newsletter - johns hopkins university · in this issue of the johns hopkins technology ventures...

Every day at Johns Hopkins, our deeply talented faculty, staff and students develop innovations with the potential to benefit people all over the world—from as far away as India to right here in our own backyard in Baltimore. Our mission at FastForward and Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures is to enable these amazing technologies to come to life and—in the process—to build a robust ecosystem that supports even more innovation.

Fiscal year 2015 was a busy one for Johns Hopkins researchers, physicians and employees, who submitted a staggering 500 invention disclosures to the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures office—more than a 10 percent increase from last year. This

significant number reflects the innovative ecosystem within Johns Hopkins and lays the groundwork for potential products, services and know-how to benefit the public.

In this issue of the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures Newsletter, we highlight recent events and a few technologies and collaborations that demonstrate the true range of the innovative work being done at Johns Hopkins. From a plan for Baltimore’s first commercial hydroponic farm, to an international collaboration for drug discovery, to a medical device company with applications for the military and the developing world, read on to learn more about the exciting things happening here.

Social Innovation Lab Supports Innovations to Help Baltimore

A plan to build Baltimore’s first

commercial hydroponic farm;

a digital platform for Baltimore

residents to call attention to neighborhood

issues; a tool to help Internet novices,

especially the elderly, stay connected with

their communities and families—what do

these have in common?

All were developed by participants of The

Johns Hopkins University’s Social Inno-

vation Lab, an early-stage incubator for

innovative nonprofits and mission-driven

companies whose technologies address

pressing social issues in Baltimore and

beyond. The program, which just completed

its fourth year, held its annual Impact and

Innovation Forum Demo Day on April 27.

This year’s cohort of emerging social enter-

prises addressed challenges in the areas of

medicine, food, community and technology.

“The Social Innovation Lab is a place where

positive ideas for making Baltimore and

the world a better place can take root and

grow,” says Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor

to the president of The Johns Hopkins

University.

“Now more than ever, we know we need to

address the challenges we face right here in

our own backyard, and many in this year’s

Social Innovation Lab cohort are tackling

these issues head on,” Wyskiel says.

Continued on page 9

ISSUE #4 JULY 2015

IN THIS ISSUE

Hopkins BME/CBID Design Day 2015

P2

App to Teach Sight-Reading

P4

HealthCare Collaborate

P7

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE2015 DreamIt Health Baltimore (P3)

Novel Drug Delivery System (P5)

Hopkins-MedImmune Collaboration (P5)

Hopkins-Bayer Collaboration (P7)

FastForward News (P10)

AND MORE

NEWSLETTER

Members of the 2015 Social Innovation Lab cohort

| 2

JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER

This year’s graduate teams developed the

following products:

• An assistive device for non-image-guided central venous access

• CardiON: a home monitoring system for heart failure management

• DrinkSync: a hydration status monitor for chronic patients

• A neonatal vital signs monitoring system

• Renalert: a real-time monitor for acute kidney injury

• Rural Health Kiosk: a system for providing primary care to rural India

• A training system for vaginal examination and fetal head assessment

• Tremtex: neurostimulation devices for the management of Parkinson’s disease symptoms

The undergraduate teams developed:

• A laparoscopic fascia closure device

• A novel assistive device for lower limb prostheses

• A novel stem cell delivery device

• A novel technology to mitigate scissoring gait in cystic fibrosis patients

• A novel tracheal stent

• A self-contained uterine contraction monitor for low-resource clinical settings

• A surgical tool to reduce complications associated with spinal revision surgery

• An early screening tool for preterm labor

• Pranapulse: a deskilled EKG for low-resource clinical settings

• Regulaire: a closed-loop oxygen

controller for premature infants

• SpiroSense: a deskilled spirometer for

low-resource settings

• TenoSlice: a novel tool to harvest tendons

• The CITT Kit: a kit of deskilling contraceptive implantation and removal procedures

Students Present Med-Tech, Global Health Solutionsat Johns Hopkins BME/CBID Design Day 2015

More than 100 Johns Hopkins stu-

dents spent the past year develop-

ing medical technology and global

health innovations that address some of

today’s most pressing health care issues. Their

products included a spirometer, SpiroSense,

that helps diagnose respiratory conditions

of patients in developing countries, and a

device, DrinkSync, for measuring hydration in

patients suffering from chronic ailments.

