Hello Tri-I Community!

Happy Fabulous February! We have made a change to our general body meeting time: The next SVG general body meeting will be held in-person on the last day of the month, featuring Rockefeller University's Luciano Marraffini, co-founder of eligo bioscience, Tuesday, February 28 at 5:30 pm EST in the Bioventure eLab located at 1157 York Ave. Come for an exciting discussion about the translation of science from lab to industry. SVG Newsletter Editor, Yanyang Chen, will be moderating. As always, there will be food and beverages for those who can make it!

Since our last newsletter, we partnered with the Tri-Institutional Biotech Club to host a panel of Venture Capitalists titled, "From Benchside-to-VC: Careers in Venture Capital and Investing." Ellen Horste and Peter Chhoy were amazing moderators, and fantastic questions were asked by the audience. We also hosted Lea Sanford, a current member of the Runway Startup program at Cornell Tech, who discussed her experiences with the program and entrepreneurship as a recent graduate from Weill Cornell Medicine. If this sounds exciting to you, please join us for more information about upcoming events. 

We are always looking for more entrepreneurship opportunities to participate in and share with our community. If you want to be involved further with the Startup Venture Group (and we would love to have you), please fill out this survey to subscribe to our newsletter, join our Slack channel, or offer help here! You can also find us on Twitter (@StartupWCM) and at our website, https://svg.bio.

Sincerely,

Nick Bartelo
President, Startup Venture Group
PhD Candidate
Weill Cornell Medicine

Faculty Feature: Dr. Dan-Avi Landau 

For this newsletter’s Faculty Feature, Yanyang Chen (SVG Newsletter Editor) and Nick Bartelo (SVG President) had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Dan-Avi Landau, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Associate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Core Member of New York Genome Center. Dr. Landau specializes in fundamental principles in evolutionary biology and biological regulation of mammalian cells through the study of cancer, with the goal of devising therapies that directly anticipate and address tumor evolution. He completed his postdoc at Harvard before joining Weill Cornell Medicine in 2015. He is the co-founder of C2i Genomics, which measures the whole genome sequence of 2-3 ml of blood, enabling informed and timely treatment decisions. Their company leverages a cloud-based platform to perform tumor burden monitoring on a global scale, leading to the development of a personalized medicine approach to cancer.
 

SVG: What inspired you to co-found C2i Genomics? Have you always thought of translating the academic research in your lab into clinics? 

Dr. Landau: We started out with a cool idea that we realized could answer urgent needs of patients. We initially had some discussion with other biotechs in the space. However, they were already invested in their products and had less bandwidth to pursue things outside of the box and orthogonal. That inspired myself and my co-founder (a postdoc in our lab) to spin off a new entity. 

SVG: What is the role of C2i Genomics in healthcare intervention?

Dr. Landau: The platform is unique in the sense that it’s a software service model. We partner with institutions, health care provider networks, and pharmaceutical companies around the world by providing them with a fairly straightforward data production protocol, and then they can start producing data in their own centers. They can upload the data into the cloud with the data physically located within their countries, limiting the tricky situations of moving data across country borders. We then run our software on these data and provide different clients with outputs. The outputs will be used in different ways, either direct patient care or clinical research. 
Compared to a centralized model, where someone has to send you the samples for processing, we can start a collaboration with Singapore, India, or anywhere around the globe much faster and more straightforward. We started this project on a whiteboard in 2017, and fast forward we’re at the beginning of 2023. Within 6 years, the company deployed across continents, participated in advanced clinical trials, and collaborated with pharmaceutical companies. Seeing something go from a crazy idea on the whiteboard all the way to high impact within a short period of time is both exciting and empowering. 

SVG: The massive datasets of C2i Genomics is unparalleled. How does the company plan to utilize these invaluable data for R&D?

Dr. Landau: We pioneered the concept of whole genome sequencing of the plasma as an alternative to the prevailing paradigm of targeted panel sequencing. Our immediate goal is to provide real time information to clinicians and patients about the state of the disease and to optimize therapy.
We also are excited about leveraging this kind of data for discovery data mining. We're capturing germline variability more than you could with panels, so that gives us an advantage for data mining and discovery.

SVG: What advice would you give to graduate students and postdocs interested in starting a biotech company with their research?

Dr. Landau: The key is to focus on the science. You have to bring in some kind of deliverable that has the potential to be a game-changer. For instance, our business model does not involve shipping samples to a centralized lab, allowing worldwide expansion. You must be open-minded as to in what arena your invention or discovery will flourish the most.
The business side will be learned as you progress. You must have a good pitch deck, be able to communicate very effectively the unique added value, compare your technology to what's out there, highlight your key assets and strengths, and assemble a team. You all have an advantage that you can create an impressive team with your graduate school peers. The opportunities for intellectual and personal growth around starting a company and bringing your vision to life are exciting!

