Brown Technology Innovations

2024 Innovation@Brown Showcase

The second annual Innovation@Brown Showcase featured representatives from 24 Brown-affiliated companies and awards for Innovation of the Year, Inventor of the Year, and Startup of the Year.

Award Winners

Innovation of the Year

Kimani C. Toussaint, Jr., Ph.D., Professor and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Engineering, Founder of EquiPulse

Kimani Toussaint, senior associate dean for research and strategic initiatives at the Brown University School of Engineering: Pulse Oximetry without Skin Tone Bias

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an optical technique that monitors blood oxygen saturation levels, typically through the use of pulse oximeters. Conventional pulse oximetry has been found to overestimate blood oxygen for individuals with appreciable amounts of melanin in their skin. As a result, those with darker skin tones are close to three times more likely to suffer from silent hypoxia. Kimani Toussaint and his team are developing a novel PPG technique that leverages optical polarization for more accurate estimates of blood oxygen.

Inventor of the Year

Left to right: Kimani C. Toussaint, Jr., Ph.D., Professor and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Engineering, Founder of EquiPulse and Wafil El-Deiry, Director of the Legorreta Cancer Center

Wafik El-Deiry, associate dean for oncologic sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School

El-Deiry is the Director of the Legorreta Cancer Center, and his recent disclosures covered new discoveries in many aspects of cancer research, including new drug candidates, combination therapies, new therapeutic targets, and prognostic biomarkers. Dr. El-Deiry is a world renowned researcher and clinician as well as a prolific inventor and entrepreneur.

Kimani Toussaint

Dr. Toussaint directs the laboratory for Photonics Research of Bio/nano Environments (PROBE Lab), an interdisciplinary research group which focuses on both developing nonlinear optical imaging techniques for quantitative assessment of biological tissues, and novel methods for harnessing plasmonic nanostructures for light-driven control of matter.

Startup of the Year

Phinyx AI

Democratizing simulation technologies, Phinyx AI, uses generative AI and cutting edge physics and mathematics.

Event Media

Event Details

Schedule

3:00pm – 4:30pmArrival, Registration, Welcome Remarks & Venture Showcase
4:30pm – 5:00pmAI & Health Panel
5:00pm – 5:20pmPitches from Innovation of the Year Finalists
5:20pm – 5:50pmAI & Tech Panel
5:50pm – 6:00pmAwards Ceremony – Inventor of the Year, Startup of the Year, Innovation of the Year
6:00pm – 7:30pmVenture Showcase & Networking

Speakers

  • Providence Mayor Brett P. Smiley
  • Robert Safian, host, Rapid Response
  • Jan Kautz, vice president of learning and perception research, NVIDIA
  • Janet Blume, deputy provost, Brown University
  • Jeremy L. Warner, professor of medicine, professor of biostatistics, associate director of data science at the Legorreta Cancer Center, director of the Brown Center for Clinical Cancer Informatics and Data Science, Brown University
  • J.D. Kleinke, pioneering entrepreneur in the health care information industry
  • Neil Steinberg, chairman of the Board of Directors, Rhode Island Life Science Hub
  • Brian Anderson, chief executive officer and co-founder, Coalition for Health AI

Featured Ventures

Adept Materials, founded by Brown professor Derek Stein, has developed an eco-friendly two-layer system of directional moisture control for use in construction, apparel, packaging, and health care. The patented technology provides a moisture barrier that not only keeps moisture away, but actively removes new and existing moisture. The two layers work in concert: The thinner layer acts like a gate that opens when the humidity rises. The thicker layer acts like a sponge, absorbing incoming water vapor, redistributing moisture within its pores, and letting the water evaporate into a dry environment. The technology’s functions include directional vapor control, vapor pumping, humidity regulation, and temperature regulation.

Asymmetrical Media Interface is a fully accessible interface for interactive musical composition and performance. Designed for non-sighted musicians, it features touch-sensitive controls and audio feedback cues, encapsulated in a unique asymmetric layout allowing for easier interaction and control.

Existing biometric authentication methods struggle to handle normal variations of the biometric data through effective recognition techniques. Our unique approach “encapsulates” ephemeral cryptographic keys with biometric data that can be fully recovered even if the biometric data differs during normal authentication cycles. The encapsulation process leverages a novel challenge-response-pair mechanism (CRP) that eliminates the need to store reference biometric images, thereby protecting privacy. Additionally, our method generates error-free cryptographic keys to unlock a large range of applications aside from “plain authentications” including the protection of digital files and implementations of secure post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in public key infrastructures (PKI) such as in financial transactions, cryptocurrencies, secure mail, etc.

Bolden Therapeutics is developing RNA and antibody therapeutics targeting stem cells in the brain and muscle.  These therapies are aimed at treating Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases as well as promoting muscle growth and regeneration.  

BRICS is a new technology for 4D spatial AI — AI that can understand the world spatio-temporally. BRICS enables high-quality, 4D capture and analysis of dynamically-changing environments with inexpensive cameras.

Brown HCI Research Group Products from Human-Computer Interaction Research.

CareCrowd – People Powered Access to Healthcare. We’re building the first-and-only user-driven healthcare provider data directory. Think Waze for healthcare provider data. Combining the power of AI, machine learning and crowdsourcing to enable network effects to deliver the most accurate, real-time provider data on the market.

