MIT Startup Exchange February 2025 Demo Day

Valeriia is the co-founder and CEO of EQORE, delivering limitless savings opportunities for businesses through an end-to-end energy storage solution. She completed her mechanical engineering degree at MIT as an international student from Ukraine. Throughout her academic career, Valeriia conducted renewable energy research and received a patent for sustainable power generation at the age of 16. Before founding EQORE, she worked at the Barcelona-based X1 Wind and in Tesla’s battery department.

Surojit is the founder and CEO of Ema. Previously, he guided Coinbase through a successful 2021 IPO as its Chief Product Officer and scaled Google Mobile Ads and Google Shopping into multi billion dollar businesses as the VP and Head of Product. Surojit holds 40 US patents and has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, MS in Computer Science from SUNY at Buffalo, and B. Tech from IIT Kharagpur.

At MIT Sandbox, Vyda Bielkus is an Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of the DHIVE Healthcare Entrepreneurship Program. She oversees all aspects of DHIVE program development and facilitates partnership opportunities.

Bielkus is a seasoned entrepreneur with 20+ years’ experience scaling startups from idea to fully multi-dimensional operations. With previous experiences in early-stage healthcare, technology, and wellness companies she is passionate about fostering entrepreneurship. As VP of Strategy and Business Development at MedicaMetrix, a prostate health startup, she focused on developing a new biomarker test for prostate cancer.

Previously Bielkus was a co-founder and CEO of Health Yoga Life, a multi-location and online yoga & wellness company. Prior to helping shape the yoga industry in the US, she was an early employee and director of operations for a successful technology startup acquired by Motorola for $400 million. Her most recent start-up, Wellfulli, reimagines how individuals engage with their emotional wellness.

Bielkus holds a Master of Business Administration degree with an additional Healthcare Certificate from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College.

Emily Nieves is Co-Founder and CEO of Delineate, an AI copilot for computational pharmacology. Delineate empowers pharma and biotech companies to make faster, evidence-driven decisions, de-risking development across all departments. Nieves is a Ph.D. Candidate in Biological Engineering at MIT where she focuses on the intersection of AI and pharmacology. She has previously worked at large pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer where she built models to assist in answering various questions along the drug development process. Nieves is passionate about enabling scientists to make the best evidence-based decisions possible.

Mr. Patrick A. Rivelli is a General Partner at Mapleleaf Capital Ltd. Mr. Rivelli serves as the President of Sunwestern Managers Inc. He Founded Bioabsorbable Therapeutics, Inc., in 2004 and has been its President and Chief Executive Officer since 2004. Mr. Rivelli was General Partner of AMT Capital Ltd. He served at Sunwestern Investment Group. Previously, he was a Founding General Partner of Sunwestern Investment Fund III (1987), a General Partner of Sunwestern Investment Fund II (1989), and a Founding General Partner of Heartland Capital Fund, Ltd. Mr. Rivelli has over 15 years experience in managing technology based venture investments. He was a Private Investor and Consultant to numerous early-stage technology companies. Mr. Rivelli was a Co-Founder and Senior Vice President responsible for marketing, sales, and engineering for National Micronetics, Inc. In addition, he held the position of Chief Engineer at the Ferroxcube Division of North American Philips and various project management positions at Burroughs Corporation and UNIVAC (now UNISYS). Mr. Rivelli was instrumental in managing the growth of this company from a startup to a $70 million public corporation with over 2500 employees worldwide. He also co-founded RASNA Corporation. He serves as a Director of Bioabsorbable Therapeutics, Inc and EZ-Med Technologies, Inc. Mr. Rivelli serves as Director of five companies, two of these as the Chairman. He serves as a Director of Cormedics Corporation. He served as a Director of MaxServ, Inc., from January 1994. Mr. Rivelli served as a Director of Vista Information Solutions, Inc., since 1992. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston and a Master of Science in Engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Mr. Rivelli also completed the Executive Management program at Stanford University, Palo Alto.

John Wass is the Co-Founder and CEO of Profit Isle, a SaaS startup based in Cambridge, MA. The Profit Isle Platform helps companies make their enterprise data speak profit—generating coherent datasets that are updated every period, ready for AI and BI applications. By integrating and transforming siloed, disparate datasets, the PI Platform assigns general ledger costs to each transaction and generates a full P&L for every invoice line. Having analyzed more than $300 billion in revenues, the Profit Isle platform provides teams across retail, distribution, manufacturing, and services industries with profit insights and recommendations grounded in a company’s data, delivering rapid ROI and value. John is a disruptor in the AI and fintech space and an entrepreneur at heart, with a proven track record of building and scaling companies, increasing profitability for customers, while scaling operations and driving innovation. John earned his master’s degree from MIT in Logistics and a B.S.E. from Princeton. John co-authored the book, Choose Your Customer: How toCompete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive, has lectured at MIT for 10+ years, wrote numerous published articles, and regularly presents at seminars across the country on topics such as profitability, digital transformation, RFID, and supply chain innovation.