Upcoming Events

Fellowships/Internships/Programs

Career Opportunities

Job Postings
Many great opportunities are available using IndieBio Talent Network. 
Also check out a variety of job posting with startups at BioLabs. 

Aclid Bio - Founding Engineer
APPLY HERE
Aclid Bio is a biological security and safety platform co-founded by Professor Harris Wang from Columbia University. They are building the infrastructure to safeguard the SynBio community from misuse, enabling responsible research, keeping scientists safe, and protecting national security. They work with some of the leading gene synthesis providers, foundries, and governments in safety, surveillance, and compliance. Their screening service detects and analyzes pathogenic or toxic elements in DNA sequences, helping biotech manufacturers and service providers comply with guidelines and regulations to protect their liability. 

Cellarity - Many job postings
APPLY HERE
As part of the Computation and Data Science department, you will be part of a ~20-person team of computational experts who collaborate with the biology, chemistry, and genomics teams throughout the company. They are generating massive amounts of data, mostly single-cell, across a number of diverse therapeutic areas. These positions run the gamut from blue-sky research projects, to applied ML modelling, to driving specific drug programs.

Nautilus Biotechnology - Senior Staff Scientist, Biophysical Characterization
APPLY HERE
Nautilus's goal is to improve the health of millions by unleashing the potential of the proteome to accelerate drug development and enable a new world of precision and personalized medicine. This position will be tasked with managing a team of researchers, developing methods to characterize our affinity reagents, and collaborating cross-functionally to incorporate these reagents in the Nautilus platform. You will work closely with colleagues upstream in the probe development process and downstream in platform integration. It is a hands-on leadership role, working closely with the researchers on the team to design, execute, and analyze experiments. This position will report to the Vice President, Affinity Reagent Development, within the R&D organization and is located in San Carlos, CA.

LifeSci NYC
Look at opportunities HERE
The LifeSci NYC Internship Program has just launched for 2022-2023. Both academic year internships and full-time job opportunities posted. Summer internship opportunities will be posted in the next couple of months. All types of positions will continue to be posted on a rolling basis, as host companies are ready to begin their hiring process. At present, there are 64 roles listed at 38 different companies. Once a student creates an application, they may view job descriptions for all of these roles in our job portal, and may submit cover letters for those that interest them. Students who have not yet applied for our program may view all of our academic year and full-time roles at http://bit.ly/altopps, and may then submit a program application in order to apply for listed roles. Summer internships will only be shared with students who have submitted a program application, so students will need to apply in order to access those listings.

New York Stem Cell Foundation 
NYSCF Research Institute is a non-profit accelerator looking to develop cures for the major diseases of our time through stem cell research and they have a few open positions. 

What We're Listening To (or Reading!)

Startup Cornell Podcast
Ever wonder how a young Cornell entrepreneur got their first idea? Or when they decided to just go after it? Wonder what they do first thing in the morning? Or if there’s a book they read that changed their life? Listen to Startup Cornell, the new podcast from Entrepreneurship at Cornell that explores the bold entrepreneurial ideas coming from our students, faculty, staff and young alumni.
In each segment, you’ll hear a Cornell entrepreneur tell their story of success, failure, wins and losses. They’ll also offer actionable advice for building and growing your own business.
Currently 18 episodes have been recorded: Listen Here

Seven technologies to watch in 2023
Nature’s pick of tools and techniques that are poised to have an outsized impact on science in the coming year. This article discusses seven technologies expected to boom in 2023. Many are biotech focused. Read Here

ChatGPT listed as author on research papers: many scientists disapprove
The artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT that has taken the world by storm has made its formal debut in the scientific literature — racking up at least four authorship credits on published papers and preprints.
Journal editors, researchers and publishers are now debating the place of such AI tools in the published literature, and whether it’s appropriate to cite the bot as an author. Publishers are racing to create policies for the chatbot, which was released as a free-to-use tool in November by tech company OpenAI in San Francisco, California.
Read more here

Once a Scientist Podcast
The Once a Scientist podcast was launched in April 2020 by Nick Edwards, a neuroscience PhD who works at a San Diego-based biotech company. His goals for the show are simple: 1) Provide a resource for young scientists to learn about different careers; 2) Speak with scientists from a broad spectrum of backgrounds; 3) Make science cool again; 4) Have honest conversations. The latest episode is with Tari Suprapto, PhD, who is the Director of Search and Evaluation at Novo Nordisk and Board Chair at the San Diego Innovation Council. A super connector and opportunity scout, Tari talked about running toward things that drive you. Listen Here

Startup/Entrepreneurship resources in the Tri-I community: