Rutgers Innovation Showcase

Ilker Hacihaliloglu, PhD, MSc
Co-founder and CTO of PONS (Newark, NJ), and Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Canada

PONS is transforming ultrasound into a scalable, AI-powered platform for early disease detection, decentralized care, and large-scale imaging data generation. Our patented technology makes early-stage disease features visible and expands dataset size by up to 50-fold, enabling more robust and accurate AI development.
Learn more about PONS

Marco Taglietti, MD
Chief Executive Officer of NanoNewron

NanoNewron is a pioneering biotechnology company dedicated to developing innovative, humanized biologics that cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to treat central nervous system (CNS) diseases. Founded by Dr. Luciano D’Adamio, a professor at Rutgers University and holder of the Herbert C. and Jacqueline Krieger Klein Endowed Chair since 2017, NanoNewron leverages cutting-edge nanobody technologies to target neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer's disease and other CNS neurodegenerative pathologies. The lead product NN-843 is a novel therapy to treat Alzheimer’s Disease by targeting TNF-α induced neuroinflammation with a TNF-α inhibitor efficiently crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) using our NewroBus technology.
Learn more about NanoNewron

Roger Spillmann, BS
CEO of NanoCrystal Composites

NanoCrystal Composites Inc. (NCC) is commercializing a new category of revolutionary multi-crystal polymer nanocomposites called “NanoCrystalene” - co-developed with the AMIPP Advanced Polymer Center at Rutgers University. Produced via a patented method of in-situ exfoliation, where natural flake graphite - together with other crystalline materials (e.g., e-mica, boron nitride nanosheets) - is homogeneously dispersed within, and covalently bonded to, thermoplastic matrix materials, NanoCrystalene exhibits tensile modulus enhancements of 5x–10x over neat thermoplastics, heat deflection temperatures exceeding 250°C, impact resistance 2–3x higher than aerospace-grade thermosets, and EMI/EMP shielding effectiveness >99.99%.

By fusing 2D mono-atomic layered crystalline such as graphene directly with the substrate’s polymer chains, NanoCrystalene delivers metal-like performance, including superior conductivity, thermal transfer, wear resistance, and more. NanoCrystalene can be seamlessly integrated into existing manufacturing, opening up a myriad of applications across a wide range of industries, including defense, transportation, construction, consumer, electronics and medical - the latter being pursued by NCC’s JV partner, NanoCrystal Med-Tech Inc.
Learn more about NanoCrystal Composites

Joel Caplan, PhD
Sr. Vice Chancellor of Research and Collaborations at Rutgers University -- Newark, Cofounder and COO of Simsi

Simsi is a technology company delivering software-as-a-service for precision policing and cross-agency partnerships. Our platform is custom-built for public safety and bundles project management with analytics and AI for data-informed collaboration.
Learn more about Simsi

Ilya Raskin, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Center for Agricultural Molecular Biology, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; co-founder and Chairman of Nutrasorb

Nutrasorb develops functionally enhanced complexes of dietary proteins and phytonutrients. Our proprietary, clean-label technology integrates edible proteins with beneficial phytonutrients derived from fruits and vegetables, markedly amplifying the nutritional and health benefits of both components. This presentation highlights how Nutrasorb technologies improve protein bioavailability, enhance solubility, and significantly reduce allergenicity, while simultaneously delivering essential phytonutrients. Our novel ingredients are designed for broad applications in sports nutrition, healthy aging, and child and infant nutrition.
Learn more about Nutrasorb

Jeffrey Zhao, BS
Co-founder and CEO of Notitia Biotechnologies

Notitia Biotechnologies is a clinical-stage, revenue-generating microbiome startup developing therapeutics and products for preventing and alleviating chronic diseases. Founded on the Two Competing Guilds (TCG) Model and Foundation GuildTM Technologies originally developed by Dr. Liping Zhao at Rutgers University, Notitia develops Foundation Guild bacteria-targeted interventions that restore balance in the gut ecosystem. Our proprietary CoreGuildTM Therapy platforms—Foundation Guild Analysis (FGA), Foundation Guild Transplantation (FGT), and Foundation Guild Nutrition (FGN)—are designed to identify, enrich, and promote beneficial microbial guilds that combat gut dysbiosis and systemic inflammation. We are advancing clinical-stage programs and precision nutrition products in multiple countries to address conditions including type 2 diabetes, diabetic kidney disease, and other chronic unmet medical needs.
Learn more about Notitia Biotechnologies

Matthew Tamasi, PhD
Chief Executive Officer of Plexymer

Plexymer is revolutionizing biologic therapeutics by developing autonomous laboratories for drug formulation. A Rutgers University spin-out company, Plexymer utilizes an AI-driven robotic platform to perform end to end scientific research & development and discover novel formulations for biologic therapeutics. Focusing on enabling at-home treatment options for immunotherapies, they are applying their platform to autonomously re-formulate monoclonal antibody therapies to move from IV-infusion to at-home self-administration dosage forms. Further, Plexymer seeks to dramatically reduce the typical development timeline of biologic formulation from over a year to months and use AI molecular profiles to de-risk therapies during clinical trials and manufacturing.
Learn more about Plexymer

Anders B. Laursen, PhD
Co-founder and CEO of RenewCO₂

RenewCO₂ develops electrocatalytic technology (eCUT) that transforms CO₂ into high-value fuels and chemicals using only water and electricity. Their proprietary catalyst enables the energy-efficient production of synthetic fuels and chemicals. eCUT is designed for flexible, distributed deployment, allowing industrial partners to localize production, stabilize supply chains, and reduce exposure to volatile markets. The system’s modularity and compatibility with existing infrastructure make it ideal for on-site chemical and fuel manufacturing, offering a reliable and scalable alternative to traditional petrochemical routes.
Learn more about RenewCO₂

Danielle Dick, PhD
Director, Rutgers Addiction Research Center, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Thrive Genetics

Thrive Genetics offers the first evidence-based technology platform integrating genomic, behavioral, and environmental data to unlock personalized addiction risk profiles. Our vision is to end the addiction epidemic by bringing the latest scientific advances to individuals, patients, and medical providers to enable personalized decision support healthcare strategies.
Learn more about Thrive Genetics

Tunde Lawrence, MD, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO, Larada Therapeutics

Larada Therapeutics Inc. is a clinical stage, phase 1-ready, with lead asset LAR-101, that is fast-acting, long-lasting ophthalmic solution for critical unmet medical needs in ocular surface diseases (dry eye diseases – DED) that currently have poor or no standard of care (SoC), and those with difficult-to-treat or no approved therapies.
Learn more about Larada Therapeutics

Amrit Khalsa, PhD
Vice President of Finance and Business Operations, Queens Carbon

Queens Carbon seeks to accelerate the transition to sustainable cement and concrete through pioneering breakthrough technology that can produce carbon-neutral cementitious materials from industry-standard feedstocks, without a green premium.
Learn more about Queens Carbon

F. Javier Diez, PhD 
Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering; co-founder, SubUAS

SubUAS LLC, based in Somerset, New Jersey, is a small business specializing in advanced unmanned systems capable of seamless operation across air, surface, and underwater environments. Its flagship platform, the Naviator, is multi-domain operation vehicle. This dual-environment UAS/UUV that transitions from flying to swimming is serving critical commercial missions such us oil and gas, renewal energy, bridge inspection, port inspection, water quality monitoring but also defense missions in ISR, ASW, MCM, and maritime domain awareness. SubUAS combines innovative design with experience in DoD contracting and TRL 9 platforms.
Learn more about SubUAS

Signals of Change

Partho Sengupta, MD, DM, FACC, FASE
Henry Rutgers Professor of Cardiology, Chief of Cardiovascular Disease and Hypertension, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Chief of Cardiac Services, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
Learn more about Dr. Sengupta

Naveena Yanamala, MS, PhD, FASE
Associate Professor of Medicine, Section Chief, Clinical Research and AI Innovation, Director of Data Science and Machine Learning Research, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Director, Center for Innovation at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
Learn more about Dr. Yanamala

This presentation explores how emerging biosignal and imaging technologies—specifically ECG and wearable sensors, alongside pixel-level ultrasound imaging—are transforming early detection and prediction of cardiovascular disease. We bridge the gap between the electrical and structural intelligence of the heart, translating both signals and images into actionable, predictive insights to design care pathways.

Self-Limiting Electrospray Deposition of Advanced Coatings

Jonathan Singer, PhD
Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Associate Director of the New Jersey Advanced Manufacturing Institute
Learn more about Dr. Singer's Hybrid Micro/Nanomanufacturing Lab

Self-limiting electrospray deposition is a conformal and efficient means of depositing micron-scale coatings. I will present my lab’s work in understanding what makes a formulation compatible with this method and how we can use this understanding to reach any desired coating function.

Long Term Investment in Plant Breeding Yields Substantial Breakthroughs in Hazelnuts and Dogwoods

Thomas Molnar, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Plant Biology, Rutgers SEBS
Learn about Dr. Molnar's hazelnut advances and dogwood breeding.

A fungal disease called eastern filbert blight occurs naturally in the eastern United States that kills European hazelnut trees. This disease has made it impossible to grow this valuable and sustainable crop in our region. Our research at Rutgers on hazelnuts over the past 30 years allowed us to search the world for naturally occurring resistance to this disease and then through the art and science of plant breeding develop locally adapted, high-yielding hazelnuts for New Jersey’s farmers. While it took a couple decades of effort, we had tremendous success in this approach. Today, based on our new disease resistant cultivars, for example ‘Raritan’ and ‘Monmouth’ hazelnuts released in 2020, an eastern U.S. hazelnut industry is emerging for the first time in history!

Building on the ambitious breeding approach used for hazelnuts, we set out to develop new dogwoods for the ornamental landscape industry with bloom colors never before seen in the species. We achieved this by making wide crosses among different breeding lines of dogwoods within the long-term Rutgers legacy program started by Dr. Elwin Orton in the 1960s. By growing thousands of offspring from these wide crosses over about 10 years, we uncovered a highly coveted breakthrough: a vivid pink bloom in the Asian kousa dogwood species. This led to the release of the award-winning Scarlet Fire® dogwood and, more recently, Eternal Scarlet®, which features even darker pink blooms unlike any dogwood previously available. These new cultivars are carving out their own niche in the flowering tree market, adding a splash of pink color to the landscape in late spring—after most flowering trees have already dropped their blooms.

Microscale Thermal Sensing for Energy and Electronics

Amin Reihani, PhD
Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Graduate Faculty, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Learn more about Dr. Reihani

Our lab develops advanced thermal sensors and microscopy tools for energy storage and microelectronics. We present two recent technologies: (1) a thin-film anisotropic thermal conductivity sensor for real-time Li-ion battery diagnostics, which correlates 3D depth-resolved thermal transport properties with the battery cell’s State of Health and State of Charge for applications in EVs, stationary energy storage, and defense; and (2) a spatially aware thin-film sensor (developed in collaboration with Prof. Ramanathan’s group) that employs quantum materials integrated onto cell electrodes to detect sub-millimeter hotspots in large-format batteries within seconds, providing a robust in-cell solution for early anomaly detection and thermal runaway prevention.

Next Generation Stem Cell-Based Platform Technology with Broad Biomedical Applications

Arash Haterfi, PharmD, PhD
Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Learn more about Dr. Haterfi's Lab

Technology: A next-generation, clinically translatable stem cell platform that is hypoimmunogenic, readily expandable, monoclonal, and built with intrinsic safety and real-time traceability.
Significance: This platform will serve as an allogeneic, donor-independent cell-based system that can be tailored to deliver a diverse range of biologics, including enzymes, proteins, and antibodies. Its versatility enables broad applicability across multiple biomedical fields, including cancer, autoimmune disorders, metabolic diseases, and tissue regeneration.
Impact: This platform can be seamlessly translated from preclinical into clinical settings without the need for extensive modifications or manipulations. This seamless transition from bench to bedside underscores its transformative potential to advance next-generation cell-based therapeutics and accelerate their integration into clinical practice.

Bioprospecting Weeds for Growth Promotional Microbes for Crop Plants

James White, PhD
Professor, Department of Plant Biology
Learn more about Dr. White

James White’s lab seeks to identify endophytes (internal non-pathogenic microbes) in plants and other eukaryotic organisms (including mosses, liverworts and fungi) that play roles in facilitating ecological adaptation of hosts to their environments and enhance survival. From a practical perspective, this research is to identify microbes that may be used in crops to reduce need for agrochemical applications, improve plant growth, improve tolerance of crops to biotic and abiotic stress, and improve tolerance to diseases. Further, we have identified a process (termed rhizophagy cycle) in roots whereby plants absorb microbes from soils, oxidize them and thereby extract nutrients from them. Efforts in the lab continue to focus on understanding how the rhizophagy process works.

Continuous Manufacturing System for Rapid Development of Sterile Liquid Products

Fernando Muzzio, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Learn more about Professor Muzzio

An innovative system that can accelerate the development of a formulation and a manufacturing process for a sterile liquid product from months to days.

