a food supply chain: supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and retailer such as supermarkets.

Team: Dan Perlman, Sining Sun, Jiujun Zhang, Kanjun Li, Keren Sun

Probiotics have become a major factor in the choice of foods by health-conscious consumers and provide a number of benefits. This invention enables cheaper and faster manufacturing of low water activity fat-containing probiotic spreads and butters made from nuts, seeds and beans, with long-term survival of probiotic particles in the butter and extended shelf life.

The technology introduces a manufacturing method for health butters and spreads made from blending anhydrous probiotic bacteria slurries in vegetable oil prior to crystallization of the structuring fat. No cold storage will be required to maintain probiotic bacterial viability over 12-month, which benefits packaging and transportation.

Team: Dan Perlman

Team: Shantanu Jadhav, Jacob Olson, John Bladon, Xin Yao Lin, Faye Raymond

Systems neuroscientists strive to understand the brain. The field often records rodents foraging for rewards to learn about learning, memory, and addiction. Currently, behavioral tracks are developed individually by graduate students inexperienced in mechanical and electrical engineering. This practice costs time, money, and limits experiments. The AdaptaMaze system for behavioral rodent experiments is customizable, adaptable, and scalable. The solution allows scientists to complete better experiments faster, advancing our understanding of the brain.

Team: Arnold Kamis, Mahesh Neralkar, Chris Minkwon Choi, Yonah Shafner

Drug development is a complicated and time-intensive and money-intensive process, with the timeline from when a potential candidate is discovered to when it is brought to market, can be as long as 12 years. There have been many computational and machine learning approaches for drug discovery with great success. Our goal is to use the parsing of PubMed abstracts using Natural Language Processing methods to determine drug repurposing candidates given a search term. The first step is to find key features or words that can help us determine if a compound or a drug is a candidate or not. We will do that using known repurposed drugs and then test on novel drugs.

Team: Joanne Nicholson, Kush Singh, Wentao Li, Bertha Asare

WorkingWell (WW) is a research-based, feasibility-tested mobile app to help people with mental illness succeed at and sustain employment. WW users set and achieve goals, establish routines, learn to get along with others, and develop coping skills contributing to workplace success and tenure. WW fills the gap between what we know about mental illness and employment and what we do about it, to enhance individual outcomes and reduce employer/employee assistance, state agency and provider costs.

Team: Bing Xu, Quixin Zhang, Christian Gochez, Levi Goldfarb

A hydrogel—as the name suggests—is a gel that consists of over 90% water. Although mixtures with such a high concentration of water are usually liquids, certain solutes are able to cross-link with enough tensile integrity to form an internal mesh, allowing water to take on a 3-dimensional, semi-solid structure. These solutes vary, but Dr. Xu’s lab combines short peptides with small bioactive molecules that then self-assemble into what is essentially an interlaced peptide web, able to retain a significant amount of water within a few seconds. This hydrogel exhibits distinct properties such as instant formation, biocompatibility, and oxygen-permeability, which render it great potential in the emergency medical industry.

Team: Daniel Acker (Brandeis M.S. ‘14, Ph.D. ‘18), Domenico Bullara (Ph.D), Madhura Shringare (MBA,Brandeis IBS)

Enoch plans to use artificial intelligence to identify high-quality drug formulations for degenerative disease. Their therapeutics will buffer terminally differentiated cells and prevent their entry into degenerative programs. Their machine learning models will learn general representations of the regulatory networks governing mammalian cells. Enoch Therapeutics will incorporate causal relationships into their models using novel algorithms as well as data from single cell sequencing and perturbation experiments in naturally aging animals and cell lines. Their use of natural aging as a disease model will permit rapid and powerful hit validation by translating across animal models. Their causal machine learning models and adaptable biological model systems will provide high-confidence therapeutic predictions for a range of degenerative diseases.

Team: Gavin Shen (Brandeis BS ’19), Mah Ebrahimi (PhD Candidate, International Economics and Finance), Xinyue Liu (Chemistry PhD candidate)

SeniorTells aims to elevate the college application experience for international students. By moving the offline services into the online world, SeniorTells provides access to the originally inaccessible resources, which offers equal opportunities for international students. Specifically, they would like to help high school students have a deeper understanding of universities and make better decisions by building personal connections with current college students. Currently, SeniorTells supports video chat, live streaming, and content sharing. Users can easily schedule a video chat or online campus tour with their college fellows. Meanwhile, registered users will have easy access to request a one-on-one mentorship with other comprehensive services.

Team: Grace Han (PhD, Principal Investigator), Mihael Gerkman (PhD candidate, Brandeis University), Timothy Wiggin (PhD, Neuroscience), Leiming Tian (Brandeis PhD’18), Kundan Kumar Sharma (MBA student, Brandeis International Business School)

Heat-Storage Materials develops green technology to improve startup reliability and prevent engine damage in vehicles. In areas where temperatures often drop below ‒20 °C (‒4 °F), such as the northern U.S. and Canada, cars have trouble starting. At temperatures below 0 °C, oil becomes thicker and denser than usual and increases friction, wearing down the engine parts and in extreme cases, preventing the engine from starting. To combat this issue, the lab has developed a material that can capture waste heat from a running engine, store it, and release it when exposed to LED lights, which can thereby act as an instant on-demand engine oil heater. Integrating this material into an oil pan provides a facile on-demand method for heating oil. This device will give customers a convenient, reliable, durable, and reusable way to improve engine longevity and start-up during the winter months.

Team: Gabe Bronk (Brandeis BS ’11, PhD’18), Alicia Duce (High school senior, Waltham High School), Ariel Xie (MA student, Brandeis International Business School)

Science teachers are constantly looking for new ways to engage their students. Reach Into Research will create videos and relevant activities for use in high school classrooms. While current science videos go into depth, they are not engaging or are engaging but do not clearly explain concepts. Their videos will teach challenging content while also being very funny. Aligned with the national science curriculum standards, the videos and activities will easily fit into any teacher’s lessons. Additionally, students will become interested when learning information that is useful in their daily lives — the videos will tie in health, wellness, environmental protection, and other information that allows students to make informed decisions. Activities will involve experiments, computer modeling, and data-analysis projects based on cutting-edge science research. This gives students the opportunity to be the scientists and motivates them to pursue STEM careers. Moreover, students’ participation in research is by far the best way to learn the scientific method, which is the most important concept in science, yet the traditional curriculum teaches it ineffectively. It is critical that students understand how scientific discoveries are made so that they believe scientific findings and so that they know how to determine whether something is true.

Team: Richard A. Roy (PhD’18, Biochemistry), Jacqueline L. Naffin, PhD (Brandeis Research Associate), Mengchun Li (MBA Student, Finance, IBS), Víctor Manuel Suárez (MS/MBA Student, Biology and Healthcare Management, Heller/GSAS)

Stryx Biotech provides fast, accurate, continuous monitoring of essential blood biomarkers for health care and health optimization. A biomarker or biological marker is a measurable indicator of a state of health. Blood biomarkers are commonly used for the monitoring and treatment of a variety of conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, stress, and organ damage. Their device allows the wearer to quickly gain and continuously accumulate rich, detailed analyses of their blood, providing vital information to make insightful decisions about their health on a daily – or even hourly – basis.

Team: Diego Placido (Alumnus, Psychology, Neuroscience, and Computer Science), Samantha Malmberg (Graduate Student, Neuroscience), Xiaotong Liu (Graduate Student, IBS), Francis Hwang (Graduate Student, Heller)

Effy is an effective research-based service that assesses cognitive performance and provides immersive and interactive Cognitive Enrichment exercises through Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Their approach focuses primarily on components of Visual Attention and Executive Functions - necessary for overall development, including emotional and behavioral regulation. The overarching goal is to make these protective and compensatory benefits accessible to all communities, irrespective of socioeconomic status.

Team: Clemens Noelke (Research Director, ICYFP, Heller), Huiyan Zhang (BS Student, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Economics), R Matthews (BS/ BA Student, Computer Science and African & Afro-American Studies)

Diversitydatakids is a comprehensive information system to monitor the state of wellbeing, diversity, opportunity and equity for U.S. children. Despite increasing child diversity, persistent inequities, and recognition of equity as a policy goal, policymakers and practitioners must currently piece together limited information from disparate and fragmented sources to document equitable progress and policy gaps. To help fill this gap, diversitydatakids.org offers the first comprehensive, equity-focused information system to monitor progress towards improved wellbeing for children of all racial/ethnic groups through the creation and dissemination of unique indicators and analysis of: 1) the state of wellbeing, diversity, opportunity and equity of children in the U.S., and 2) the availability, capacity and research evidence supporting the effectiveness of public policies and programs to equitably serve children of all racial and ethnic groups and reduce disparities among them.

Team: Olivia Hoy (BS Student, Biology), Ryan Xu (BS Student, Applied Mathematics and Neuroscience)

iRemember is an app that helps people with memory problems caused by conditions such as dementia and TBI to remember things in their daily lives. Features include reminders to take medication, medical appointments, daily organizers, calendars, and other features that make their lives easier. The color scheme for the app is dementia-friendly and it includes visual and audio reminders for patients with sensory impairments. A confirmation system for medications and reminders allows family members and medical professionals to ensure patients have taken the correct medications and are following their daily schedules.

Team: Dr. Alexandra Ratzlaff (Faculty, Department of Classical Studies), Yu Lu (MBA’17), Kun Qiu (MS Student, Business Analytics)

Arca is an open-access online platform where projects can upload not only their results such as 3D models and lidar surveys but also instructional tutorials explaining the process used to create these products (models etc.) and detailed information on what equipment or software was utilized. This platform or open-source receptacle is free for users to see results as a useful learning tool for the general public and students but for a fee archaeological projects and institutions/universities could have further access to the tutorials and other more detailed information.

Team: Cherubin Manokaran (BS Student, Neuroscience and Computer Science), Ana Ward (MS/MBA Student, Biotech and Healthcare Management)

Transcriptional Enhancer Prediction (TEP) is a platform for predicting highly specific c-Myc binding partners and would support the identification of new targets for cancer research. c-Myc (hereafter Myc) is amplified in nearly all cancers. Interestingly, Myc binding sites are conserved within but not always across tissue types because Myc begins to bind at low-affinity, variable e-boxes. Integrating histone methylation and Myc occupancy data for several cancer cell types on this platform reveals tissue-specific interactions between Myc and potential binding partners and enhancers. Therefore, this platform identifies novel transcriptional targets that are relevant to cancer cell survival and proposes other ways of targeting Myc for cancer therapy such as exploiting tissue-specific protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. Additionally, it facilitates the prediction of highly specific binding partners and enhancers of Myc and other master transcriptional regulators in other contexts, such as drug resistance.

Team: David Waterman (Research assistant), Brenda Lemos (Researcher), Shen Wang (PhD student, neuroscience),Yi Jin (PhD student, Biochemistry and Biophysics)

More plastic has been manufactured in the last 10 years than all of the last century. This overplastification has had detrimental effects in our planet. Science—specifically laboratory work - is partly to blame. Much of the lab-grade plastics could not be recycled traditionally. Until now: Brenda Lemos and her team are working on a project to recycle America’s 6 Million tons of plastic lab waste.

There are 20,500 research institutions world-wide that produce approximately 6 million tons of plastic waste per year – the equivalent weight of ~65 cruise ships. Of this 6 million tons, >85% ends up in landfills where it slowly degrades over centuries. GreenLabs will tackle this problem by collecting and recycling plastic lab waste and reintroducing it back into an $80 billion market as raw material. With over 10,000 research labs in the country, and over 300 in the greater Boston area, GreenLabs will both improve our planet and profit from an untapped market.

