Hosted by Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company
How does innovation and entrepreneurship work in Japan? How could international interactions enrich Japanese innovation ecosystems as articulated in Prime Minister Abe’s economic growth strategy? Join the MIT Startup Exchange, MIT Industrial Liaison Program, for a fast-paced agenda that will include speakers from MIT, University of Tokyo, and Takeda, featuring short talks by entrepreneurs from nine startup companies, five of them MIT-affiliated.
Hosted by Takeda in Shonan on October 18, 2017, the overall theme will be life-science entrepreneurship and the various mechanisms and cultures that enable startups to turn ideas and early research into innovative products and services.
The target audience is the emerging Japanese innovation ecosystem, including academics, startups, corporate innovators, investors, and policy makers.
About MIT Startup Exchange MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).
MIT Startup Exchange maintains a propriety database of over 1,500 MIT-connected startups with roots across MIT departments, labs and centers; it hosts a robust schedule of startup workshops and showcases, and facilitates networking and introductions between startups and corporate executives.
STEX25 is a startup accelerator within MIT Startup Exchange, featuring 25 “industry ready” startups that have proven to be exceptional with early use cases, clients, demos, or partnerships, and are poised for significant growth. STEX25 startups receive promotion, travel, and advisory support, and are prioritized for meetings with ILP’s 230 member companies.
MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.
Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.
In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.
Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.
He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.
He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.
Dr. Sham Nikam is Vice President, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Takeda and is based in Shonan/Fujisawa, Japan. In this role, he is responsible for identifying entrepreneurship opportunities for Takeda employees to launch biotech startups using innovative Takeda technology or therapeutic assets.
Prior to this role, Dr. Nikam was the head of the Extra Value Generation Drug Discovery Unit the mission of which was to deliver novel therapeutic options for high unmet medical needs by identifying new utilities for current and past Takeda assets. Prior to Takeda, he was the Head of Global Discovery at Nycomed in Germany, a Zurich based pharmaceutical company, and also served in leadership roles at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, Smith Kline and French Labs, and Sandoz.
Dr. Naoki Tarui co-founded SEEDSUPPLY Inc. in May, 2017 where he focuses on improvement of the early drug discovery process using innovative technologies. Prior to SEEDSUPPLY, Dr. Tarui was engaged in drug discovery at Takeda for 20 years. His efforts in technology, especially regarding the construction of chemical libraries and systematic screening of those libraries, successively identified dozens of drug candidates. He won the Pharmaceutical Society Japan Award for Drug Research and Development ’16. Dr. Tarui holds Ph.D. in biochemistry from Osaka Prefecture University.
Dr. Yukio Yamada is the CSO and a co-founder of Scohia Pharma, Inc. The company was initiated in April, 2017. Dr. Yamada has worked in the area of cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic diseases for approximately 30 years. Before his involvement with Scohia Pharma, he served as Head of Metabolic Disease Drug Discovery Unit and then became Associate Head of the Cardiovascular & Metabolic Drug Discovery Unit, both at Takeda. Prior to these positions Dr. Yamada worked in the Strategic Research Planning Department as Director of Project Lead and Research Alliance. While at Takeda, he contributed to the progress of many drugs such as ACTOS, NESINA, ZAFATEK, and AZILVA.
Yukio holds PhD in medicine from Osaka University.
Masuhiro Kato, M.D., is Project Professor of the Translational Research Initiative, The University of Tokyo, Senior Advisor to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) Japan, and Honorary Advisor on Life Sciences to the UK Trade & Investment Department of the British Embassy in Japan.
Dr. Kato graduated from Yokohama National University Department of Applied Engineering. After completing a Master’s degree in Life Sciences at Tokyo Institute of Technology, he obtained a doctorate in Medicine from Gunma University. And he joined Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. After assignment to the Gunma University School of Medicine Microbiology Laboratory, he transferred to the Drug Development Department of Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd., and transferring to the company’s Dusseldorf office (Germany). He subsequently served as International Pharmaceutical Affairs Manager for Zeneca Group PLC (U.K.), and held positions as Manager of Pharmaceutical Survey Department, Manager of Pharmaceutical Affairs Department, Director and Vice-Head of Research and Development plus Manager of Pharmaceutical Affairs Department at Zeneca K.K. (Japan). After the company became AstraZeneca K.K (Japan), his appointments included, chronologically, Director and Vice-Head of Research and Development plus Manager of Pharmaceutical Affairs Department, Vice President and Head of Research and Development, President and CEO, and Chairman. Dr. Kato is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He has also served as Chairman of EFPIA Japan’s Technology Committee, as well as Vice-Chairman, Chairman of the organization, and Executive Director of Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (JPMA).
John Roberts has been Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations (Interim) since February 2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at MIT and returned to the university after a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, joining the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in 2013. Prior to his return, John worked at small, medium, and large companies, holding positions that allowed him to exploit his passions in synthetic chemistry, project leadership, and alliance management while growing his responsibilities for managing others, ultimately as a department head. As a program director at MIT, John built a portfolio of ILP member companies, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry and headquartered in Japan, connecting them to engagement opportunities in the MIT community. Soon after returning to MIT, John began to lead a group of program directors with a combined portfolio of 60-80 global companies. In his current role, John oversees MIT Corporate Relations which houses ILP and MIT Startup Exchange.
Charles Fracchia is founder and CEO at BioBright, a company building smart laboratory tools to improve reproducibility in biomedical research. BioBright has been featured in Scientific American, the innovators under 35 in MIT Tech Review, BioIT World, and SLAS. Fracchia did his graduate work between the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Medical School and obtained his BSc from Imperial College London.