Dymaxion We help residents design homes and shop for furniture using AI. While traditional interior design service costs on average $5400 and 3 months to design one room, we help them to do it in minutes with significantly less cost and hassle. Specifically, we assist residents in selecting color schemes and styles, choosing wall and floor coverings, planning room layouts, and buying furniture and decorations.

EcoForge is pioneering sustainable material science by leveraging natural materials, computational chemistry, high-throughput screening, and artificial intelligence to drive innovation and create eco-friendly solutions.

Embrace Medical Technology Around 57% of below the knee amputees suffer in pain due to the discomfort of their prosthetic socket, which is a 1.1 billion dollar market. The reason this is the case is because the amputees’ residual limb (what’s remaining below the knee post-amputation) will fluctuate in volume throughout the day, something that rigid prosthetic sockets can’t accommodate.

Our solution is our patent-pending automatically adjustable prosthetic socket, which will fit our patients’ residual limb perfectly, completely hands free.

Conventional pulse oximetry has been shown to result in inaccurate estimates of oxygen saturation levels for individuals with higher levels of melanin. EquiPulse is addressing this fundamental challenge by incorporating polarization gating into a wearable photoplethysmography (PPG) device to improve the signal fidelity against motion artifacts and variations in skin tone.

Ethylium uses a non-oxidative catalyst-free method to capture carbon and transform it into valuable products for a decarbonized future. 

IRIS Therapeutic Devices employs the unique power of photobiomodulation to treat the root causes of neurodegenerative disorders, rather than merely medicating their symptoms.  Their novel approach to brain stimulation algorithmically syncs stimuli utilizing closed-loop feedback from real-time responses to offer a tailored treatment uniquely calibrated to the current state of each patient’s brain.

Just Breathe is setting out to disrupt the wellness market and set a new standard of care for anxiety by building the future of mindful breathing and making breathwork as easy as breathing itself. Our patent pending device rests comfortably in your mouth and uses light airflow cues to guide users through pre-programmed breathwork patterns that are calming, targeted, and science-backed.

Native Orthopedics is a sports medicine company with a philosophy that a lighter, earlier intervention is better than a late, invasive approach. We have developed a solution that allows surgeons to quickly and easily reattach tissue to bone and keep it there, so that it may heal.

We develop ultra-small, injectable sensors for mobile brain monitoring. Using wireless power and data transfer, we can stream information about the electrical activity of a patient’s brain to their doctor for diagnosis and monitoring.

RNTech Oncology’s lead product, Mitosiran, is a siRNA-lipid nanoparticle designed specifically to activate effector antigen presenting cells (through checkpoint silencing), increasing immune recognition of cancer cells, and their destruction through phagocytosis and antigen presentation.

Octagon Therapeutics is developing targeted medicines for autoimmune and inflammatory disease that reset normal immune homeostasis without damaging healthy protective immunity.

Illness strikes when our bodily defenses fail. Everyday challenges like pollution and stress, which we are typically robust to can suddenly overwhelm us, leading to acute or even chronic illnesses. Operant BioPharma has developed a platform that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to pinpoint the root causes of why our bodies break down and design therapeutics that increase cellular resilience and reinforce our natural defenses against disease.

Opioid-related overdose deaths are increasing in the U.S. despite a large effort by government to address illicit drug use and to implement public health approaches. A significant reason for this is due to the increasing prevalence of xylazine (aka: tranq) in the drug supply. Our proposed technology has developed an antidote to xylazine, to be used emergently in human overdose situations. . Similar to the existing opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, our antidote would be administered via intramuscular or intravenous injection or by nasal spray, alone or in combination with naloxone given the high rates of illicit fentanyl containing xylazine and contributing to multidrug overdose.

Phinyx AI Democratizing simulation technologies using generative AI and cutting edge physics and mathematics.

PyraSim Solutions offers brain circuit simulations to accelerate drug discovery and neurotechnology device development. Our team is developing innovative computational tools to bring together mechanistically-informed neural signal processing of brain recordings with methods for model inference using these biomarkers.

Tinos Therapeutics is a seed stage company leveraging RNA modifications therapy to promote a lasting response in oncology and obesity.

XM Therapeutics, Inc. develops tissue repair and regeneration biologics for chronic diseases where an impaired healing response due to aging leads to progressive fibrosis or scarring. Initially focused on heart disease, the proprietary technology consists of injectable particles that contain human Extracellular Matrix (ECM), the scaffold of proteins that surrounds and sustains cells. These reduce scarring and inflammation while improving blood and oxygen supply, opening up the potential to develop breakthrough therapies for millions of  patients. 

Travel and Accommodations

Aloft Providence Downtown

191 Dorrance Street, Providence, RI 02903-3925

Marriott Reservations at 1(877) 462-5638 or (401) 252-0710

Please leave extra time for parking! There is limited street space in front of 225 Dyer, and multiple paid parking garages nearby. The closest garage is South Street Landing at 330 Eddy Street. The Richmond Parking Garage has a limited number of spots with an event rate of $7. It is located next to the Warren Alpert Medical School with entrances on Eddy St. and Elm St.

Sponsors

    Division of Research  Goodwin.   .      .

 

Interested in becoming a sponsor?

Contact us at innovation-showcase@brown.edu or 401-863-7499.