A Glimpse to the Future of Healthtech and Biotech
Exploring opportunities in healthcare and related applications by leveraging cutting edge technologies
The MIT Bangkok Symposium is the first regional conference in Thailand organized by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), in cooperation with Bangkok Bank PCL. The symposium will bring together industry, academic, and investment leaders from the Healthcare and BioTech ecosystem at MIT and across Southeast Asia to Bangkok, Thailand. Attendees will benefit from distinguished speakers and panelists, including industry luminaries, pioneers, investors, and world-class researchers, with whom they can interact during networking sessions. HealthTech and BioTech entrepreneurs from the MIT Startup Exchange will exhibit their transformative solutions in the Symposium and be open to discuss potential collaboration with attendees.
*** Online registration is closed. Walk-in registration is available on-site. ***
Registration Fee
ILP Member: Complimentary General Public: $1,200 Bangkok Bank Guest: Complimentary. Please use a comp code you received in the invitation.
Robert S. Langer completed his undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering at Cornell University and obtained his Sc.D in Chemical Engineering at MIT. He joined MIT as Assistant Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry in 1978. Dr. Langer has written over 1,250 articles and also has nearly 1,050 patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 250 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.
Dr. Langer has received over 220 major awards. He is one of 5 living individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science (2006) and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). He also received the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize, the 2012 Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, the 2013 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2014 Kyoto Prize. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 82 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008), the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008), the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2011) and the Terumo International Prize (2012). In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2012 he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors.
Leo Anthony Celi has practiced medicine in three continents, giving him broad perspectives in healthcare delivery. As clinical research director and principal research scientist at MIT Laboratory of Computational Physiology (LCP), he brings together clinicians and data scientists to support research using data routinely collected in the intensive care unit (ICU). His group built and maintains the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC) database. This public-access database has been meticulously de-identified and is freely shared online with the research community. It is an unparalleled research resource; over 2000 investigators from more than 30 countries have free access to the clinical data under a data use agreement. In 2016, LCP partnered with Philips eICU Research Institute to host the eICU database with more than 2 million ICU patients admitted across the United States. The goal is to scale the database globally and build an international collaborative research community around health data analytics.
Leo founded and co-directs Sana, a cross-disciplinary organization based at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, whose objective is to leverage information technology to improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. At its core is an open-source mobile tele-health platform that allows for capture, transmission, and archiving of complex medical data (e.g. images, videos, physiologic signals such as ECG, EEG and oto-acoustic emission responses), in addition to patient demographic and clinical information. Sana is the inaugural recipient of both the mHealth (Mobile Health) Alliance Award from the United Nations Foundation and the Wireless Innovation Award from the Vodafone Foundation in 2010. The software has since been implemented around the globe including India, Kenya, Lebanon, Haiti, Mongolia, Uganda, Brazil, Ethiopia, Argentina, and South Africa.
He is one of the course directors for HST.936—global health informatics to improve quality of care, and HST.953—secondary analysis of electronic health records, both at MIT. He is an editor of the textbook for each course, both released under an open access license. The textbook Secondary Analysis of Electronic Health Records came out in October 2016 and was downloaded over 48,000 times in the first two months of publication. The course “Global Health Informatics to Improve Quality of Care” was launched under MITx in February 2017.
Leo was featured as a designer in the Smithsonian Museum National Design Triennial “Why Design Now?” held at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City in 2010 for his work in global health informatics. He was also selected as one of 12 external reviewers for the National Academy of Medicine 2014 report “Investing in Global Health Systems: Sustaining gains, transforming lives.”
Thanos Kosmidis has 20 years of experience in the technical and commercial divisions of high-tech companies in the USA and Europe. He is the cofounder & CEO of Care Across Ltd, and has grown the company to a leading position in the area of digital health in cancer, internationally. Mr Kosmidis is supporting cancer services at an institutional level. More specifically, he has served as an Assembly Member for the European Commission’s “Mission on Cancer”, and is a technology expert for the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) and Colorectal Cancer (ECICC). Finally, 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.
Daniel Oliver is a co-founder and the CEO of Rejuvenate Bio, a startup out of George Church’s Lab at Harvard Medical School working on targeting the driver of age-related disease using novel gene therapies. Before Rejuvenate Bio, Daniel was awarded a Blavatnik Fellowship, during which he co-founded Voxel8. Voxel8 was named one of the top 9 innovations at CES and one of the top 50 most innovative companies by the MIT Technology Review. Daniel received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business from the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Hermano Igo Krebs is a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department and the Director of The77Lab (http://the77lab.mit.edu/). He holds affiliate positions as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Neurology, and as a Visiting Professor at Fujita Health University, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Japan), at Osaka University, Mechanical Science and Bioengineering Department (Japan), at Keio University, System Design Engineering Department (Japan) and at Loughborough University, The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical, and Manufacturing Engineering (UK). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and received the 2015 IEEE-INABA Technical Award for Innovation leading to Production “for contributions to medical technology innovation and translation into commercial applications for Rehabilitation Robotics.” He was one of the founders and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Interactive Motion Technologies from 1998 to 2016. He successfully sold it to Bionik Laboratories, a publicly traded company. He later founded 4Motion Robotics.
Ben Merewitz brings over 15 years of experience launching and managing businesses in industrials, biopharma and medical technology. Prior to Agile Devices, Ben spent most of his career advising management teams and launching products in high-tech sectors with heavy regulatory oversight. From building and scaling the first solar inverter market research practice to advising global publicly traded biopharma companies on multibillion dollar decisions, Ben has consistently delivered strategic value to the C-suite, either as an external consultant or an internal advisor or Chief of Staff. As an operator, Ben has designed, built, and scaled products and services ranging from aviation mobile applications to APAC-focused biotech consultancies, consistently delivering 7+ figure revenue in the first year following launch. Ben has excelled in emerging/midsize companies (PureSense, PHOTON Consulting, Sentient Jet) and large multinational companies (Wellington Management, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, DRG and Clarivate), with functional responsibilities primarily in corporate development, product management, and management consulting. Ben holds a BA in Psychology from Amherst College and MBA in General Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Co-Founder and Faculty Director, MIT Hacking Medicine Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
Zen Chu serves as Faculty Director of MIT's Hacking Medicine Initiative, and is a Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Innovation for both the MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology program.
In partnership with Professors Martha Gray and Bill Aulet, Zen created and directs HST.978 MIT Healthcare Ventures, a graduate course that teaches entrepreneurship, business models, and venture creation around technology that can transform healthcare. Zen actively consults companies in pharma, health tech, and healthcare systems struggling to adapt to global digital healthcare transformation and emerging markets.
As managing director of Accelerated Medical Ventures, Zen specializes in building early-stage medical technology and healthcare service companies, usually serving as cofounder and first investor. AMV’s portfolio spans Boston, Silicon Valley, and China, including PillPack.com, Call9.com, Figure1.com, NuRx.com, 3D-Matrix Medical [JASDAQ: 7777], Sofi.com, Curoverse Genomics (acq Veritas Genomics), BitGym.com, DirectDermatology.com, and a few companies still in stealth mode.
Alongside MIT professors Shuguang Zhang, Alex Rich, Alan Grodzinsky, and Bob Langer, Zen cofounded and served as ceo for 3D-Matrix Medical Inc., a venture-backed MIT regenerative medicine company with a successful IPO in 2011. 3D-Matrix has wound-healing and drug-delivery products on the market outside of the US and multiple human clinical trials in process.
He has managed and led new ventures for Harvard Medical School, Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Bioengineering, NetVentures, and Hewlett-Packard. Zen earned a BS in biomedical/electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from Yale University. He is married to Katie Rae, a serial entreprenuer and CEO of MIT's Engine Fund. They are raising three aspiring entrepreneurs in Brookline, MA.
Dr. JJ Jiang is CTO of the Charoen Pokphand Group.
Mr. Thammasak Sethaudom is currently the Executive Vice President of SCG. Previously, he covered corporate financial management functions as VP-Finance and Investment & CFO since 2018. With over 30 years of experience at SCG, most of his time was spent in Chemicals Business. Prior to this, he had been the General Director, Long Son Petrochemicals Co., Ltd.
After achieving SCG scholarship, his major responsibility was in business development and planning in SCG Chemicals before starting the Long Son project. He holds a Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Chulalongkorn University in 1991, and received SCG master degree scholarship in Business Administration from London Business School, United Kingdom (Distinction) in 1999 and also attended Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in 2019.
Kobsak Pootrakool is the Director and Senior Executive Vice President of Bangkok Bank.
Alexander Slocum is the Walter and Hazel May Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He has 130+ patents and has helped develop 12 products that have received R&D 100 awards for “one of the one hundred best new technical products of the year”. He has helped start several successful precision manufacturing equipment companies and has a passion for working with industry to solve real problems and identify fundamental research topics. For the past decade his prime focus has been on renewable energy systems.
Mr. Orsen Karnburisudthi is Vice President of the Investment Department at Bangkok Bank.
David Zhu is a Managing Partner at Kendall Capital Partners.
Sarayuth Saengchan is Senior Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration at Mitr Phol Sugar Corp., Ltd.
Tunyawat Kasemsuwan is Group Director of the Global Innovation Center at Thai Union Group Public Company Limited.