Fracchia has presented his work at venues including the White House, MIT Sloan, NASA Ames, IBM Research, Airbus, O'Reilly and SciFoo. Over the years, the work has been sponsored by DARPA, NSF, Alphabet's X (formerly Google X), Knight Foundation, and Templeton Foundation.
Andrew M. Radin is cofounder and Chief Marketing Officer of twoXAR, a company dedicated to transforming how large biological datasets are harnessed to accelerate the identification and validation of new medicines. As Chief Marketing Officer of twoXAR, Radin is focused on understanding the market, identifying partners, and communicating the business. He formerly worked as an investor in venture and private equity funds at Macquarie Bank and has designed, built, and managed several small organizations. Radin also cofounded a mobile platform startup while at MIT. He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, a BS in biochemistry and cell biology from UC San Diego, and a BA in economics from UC San Diego.
Thanos Kosmidis received his MEng in Computing from Imperial College (UK), his MS in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), and has been an Advanced Study Fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (USA).
He has 20 years of experience in the technical and commercial divisions of high-tech companies in USA and Europe. His last post, which he left to build CareAcross, was that of deputy director at a large telecommunications' firm strategic commercial planning department.
He has solid experience in managing multiple local and remote teams, including growing a team of 5 to reach 180 people across three countries and five timezones. He has led multimillion dollar projects from inception to delivery, and is experienced in the full lifecycle of products and services.
Mr. Kosmidis is an active member of the international Health 2.0 organisation promoting the application of technology in healthcare, and a frequently invited speaker and presenter at international conferences in digital health.
Finally, Mr. Kosmidis is serving as a Assembly Member for the European Commission’s “Mission on Cancer”, and as a technology expert for the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC), and the Quality Assurance Scheme Development Group (QASDG) in particular.
Carlos Boto co-founded doDOC in 2015 and serves as Chief Operations and Sales Officer.
doDOC is helping pharmaceutical companies bring new medical products to market faster by turning highly complex documentation processes into simple and transparent collaborative tasks.
With an executive engineering background and specialization in computer science, research and entrepreneurship, Carlos has also a track in management. Carlos is the inventor of a patented light-activable nanoformulation, with applications spanning from research to therapeutic medicine worldwide. He has been responsible for project management of international initiatives for several years, having successfully managed multidisciplinary teams from 27 different nationalities and based on 32 different organizations.
Carlos received his PhD in Engineering Systems from MIT MPP, in collaboration with University of Salamanca (Spain), University College London (UK) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (China). His BS and MS degrees in Materials Engineering are from the University of Coimbra (Portugal).
Dr. Catherine Havasi is a technology strategist, AI researcher, and entrepreneur who has been working to apply emerging AI technology to real problems. She is the Chief Product Officer of Basis Technology. Previously, she founded the MIT startups Luminoso and Dalang and worked as a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.
MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).
Hiroaki Suga is a Professor of the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science in the University of Tokyo. He was born in Okayama City, Japan in 1963. He received his Bachelor of Engineering (1986) and Master of Engineering (1989) from Okayama University under supervision of Prof. S. Torii, and Ph. D. in Chemistry (1994) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under supervision of Prof. S. Masamune.
After three years of post-doctoral work with Prof. J. W. Szostak in Massachusetts General Hospital, he was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the State University of New York at Buffalo (1997) and promoted to the tenured Associate Professor (2002). In 2003, he moved to the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology in the University of Tokyo as an Associate Professor, and soon after he was promoted to Full Professor. In 2010, he changed his affiliation to the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science.
His research interests are in the field of bioorganic chemistry, chemical biology and biotechnology related to RNA, translation, and peptides. He is also a founder of PeptiDream Inc. Tokyo, a publicly traded company, which has many partnerships with pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
Associate Provost Alexander and I Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering MIT Office of the Provost
Dr. Karen K. Gleason is Associate Provost and the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1987 and has served as Executive Officer of the Chemical Engineering Department, Associate Director for the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and as Associate Dean of Engineering for Research.
Professor Gleason’s research focuses on the near room-temperature synthesis of ultrathin, conformal organic films by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Gleason has authored more than 250 publications and holds 18 issued US patents for CVD polymers and their applications in optoelectronic, sensing, microfluidic, energy storage, and biomedical devices, and for the surface modification of membranes.
Gleason is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) and held the Donders Visiting Professorship Chair at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her awards include the ID TechEx Printed Electronics Europe Best Technical Development Materials Award, the AIChE Process Development Research Award, and Young Investigator Awards from both the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. She has delivered the Van Ness Award Lecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University and the Tis Lahiri Lecture at Vanderbuilt University.
In 2001, Prof Gleason co-founded GVD Corporation, which has successfully scaled-up and commercialized technology invented in her MIT lab. GVD is headquartered in Cambridge, MA and has manufacturing facilities in Greenville, SC. In 2014, she co-founded Drop-Wise for improving the efficiency of steam power cycles.
Gleason received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her BS and MS degrees are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also won All-American honors in swimming.
What are the new models emerging? How do these models interact? How to support innovators to create products of the future.
Dr. Seigo Izumo is Senior Vice President, Global Head of Regenerative Medicine Unit and Head of Scientific Affairs in Japan at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. Previously he served as Senior VP & Head of Cardiovascular Therapeutics at Gilead Sciences, and VP & Global Head of Cardiovascular Research at Novartis. Prior to joining the industry, Dr. Izumo was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of Cardiovascular Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Chief of Cardiology Division. In addition, he was Professor of Internal Medicine & Biological Chemistry and Director of the Center for Organogenesis at University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Izumo graduated from University of Tokyo and received clinical and research training at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Hospital and The Children's Hospital in Boston. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease.