MIT Startup Exchange June 2025 Demo Day

Hiten Sonpal became the RISE® Robotics Chief Executive Officer in July 2024. Sonpal, a seasoned leader in robotics and automation, brings a wealth of experience and a clear vision to drive RISE into its next phase of growth and innovation.

Sonpal's impressive background includes roles as President at Electric Sheep Robotics, Chief Product Officer and CEO at Mowbot, and key positions at iRobot, where he led engineering and product initiatives. Sonpal’s leadership has been instrumental in the successful shipment of millions of units across various product lines, demonstrating his ability to scale and drive significant business impact.

Sonpal's strategic focus includes accelerating the time to market for RISE Robotics' products, starting with the company's sampling program, and restarting the paused liftgate project. He emphasizes the importance of speed over size in seizing market opportunities, ensuring that RISE Robotics remains agile and impactful in the industrial sector.

Johannes Galatsanos is an executive leader with a track record in delivering transformation in Data, AI, and Quantum Computing. He has spent approximately 15 years building cutting-edge innovation in Data and AI capabilities in global Pharmaceuticals across R&D and Operations, integrating them into organizations to create real business value. Currently, he is a researcher at MIT focusing on Quantum Computing in Drug Discovery and computing complexity theory. He is the author of the annual MIT Quantum Index Report. Additionally, he is a Fellow at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy and the Center of Quantum Networks, a Lecturer, a frequent speaker at international conferences and podcasts, and a Board Advisor to several companies in the AI and Quantum Computing space.

Before that, Johannes was an Executive Director at Novartis, responsible for the biggest Data and AI Transformation in the company across Operations, Commercial, Finance, and R&D. He was also the Global Head of Product Lifecycle Management, overseeing the global portfolio of pharmaceuticals at Novartis. He started his career as a consultant focusing on Data, AI, and Digital Transformation at EY and Senacor. Johannes holds degrees in Computer Science, AI, Education, Business, and Technology Management from MIT, Oxford, and Frankfurt.

Deep Patel is the Co-Founder & CEO at BlueShift, a venture-backed mining processor building electrochemical systems to unlock resilient, cost-effective, scalable critical mineral supply chains and carbon removal. They are integrating technology from Harvard, Michigan, & ARPA-E and recently raised a $2.1M pre-seed round. Deep left his nuclear engineering PhD program at the University of Michigan to join Amazon as a Senior Technical Product Manager. He went on to lead Amazon Lab126’s large-scale DAC business before founding BlueShift.

Dr. Sebastien Mannai is founder and CEO of Amplified Industries. Amplified Industries is a startup out of MIT founded in 2019 and based in Boston, MA. Amplified Industries gathers a team of scientists, engineers and business people sharing a simple vision: our goal is to build the next generation of industrial systems that will automate and optimize processes at scale. The company focuses on the upstream oil and gas sector and builds connected devices, data systems and algorithms to eliminate spills and optimize production. Amplified Industries is funded by top venture capital firms and family offices, and supported by federal government organizations such as NSF.

Mannai graduated with an MS & Ph.D from the Aero/Astro department in 2018 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also completed post-doctoral research work in machine learning and artificial intelligence at MIT under a Siemens Futuremakers grant and a Deshpande fellowship. Before MIT, Sebastien received an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris and an M.S. in quantum physics from Paris XI in France. During his studies, Sebastien conducted research for Schlumberger and Siemens Turbomachinery.

Dr Georg Caspary has 20 years of experience implementing and financing environmental agricultural technologies in over 25 markets worldwide. Most recently, he spent 13 years at the World Bank focusing on smart indoor farming as a response to climate change-induced food insecurity in many parts of the world. He is the founder and CEO of HarvestAI, which uses Machine Learning and Computer Vision to allow indoor farmers to predict and target harvest dates and amounts, addressing key pain points in the industrysuch as fruit and vegetable waste between harvest and sale.

Dr Georg Caspary has taught widely in graduate schools (including for five years at Georgetown). His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in journals such as ‘Impact Assessment’, ‘Sustainable Development’ and ‘Global Governance’. He has been the recipient of various awards including e.g. being named on Germany’s "40 under 40" list.

He graduated as a National Merit Scholar in Economics and Philosophy from Oxford and holds advanced degrees from theLSE, Sciences-Po Paris and MIT.

Dr. Christy Fernandez-Cull is the CEO of DaVinci Wearables. Previously, she led the sensing and perception system’s teams at Waymo - formerly Google Self-Driving. She was also the Head of Sensors at Lyft Level 5 Self-Driving Division, leading sensor architecture for Lyft vehicle platforms — designing machine eyes to help transform transportation of the future. Prior to Lyft, she was a senior technologist at Apple spanning autonomous systems and the Camera and Depth Hardware team that released the first-of-kind Light Detection and Ranging module in the 2020 iPad. She has spanned both the development of Defense technologies at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and at-scale consumer-product technologies at Apple. She is a senior science advisor to multiple VCs and startups in the areas of sensors and systems for mobility applications, autonomous vehicles and digital health and wearables. She’s a Board member of Omnitron and a Venture Partner and Deep Tech Advisor at L’attitude Ventures and serves on a non-profit board. She received her MS and Ph.D. in Engineering from Duke University and MBA from MIT and enjoys mentoring in STEM/STEAM fields and serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, guest lecturer and AI practitioner at MIT-LL and MIT Media Lab.

Zeeshan “Zee” Mahmood helps corporate R&D organizations turn fragmented lab results into a strategic, AI-ready asset. As Director of Partnerships at Uncountable—the unified informatics platform accelerating materials- and life-science innovation—he forges global collaborations that translate business needs into data-driven outcomes and measurable competitive advantage. Drawing on 15 years in research, product development, digital transformation, and strategic account management, Zeeshan has guided multinational pharma, healthcare, chemical, and advanced-materials companies in developing new products and rolling out enterprise systems from discovery through manufacturing. His work centers on building reliable data infrastructures that unlock machine-learning insights and shorten time-to-market. Zeeshan earned a Master’s Degree in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Technology from the WU Executive Academy  / Tomorrow University of Applied Sciences, where his Master’s thesis—Overcoming Roadblocks: AI Agent Adoption in Laboratory Research and Development—explored practical pathways to industry adoption of AI. A frequent conference speaker on structured data and AI-driven product development, he is passionate about co-creating value with R&D and digital-innovation teams worldwide.