Team: Tatevik Sarkissian (PHD student), Zachary Knecht ( Graduate, Neuroscience)

Our product is a 3-D printed arena in which to assess Drosophila melanogaster behavior. It will allow a wide variety of analyses, including control of specific neural circuits in awake, behaving animals via light (optogenetics). The arena will sit atop an LED bank inside an enclosed camera housing to allow visualization via infrared light, and optogenetic control of behavior.

The product will be marketed to professional researchers, for whom custom printed arenas can be matched to particular needs at little cost from the flexibility of 3-D printing technology. It will also be marketed towards teaching labs, K-12 school science programs, and even for individuals, for which it will serve demonstration purposes of the principles underlying neural circuits and behavior, promoting STEM education. In this case, arenas and particular animals will be provided as a kit, allowing demonstrations of particular behaviors with reference to the underlying, cutting edge neuroscience research. In short, our product is poised to broach a largely untapped market existing in the space between the needs of educators, amateur and professional scientists, for whom a diverse set of needs is met by our flexible, modular platform.

Team: Vivekanand Pandey Vimal (TRISH Postdoctoral), David Hampton (Graduate), Pooja Chandrakar (Graduate, Physics), Zixiao Chen (Graduate, Pure Mathematics)

Learn Through Technology (LTT) believes that inquiry-based learning is the key to spark high schoolers interests in STEM. We are developing a curriculum to pair high schoolers with PhD students to do hands-on research projects. We will be mediating these interactions and providing the basic experimental research modules which includes technical devices/materials along with background and functional information on the experimental setup. The aim is for the high schoolers to build a portfolio with a scientific project that helps them stand out as doing graduate level science when applying to college.

Team: Reazur Rahman (PhD, computational bioIogy), Weijin Xu (PhD student, Molecular and Cell Biology)

HyperTRIBE technology uses a genetic technique to identify RNA targets of a queried RNA-binding protein (RBP) in a cell-specific manner. HyperTRIBE is capable of identifying RBP targets in as little as 150 cells and is capable of returning a ranked target list for a queried RBP. HyperTRIBE assay can be conducted both in vivo and in vitro and avoids expensive and time-consuming biochemical techniques required for competitors such as CLIP and RIP.

Team: Marshall Chang (MBA’16, IBS), Zhengyang Zhou (MS Student, Computer Science), Joyce Yu (MA and BA ’17, IBS)

The field of A.I. has been booming for the past few years, with most significantly the advance of Deep Reinforcement Learning, which first solved the classic Atari games, then conquered the crown of all A.I. tasks, Go, by beating human Go world champion in a landslide. The team is applying a Deep Learning system to trading financial markets, which to traders, are nothing but another game to solve. This is a young field where everyday new research pushes the field forward. Their innovation focuses on adapting and evolving the best current learning algorithm to the task of trading.

Team: Hongjian He (PhD Student,Chemistry), Xiaoyi Chen (MS Student, Chemistry)

The Enzymatic Cleavage of Branched Peptides for Targeting Mitochondria team aims to achieve mitochondria-targeting drug delivery via biocompatible peptide for inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. They will conjugate a well-established protein tag (i.e., FLAG-tag) to self-assembling motifs affords the precursors that form micelles. Enzymatic cleavage of the hydrophilic FLAG motif (DDDDK) by enterokinase (ENTK) turns the micelles to nanofibers. After the uptake by cells, the branched peptides mainly localize in mitochondria. Incubating isolated mitochondria with branched peptides cleaves the branch and turns the micelles to nanofibers. Moreover, the micelles of the precursors are able to deliver cargos (either small molecules or proteins) into cells, largely to mitochondria, within two hours. As the first report of using enzyme-instructed self-assembly for targeting mitochondria and delivery molecular cargos to mitochondria, this work illustrates a fundamentally new molecular motif for targeting mitochondria and exploring the applications of protease-instructed self-assembly for biomedicine.

Team: Stephen Van Hooser (Faculty, Biology), Shen Wang (PhD Student, Neuroscience), Andrea Stacy (PhD Student, Neuroscience), Chelsea Groves-Kuhnle (PhD Student, Neuroscience), Nathan Schneider (BS Student, Neuroscience)

Open Source Science Supplies proposes to investigate the feasibility of creating an open source store at Brandeis that would allow the sale of small parts. The designs would be open source to satisfy constraints of funding agencies and to allow innovation, but customers would have the option to buy the part or device for a reasonable charge. The cost would cover the manufacturing and overhead, and also include a donation to an "innovation fund" in the lab that would allow continued development or improvements of the parts. Further, the presence of the store would reinforce best practices in part design and documentation, which would benefit both the lab and customers in labs nationwide.

Team: Benjamin Segal (BS Student, Computer & Neuroscience), Rafi Cohen (BS Student, Computer Science), Geoffry Kao (BS Student, Computer Science), Anthony Liu (BS Student, Computer Science), Dani Sim (BS Student, Computer Science), Nick Krebs (BS Student, Computer Science)

Recip is trying to solve the issue of groceries that get out of date by scanning the receipt. Moreover, the technology will use data analysis to build a better system to reduce food waste and save money. It will gather data to manage export and import product prices and give price comparison between nearby supermarkets. It will be using image ocr to export the receipt information and deep neural network to analyze the information and the data.

Team: Lizbeth Hedstrom (Faculty, Chemistry & Biology), Deviprasad Gollapalli (Staff Scientist, Biology), Minjia Zhang (Staff Scientist, Biology), Ryan Cullinane (BS Student, Biochemistry), Xingyou Wang (PhD Student, Chemistry)

Bacteria known as persisters are resistant to antibiotics because they are dormant, and they again become susceptible to antibiotics when they resume growth. Therefore an attractive strategy to eliminate persisters is to identify compounds that resuscitate persisters. Less than a handful of such compounds have been reported, and none have progressed to the clinic. The team has discovered several compounds, exemplified by P226, that cause bacteria to initiate growth prematurely. They hypothesize that these compounds will cause quiescent cells to become sensitive to commonly used antibiotics, thus providing a more effective treatment for chronic infections.

Team: Diana Bowser (Faculty, Heller)

In Rwanda, cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills more people than malaria, HIV and tuberculosis combined. Of particular concern in Rwanda is the high number of children and young adults suffering from advanced rheumatic heart disease (RHD)—a repercussion from untreated strep throat. RHD leads to deterioration of the valves of the heart and open heart surgery is needed for survival. Currently in Rwanda there are no cardiac surgeons and there is no dedicated facility to perform cardiac operations. In addition to RHD, a large and growing number of adult Rwandans suffer from other CVDs. The Cardiac Care Center will become a referral hospital for the region, increasing access to evidence-based care.

Team: Ricky Brathwaite (MS Biotech), Jane Jin (MS, Finance), Kevin Xiao (MS, Finance), and Shrek Yin (MBA, Finance)

It's common knowledge nowadays that mutations in the genome cause diseases. These mutated genes often code for mutated proteins that have altered functions which cause them to either interact with proteins they don't normally interact with or their regulation is altered and they malfunction. With these proteins having novel interactions with other proteins, a number of diseases can ensue. Currently, there are a handful of tests that can be done to identify protein-protein interactions, but they either require enzymes, stringent conditions, or a substantial amount of time to complete, which make these assays expensive and time-consuming. The goal of this project is to develop a diagnostic test that has the ability to detect these protein-protein interactions in a faster, cheaper, and more efficient process. This test will have the potential of becoming a point-of-care assay, which can be implemented to quicken and improve the bench-to-bedside treatment, allowing for quicker diagnosis and thus treatment for individuals with diseases such as cancer, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative. 

Team: S. Ali Aghvami (PhD’20), Achini Opathalage (Postdoc, Physics), Zhongxing Jiang (MBA student), Seth Fraden (Faculty, Physics)

Crystallization remains the bottleneck of structure determination, which is a fundamental need for targeted drug development. Screening through a wide range of parameters such as protein concentration, precipitant concentration, pH, temperature, etc., manually or by expensive pipetting robots is the current strategy of obtaining crystal hits. Harvesting these precious crystals, and transporting them to the synchrotron facility to X-ray diffraction damages them, because stresses introduced by environmental changes and mechanical manipulation can strain or destroy protein crystals. We overcome above mentioned limitations by formulating, screening and X-ray diffracting the crystals all in one microfluidics device.

Team: Anna Henkin (PhD Student), Yawai Soe (MBA, '19), Lizbeth Hedstrom (Faculty, Chemistry)

Mechanistic target of Rapamycin (mTOR) is a master regulator of cell growth and metabolism and a clinically validated target for cancer and immunosuppression. Aberrant up-regulation of the mTOR pathway is implicated in proliferative and neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. Current treatments that directly target mTOR can induce diabetes, limiting their therapeutic value. We have discovered a small molecule (CB3A) that inhibits mTOR through a distinct mechanism, which may not induce diabetes. We seek funding to elucidate the mechanism of CB3A action, and to determine if it provides a therapeutic advantage as a treatment modality.

Team: Andrew Sawyer (PhD Student, Molecular Biology), Denise Hilton (PhD Student, Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology), Nicholas Clark ( PhD Student, Molecular Biology)

3-D Printing Functional Models for Education, is developing hands-on models to help teach complex biological concepts. Using 3D printing to create prototypes for inter-connecting proteins and biological concepts.

Team: Justin Freeman (MS, Biotechnology), Benjy Cooper ’11

Using our patented ABX platform technology, our mission is to deliver long-lasting pain relief and restoration of mobility to sufferers of osteoarthritis. Through deep understanding of patient and clinician needs, combined with innovative breakthroughs in medical device technology, Articulate Biosciences strives to bring back quality of life by eliminating chronic joint pain.

Team: Debarshi Nandy (Faculty, IBS), Kate Salop, former Senior Administrative Dean, IBS, Stephen Cecchetti (Faculty, Finance)

Using data analytics and a portfolio and securitization approach, we have developed a proprietary predictive algorithm which improves the viability of brownfield remediation and redevelopment, making it attractive to private sector funding from impact investors.

Team: Joel Meyerson (Faculty, Biochemistry), Jungwon Park (Faculty, Biochemistry)

The first step in obtaining a 3D protein structure with cryo-EM is freezing the target protein molecules into a thin layer of ice. This requires specialized technology which has remained largely unchanged since its inception 30 years ago. The problems associated with cryo-EM sample preparation are rooted in lack of control over the geometry and environment of the protein in the moments before freezing. Their solution aims to mitigate this problem by creating a small fluid cell to encapsulate the protein prior to freezing. This is accomplished with cutting edge materials science and nanofabrication.

Team: William Tarimo is (PhD’16), Kesey Sar

Discovery Teaching, A web based platform for dynamic teaching and learning that improves academic results and methods by using real time classroom interactions, feedback, and data-based insights.

Team: Galen Karlan-Mason (MBA’17), Rafael Martins Guimarães (MBA Student, Data Analytics), Peitong Xue (Faculty, Data Science)

GreenChoice, is an information technology company, developing software to help consumers quickly identify & purchase products that align with their values.

Team: Eduardo Beltrame (Faculty, Biophysics), Rian Reis

A platform for innovation management - the process that goes from sourcing ideas, choosing the best ones, managing a project, and evaluating the end results.

Team: Ingrid Marko (PhD Student, Biochemistry and Biophysics), Megan Robidas (MS/M.B.A Student, Biotechnology, Heller/SSPM)

Redesigned Scoliosis Brace, is a new brace model that has a modifiable hard plastic brace that can be mass produced and adjusted to provide proper treatment and curvature correction as a patient grows, therefore addressing issues of comfort, affordability, requiring multiple braces throughout development, length of treatment period, and manufacturing delays.