Enabling Innovation: Incubators and Government Support

You're Invited: A Pivotal Panel Discussion on Fostering Innovation with Incubators and Government Support

Incubators, universities, hospitals, and government grants play crucial roles in nurturing and supporting entrepreneurs and innovative ideas. By providing resources, mentorship, and financial support, these mechanisms empower individuals and startups to transform their ideas into impactful solutions. We will explore how incubators and grants can catalyze innovation, drive economic development, and shape the future of healthcare.

Join us for a compelling panel discussion as we delve into the strategies, best practices, and success stories demonstrating the power of public and private sector collaboration in fostering innovation for improving global health. Following the introduction, we will have an open moderated Q&A discussion where audience comments and questions will be essential to the conversation.

Wei Tao, Ph.D., Director,

Dr. Wei Tao is a distinguished educator and trailblazer in biotech entrepreneurship and venture investment. As the Director of Blavatnik Harvard Life Lab, he fosters collaboration within the Harvard innovation ecosystem to propel translational research and help promising young startup companies expedite their discovery and development of novel therapeutics.

Russell J. Barron, Principal,

Russ has a 50-year career as an IP trial lawyer and counsellor, advisor to private equity funds, executive in life sciences startups and investor in early-stage companies.

Marc Filerman, Managing Partner, HealthTech Life Sciences

Marc Filerman is Managing Partner, Life Sciences at the Start2 Group (German Entrepreneurship) – an accelerator organization supporting de-risking, growth, and international scale of startups.

Michal Preminger, Ph.D., MBA, Reginal Head Innovation, East North America,

Michal leads the Johnson & Johnson Innovation team to curate, cultivate, partner with, and invest in the region's most promising, early-stage healthcare innovations, spanning pharmaceutical and medical technology.

Jeff Stevens, Head, LaunchLabs, Vice President,

Jeff is the Head of Alexandria LaunchLabs, Boston's premier biotech incubator at One Kendall Square, where he is responsible for operations, strategic programming, and business development. As a Vice President of Alexandria's Science & Technology team, he co-leads the group's venture investment activities in Boston, focusing on early-stage companies.

Russell J. Barron, Principal,

Russ has had a 50-year career as an IP trial lawyer and counsellor, advisor to private equity funds, executive in life sciences startups and investor in life sciences early-stage companies.

Most recently, he served for 10 years as the general counsel of Velico Medical, Inc. a clinical, early commercialization medical device company supported by BARDA. For several years he was also the COO of Velico. Russ recently represented Start2 Group, Inc. in negotiating an innovative contract for a new BARDA program called, BARDA Accelerator Network 2.

Russ was long time partner and a founder of the IP practice of Foley & Lardner, where led the IP litigation practice group.

Russ is a member of the neutrals panel of Middlesex Mediation LLC, which provides ADR services in a wide range of circumstances including intellectual property disputes.

He earned a BA in History of Science at Princeton and his law degree from NYU.

Marc Filerman, Managing Partner, HealthTech Life Sciences

Marc Filerman is Managing Partner, Life Sciences at the Start2 Group (German Entrepreneurship) – an accelerator organization supporting de-risking, growth, and international scale of startups. With over 30 years in healthtech, Marc has expertise in commercialization and innovation acceleration, and broad experience leading marketing and sales for large companies and startups. Marc co-founded a molecular imaging diagnostics startup, was Chief Commercial Officer at an NIH-funded hometech venture, and spent three years doing translational commercialization at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital. Prior to that, Marc held multiple corporate leadership positions including VP of Global Marketing at iCAD, Director of Global Marketing and Strategy at Hill-Rom, and Group Director of Marketing at Smith & Nephew, where he started a $30M operating room design and integration business.

Marc holds MS and BS engineering degrees from MIT, did his graduate work at the MIT AI Lab, and started his career at HP as an engineer designing ultrasound imaging equipment.

Michal Preminger, Ph.D., MBA, Regional Head Innovation, East North America,

Michal leads the Johnson & Johnson Innovation team to curate, cultivate, partner with and invest in the most promising, early-stage healthcare innovations in the region, spanning across pharmaceutical medical technology.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Michal served as the Executive Director of Harvard University's Office of Technology Development (OTD) Harvard Medical School site, where she was responsible for development and commercialization of technologies emerging from research at HMS laboratories and for the strategy and execution of all industry collaborations. She negotiated agreements with major biopharma, life sciences, food and cosmetics companies to advance the translation of discoveries into products and create a revenue-generating product pipeline and worked with scientific founders and investors to create new startup companies.

Before joining Harvard University's OTD in 2005, Michal held several senior business and technology development leadership positions in the biotech and tech industries and co-founded a biotechnology startup. She served on several Board of Directors of Med Tech, Diagnostics, and Biotech companies of both early and commercial stage.

Currently, Michal serves on the Board of Directors for MassBio and the Kendall Square Association (KSA) and Scientific Advisory Board at FutuRx Accelerator and Binah Initiative at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Michal holds a bachelor's degree in Medicine from Hadassah Medical School, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; MsC and PhD in Biological Sciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Jeff Stevens, Head, LaunchLabs, Vice President,

Jeff is the Head of Alexandria LaunchLabs, Boston's premier biotech incubator at One Kendall Square where he is responsible for operations, strategic programming, and business development. As a Vice President on Alexandria's Science & Technology team, he co-leads the group's venture investment activities in Boston, focusing on early-stage companies. Prior to joining Alexandria in early 2019, Jeff was Vice President of Growth Operations & Strategy at PureTech Health, where he helped build new companies with an eye on operations, pipeline prioritization, competitive intelligence, and storytelling.

Jeff has extensive knowledge of healthcare systems and public/private innovative companies around the world from his long tenure as an analyst + portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments. He began his career at Roche in prescription drug commercialization and business development for their US affiliate.

Jeff has a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Trinity College and a Master of Business Administration in Finance & Management from New York University.

Wei Tao, Ph.D., Director,

Dr. Wei Tao is a distinguished educator and trailblazer in biotech entrepreneurship and venture investment. As the Director of Blavatnik Harvard Life Lab, he fosters collaboration within the Harvard innovation ecosystem and cultivates partnerships with diverse stakeholders to propel translational research and help promising young startup companies to expedite their discovery and development of novel therapeutics.

With a distinguished decade-long venture investment career in Silicon Valley, Dr. Tao specialized in early-stage enterprise software, healthtech, and biotech ventures before transitioning to academia. Prior to his venture career, he played pivotal roles in several successful biotech ventures, accumulating invaluable operational experience. Notably, Dr. Tao authored the popular IDT's web-based OligoAnalyzer early in his career, showcasing his pioneering contributions to life sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Genetics under the mentorship of Dr. Fassler at the University of Iowa.

Host or Publisher New England Healthcare Executive Network