Anupendra Sharma, Founder and Course Mentor
Anupendra is Partner at Siemens Venture Capital in Boston, investing in healthcare (devices, diagnostics, software and services). Anupendra founded the Startup Leadership Program, a global program for educating startup CEOs, which now has 500 Fellows and 300 startups that have raised $150MM. Anupendra was an investment banker at JPMorgan and Citigroup, M&A specialist at Siemens, and helped set up Ford Motor in India and China. He co-founded Mobile Medics, winner of the 2006 by the Global Social Venture Competition, which became an hour-long documentary by Japan Broadcasting Corporation, and was later taken over by Piramal Corporation. Anupendra also started a shrimp farm in Belize, Central America. He holds an MBA from Cornell, MS in Accounting & Finance from Manchester Business School, MS in Economics and Bachelors in Instrumentation Engineering from BITS Pilani, India, and grew up in a family of medical doctors.

Andrew Ayoob, Co-Director
Andrew is a PhD student in the Harvard/MIT SHBT program, working on biomaterial drug delivery strategies to the inner ear.  He is conducting his thesis research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Robert Langer and Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein of Draper Laboratory.  He is also a biomedical engineering research fellow at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. Andrew completed his undergraduate studies in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, completing research in the area of microfluidic free field protein isolation. He currently serves as the treasurer and is a general partner of the Irish Eagle Investment Partners, a young investment group interested in biomedical, renewable energy, and modern manufacturing equity assets.

​Sofia Ribeiro Carlton, Co-Director 
​Sofia is a PhD student at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Her thesis work focuses on the regulation of brain metabolism and its impact on neuronal excitability and seizure sensitivity. Sofia holds a B.Sc and M.Sc in Biochemistry from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. For her M.Sc., Sofia did research on protein-protein interactions between plant proteases with biotechnological applications at Biocant, the first biotech company incubator in Portugal. Sofia's strong interest on the life sciences industry was nurtured by taking the HIC course in 2013. She has helped organize HIC for 3 years now, which is one of her most favorite Fall activities.

Harshal Zope, Communications
Harshal is a postdoctoral fellow at laboratory of nanomedicine, Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital (HMS/BWH), Boston, USA. In the group of Prof. Omid Farokhzad and Prof. Jinjun Shi, he is developing a novel nanotechnology platform for HIV vaccine and cancer therapy. He obtained a 5 years integrated M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology as well as M.Tech degree in Biotechnology. He pursued his research interest by joining Leiden University for his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Alexander Kros. During his PhD, he worked on peptide based functional biomaterials for various applications such as understanding membrane fusion, drug delivery and vaccine development. 

Hannah Goldberg, Logistics
Hannah is a PhD student in the Harvard/MIT Speech Hearing Bioscience and Technology program. She previously worked with Dr. Daniel Kohane in the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Boston Children’s Hospital focusing on the optimization of a single-application hydrogel drug delivery system to noninvasively treat Otitis Media. In 2016 she was accepted into Harvard's Therapeutics Graduate Program to further focus on pharmacology, toxicology and drug discovery. Her concentration in translational science has brought her to the Holt/Géléoc Lab to explore the effectiveness of gene therapy as an approach to restore auditory functioning in models of human deafness. Hannah completed her undergraduate studies in Neuroscience at Wellesley College. Before attending graduate school, she conducted research in the computational neuroscience lab of Dr. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham studying the mechanisms underlying auditory attention.

Paola Abello, Director of Innovation
Paola Abello, MBA, is Director of Innovation at the Center for Primary Care. In 2015 Paola designed and launched InciteHealth, a one year intensive accelerator for primary care start-ups. Teams from around the country received funding, mentorship and participated in entrepreneurship and design thinking training as well as took part in three pitch events during the year. Currently, the Center’s innovation work is focused on providing education, training and support to medical students, post-docs and PhDs interested in creating health care startups. Paola is also working on expanding the medical school’s initiatives around innovation and entrepreneurship.

Leah Riley, Program Coordinator of Innovation
 Leah Riley is the InciteHealth Program Coordinator at the Center for Primary Care.  In this role, Leah supports the Center’s innovation programs. Leah graduated from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and Nutrition.
Previously, Leah worked as a Facilitator and Coordinator at a Sapient, a Boston based advertising agency.  Here she developed, coordinated and facilitated training programs all over the United States and Europe.  Prior to Sapient, Leah worked in the Healthcare Information Management industry.

Rohan Gidvani, Chair of the Entrepreneurship Committee, Dental Postdoc Association.
Rohan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at HMS. His focus is on identifying entrepreneurial opportunities to translate innovative emerging neurobiology and Health IT to address gaps in mental health care. Rohan serves as Chair of the Entrepreneurship Committee within the Harvard Medical/Dental Postdoc Association (HMPA), building resources to centrally involve researchers/medical students in venture creation. Rohan’s PhD focussed on elucidating the mechanisms underlying DNA replication and aberrant cell division. Following this, Rohan moved to India to take on a role as a Marketing Brand Manager at Abbott Labs, where he launched and managed a generic anti-epileptic product by developing novel processes and a campaign that drew heavily from marshaling his transferable scientific skills towards commercially-oriented solutions