Continuous Multimodal Biomarker Fusion for Human-on-the-Loop Vital Sign Monitoring via Hybrid Analog-Digital Machine Learning

Dario Pompili, PhD
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers CPS Lab 
Learn more about the Pompili CPS Lab

Current vital sign monitoring solutions face fundamental limitations: invasive methods provide accuracy but cannot operate continuously, while non-invasive approaches enable continuous monitoring but lack precision. The critical need for multimodal biomarker fusion arises from the spatial and temporal variability of different biomarkers at different body locations and timeframes. Our technology addresses these challenges through a novel human-on-the-loop multimodal wearable sensing platform that combines the accuracy of invasive biomarker detection with the continuity of non-invasive monitoring via hybrid analog-digital Machine Learning (ML). Specifically, our innovation consists in an all-analog supervised ML implementation using memristor crossbar arrays and Analog Joint Source-Channel Coding (AJSCC) with space-filling curve compression that reduces power consumption by 2+ orders of magnitude compared to digital approaches while maintaining high accuracy, thus enabling continuous wearable operation with <20μW power consumption. As an example, this technology can enable transformative applications in healthcare, workforce optimization, and mission-critical environments where individual and team stress monitoring is essential for safety and performance. Our multimodal biomarker platform extends beyond stress assessment to enable mood detection, sleep quality assessment, alcohol/food disorder monitoring, glucose tracking for diabetics, and prosthetic malfunction detection, addressing the broader healthcare transition from reactive, hospital-centered to preventive, patient-centered care.

An Antioxidant Gene Therapy to Prevent Hearing Loss

P. Ashley Wackym, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Learn more about Dr. Wackym

Todd M. Mowery, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Learn more about Dr. Mowery

Noise-induced and drug-induced hearing loss affect millions of patients each year, yet no FDA-approved therapy exists to prevent the permanent damage they cause. Our team has developed a first-in-class AAV gene therapy platform that overexpresses the three endogenous superoxide dismutase antioxidant enzymes—SOD1, SOD2, and SOD3—to protect the inner ear from oxidative injury. In multiple preclinical models, including noise exposure, cisplatin chemotherapy, and aminoglycoside antibiotics, AAV-SOD therapy provides robust preservation of hair cells, synapses, and auditory/hearing function. This work establishes a generalizable oxidative-resilience platform with clear translational potential for protecting sensory systems in at-risk patients. The presentation will highlight the therapeutic mechanism, preclinical efficacy data, IP protection/coverage, and the roadmap toward IND-enabling studies and future clinical trials.

Novel Computational Algorithm for Mechanism-centric Biomarkers of Treatment Response in Cancer

Antonina Mitrofanova, PhD
Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor, Rutgers School of Health Professions (SHP), and Deputy Director, Rutgers Center for Biomedical Informatics and Health AI (BMIHAI)
Learn more about the Mitrofanova Lab

We have developed a novel computational algorithm TR-2-PATH that reconstructs first-of-its kind mechanism-centric regulatory network, which connects molecular pathways to their upstream transcriptional regulatory programs, and prioritizes them as markers of therapeutic resistance in cancer. Such network offers a novel way to identify biomarkers that are mechanisms-centric, rather than based on individual genes or alterations - a new way to identify functional interactions and valuable therapeutic targets. As a proof of concept, we have applied TR-2-PATH to metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Network mining step addressed a knowledge gap of multi-collinearity among upstream transcriptional regulators (TRs) and identified TR groups that collaborate to regulate downstream pathways. Interrogating this network with signatures of resistance to Enzalutamide, a second-generation androgen-deprivation drug commonly administered to mCRPC, identified a collaboration between NME2 TR program and MYC molecular pathways as a biomarker of primary resistance to Enzalutamide.

Transforming How We Screen for Infectious Diseases Through Rapid Antigen Testing

Bobby Brooke Herrera, PhD
Assistant Professor of Global Health
Learn more about BB Herrera Lab

We’ve built a next-generation pipeline that can generate monoclonal antibodies against new or re-emerging pathogens in weeks instead of months, turning discovery into deployable diagnostics almost in real time. Using an optofluidic single-cell platform, we isolate and clone antigen-specific plasma cells directly from immunized mice, producing high-affinity antibodies that outperform commercial standards. In our prototype for hepatitis C, this platform yielded antibody pairs capable of screening acutely infected patients with high sensitivity and specificity, rivaling PCR but requiring no instruments. The same approach can be rapidly adapted to new viruses, enabling on-demand creation of field-ready antigen tests during outbreaks.