The 21 teams—eight graduate and 13 un-

dergraduate—presented their innovations at

the sixth annual Johns Hopkins Biomedical

Engineering Design Day on May 5.

“Design Day 2015 was a very special one for

us,” says Youseph Yazdi, assistant professor of

biomedical engineering at The Johns Hopkins

University and executive director of the Cen-

ter for Bioengineering Innovation and Design

(CBID). “We dedicated fundraising during the

day to maternity clinics in Nepal who host our

CBID students each year and who are dealing

with the aftermath of the recent earthquake,”

he adds.

This past year, some students designed

medical technologies for the U.S. market,

while others created global health products

for use in developing countries. For technol-

ogies to be used in the U.S., teams worked

with Johns Hopkins clinicians who acted as

advisors, while teams working on devices

for developing countries were assisted by

corporate sponsors and nonprofits, such as

Jhpiego, an international health organization

affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University.

Global health students traveled to places as

far away as Nepal and India for research and

development.

Participants in the 2015 BME/CBID Design Day include students from the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering

| 3

ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015

Health IT Entrepreneurs Showcase Startups at Capstone Event Co-Sponsored by Johns Hopkins

After weeks of intense work, the six

teams were ready. Some partici-

pants had moved to Baltimore from

hundreds of miles away, many had lost track

of the number of all-nighters they’d pulled,

and all were excited about their ideas to use

21st-century technology to solve a variety of

health care issues.

The six startup teams formed the cohort for

this year’s DreamIt Health Baltimore 2015

accelerator program, a four-month intensive

boot camp for health information technology

entrepreneurs co-sponsored by Johns Hop-

kins. On May 13, “Demo Day,” the startups

presented their health care solutions and fu-

ture plans to an audience of industry leaders,

possible investors and potential customers.

“Demo Day represents the culmination of four

months of hard work and determination,”

says Jason Hardebeck, managing director of

DreamIt Health Baltimore.

“Every one of these companies has validated

key business assumptions and developed

viable strategies to move from concept to

market,” Hardebeck adds. “I can’t wait to

watch these entrepreneurs ignite the second

stage of their rocketships.”

During the 16 weeks leading up to Demo Day,

the startup teams were provided with:

• Coaching: Each team was assigned a mentor and top-tier legal and accounting representation.

• Curriculum: Teams had access to curricula, such as Founders 101, designed to educate and motivate; a weekly speaker series; and office hours with industry, government, investor, academic and other experienced leaders.

• Connections: Teams received introductions to potential funders, partners and customers.

• Community: Teams worked in a collaborative space with access to a network of peers and other previous DreamIt companies.

• Challenge: Teams experienced a sense of urgency demanded by the limited four-month time frame of the program.

• Capital: Teams received up to $50,000 and in-kind software and Web hosting services.

This year’s cohort was also co-sponsored

by the University of Maryland, the Maryland

Department of Business and Economic De-

velopment, the Economic Alliance of Greater

Baltimore, the Abell Foundation and BioHealth

Innovation.

“Technology is dramatically changing the world

of health care,” says Christy Wyskiel, senior

advisor to the president at The Johns Hop-

kins University. “New health care information

technology companies need the right tools

to begin their path to success, and DreamIt

Health provides those tools. We are proud to

co-sponsor this world-class accelerator that

brings promising companies to Baltimore.”

The six DreamIt Health Baltimore 2015 startups

were:

• Baton (of Baltimore), a mobile app that ensures the seamless transition of patient care between hospital teams to avoid preventable medical errors

• Decisive Health Systems (of San Francisco), an online information and communication portal dedicated to helping doctors and their patients come together to make better, more informed decisions about patient care

• InsightMedi (of Spain), a photosharing network for health care professionals designed to enhance education and enable curbside consultations on a large scale

• Nomful (of Chicago), an app democratizing personalized nutrition support so that everyone can have access to a network of expert nutrition coaches

• Redox (of Madison, Wisconsin), which enables software developers to rapidly integrate with installed legacy health information technology systems through a modern application programming interface

• Sisu Global Health (of Grand Rapids, Michigan), which develops medical devices for the most challenging environments and markets; its first product enabled autotransfusion of hemorrhaging patients in the field with military and developing world applications

Opening remarks at the 2015 DreamIt Health Baltimore Demo Day event

| 4


The ability to sight-read—to play an unfamiliar piece of music

from start to finish, without stopping—is an important skill for

any pianist. Yet many piano students find it a difficult skill to

master—even students at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins

University, one of the world’s pre-eminent music schools.

Recognizing this need, Peabody Institute music theory professors

Travis Hardaway and Ken Johansen developed an app to help students

learn to sight-read.

“Many Peabody Institute students are expert performers, but some

of them sight-read at a lower level than what one might expect,”

Hardaway says.

Hardaway and Johansen worked with other Johns Hopkins research-

ers, including Peter Dziedzic, a software engineer and research data

systems manager for the Department of Neurology in the Johns Hop-

kins University School of Medicine, and Charles Limb, an associate pro-

fessor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins

University School of Medicine, who studies the neuroscience of music,

in structuring the app’s learning modules. Eye-tracking studies helped

shed light on how the eye reads music across a page.

The app, called Read Ahead, displays piano music on a tablet but takes

away the measures of the music, one by one, forcing a student to read

the music ahead of where he or she is playing. The app also contains

warmup exercises that train the eyes to look for patterns, the mind

to increase short-term memory and the hands to find notes without

looking at the keyboard.

Johansen and Hardaway tested the app with piano students in the

Baltimore area, and they found that it is best for students 10 years old

and up working five to 10 minutes a day on the exercises.

Read Ahead has six levels, with three sublevels and hundreds of exer-

cises at each level. It’s designed primarily for use on tablets, although

some of its features will work on smartphones. Johns Hopkins startup

BST Medical Solutions helped develop the app’s cross-platform func-

tionality.

The Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) office helped

Hardaway and Johansen turn Read Ahead into a viable product by as-

sisting with applications for patents and Maryland Innovation Initiative

grants. Hardaway and Johansen formed a company, Anacrusis LLC,

and received funding from all three phases of the Maryland program.

“JHTV really helped us work through the whole process. They were a

huge advocate for us,” Johansen says.

The JHTV office also encouraged Hardaway and Johansen to apply for

participation in the DC I-Corps program, which teaches entrepreneurs

how to develop ideas into successful products.

The I-Corps program “beat customer discovery into us,” Johansen

says, requiring them to interview music teachers to make sure they

were developing something teachers could use. Hardaway and Johan-

sen are also developing a teachers’ portal that will allow teachers to

check on student progress.

“Teachers all say that sight-reading is extremely important,” Johansen

says, “but they don’t always have time to work it into a piano lesson.”

To download a free trial of the app, visit Anacrusis’ website at

anacrusisllc.com

Peabody Professors Develop App to Teach Sight-Reading to Music Students

Ken Johansen and Travis Hardaway display their app, ReadAhead

| 5


Johns Hopkins Team Develops Novel Drug Delivery System

Drugs that must pass through

protective layers of mucus to deliver

treatment to organs of the body

are often not very effective, because the

mucus—a sticky, meshlike material—prevents

the drug from ever reaching its intended target.

But hope is on the horizon in the form of a

novel drug delivery system developed over

the past 15 years by a research team led by

Justin Hanes, director of the Center for Nano-

medicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns

Hopkins.

Hanes’s system packages drugs into nanopar-

ticles small enough to penetrate a mucus lay-

er through tiny openings in the sticky mesh,

and it gives those nanoparticles a minimally

adhesive coating that enables them to slide

through the mesh without getting stuck to

it. Kala Pharmaceuticals, a startup co-found-

ed by Hanes, is developing these coated

nanoparticles.

To develop the nonadhesive coating for the

nanoparticles, Hanes and his team studied

mucus-penetrating viruses, such as the Nor-

walk and human papilloma viruses. By 2007,

Hanes says, they had developed a coating

that could make a nanoparticle pass through

mucus “almost as if the mucus was water.”

A few years later, Hanes and his team joined

Peter McDonnell, director of the Wilmer Eye

Institute, and McDonnell’s team to apply the

technology to developing drugs that treat

conditions of the eye.

In clinical trials that took place this past win-

ter, Kala Pharmaceuticals tested how well the

system could deliver drugs prescribed to treat

dry eye and post-cataract surgery pain. To

reach their target, such drugs must pene-

trate the protective mucus layer that covers

the eye. According to Hanes, the trials were a

success.

The coated nanoparticles—called mucus-pen-

etrating particles, or MPPs—have wide-rang-

ing implications, with potential use for drug

delivery to many different organs, since mu-

cus is prevalent throughout the human body

as a barrier to infection, Hanes says.

The coating helps ensure a drug’s effective-

ness and reduce dosage levels. “Even with

less drug and a less frequent application of

the drug, you can still get just as good—or

better—effects,” because the drug isn’t being

caught in the mucus, Hanes says.

In developing the MPPs, Hanes and his

co-workers went against prevailing theory

that particles large enough to carry drugs

would be caught in the mucus rather than

pass through it.

Now, with several patents protecting its

system, Kala Pharmaceuticals is set to

dominate the field of mucus-penetrating

drug delivery.

Typical treatments for rheumatoid

arthritis target symptoms of the

disease—namely, the inflammation

that results when a patient’s immune system

attacks his or her body, particularly the joints.

But Felipe Andrade, associate professor of

medicine in the Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine, believes the field of

medicine can do better. He’s looking for a way

to halt a process called citrullination, which

turns one type of protein into another that, in

patients with rheumatoid arthritis, is attacked

by the immune system, causing inflammation.

If citrullination of these proteins could be

stopped in these patients, “it would be like

putting out the fire before it happens,”

Andrade says.

Andrade and his team of Johns Hopkins

researchers and students—including Erika

Darrah, assistant professor of medicine— are

working with a team of researchers from

MedImmune to find a way to control or stop

citrullination from causing inflammation.

They’re in their second year of a three-year

collaboration, and they’re hoping to get closer

to developing a therapy or drug that could

bring some relief to patients with rheumatoid

arthritis.

“We’re not yet at the drug development

stage, but we’re trying to find therapeutic

opportunities based on what we’re studying,”

Andrade says.

They know that patients with rheumatoid

arthritis have a specific type of antibody—

directed against peptidyl arginine deiminase

(PAD) 4—that increases the activity of

the enzyme responsible for starting the

citrullination process. They want to figure

out how that happens and how to stop PAD4

from causing citrullination, explains Andrade,

the leader for Johns Hopkins’s part of the

collaboration.

The collaboration is an equal partnership.

Together, researchers from MedImmune

and Johns Hopkins analyze data and make

suggestions on next steps.

It’s also a unique opportunity for Johns

Hopkins researchers. The drug development

industry approaches research with the goal

of developing novel therapies—a goal that

sometimes gets lost in the academic realm,

Andrade explains.

And support from industry gives academic

researchers the chance to work on something

that, Andrade says, might not otherwise be

supported in any other way.Read more about

this year’s mentors on the Johns Hopkins

Technology Ventures website at ventures.jhu.

edu/mentors-in-residence.

Felipe Andrade, associate professor of medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Felipe Andrade, associate professor of medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Johns Hopkins-MedImmune Collaboration Seeks to Stop Rheumatoid Arthritis Before It Happens

| 6


Johns Hopkins Biologists, IOCB Chemists Team Up for Drug Discovery

Johns Hopkins has proven expertise

in biological discovery and medicine,

while the Institute of Organic Chemistry

and Biochemistry (IOCB) in Prague, Czech Re-

public, employs more than 650 chemists and

biochemists. Put them together and you’ve

got a team perfectly positioned to make great

strides in small-molecule drug discovery.

This past spring, the Johns Hopkins Drug Dis-

covery (JHDD) program and the IOCB formal-

ized a translational collaboration to join forces

for drug discovery. The effort will be led by

Barbara Slusher, JHDD director and founder

and president of the Academic Drug Discov-

ery Consortium, an international collaborative

network of more than 100 university-led drug

discovery centers and programs.

JHDD is the largest integrated drug discovery

program on campus, responsible for trans-

lating basic science discoveries at Johns

Hopkins into novel small-molecule drug

therapies. Included in Slusher’s drug discovery

team are medicinal chemists, assay develop-

ers, pharmacologists, toxicologists and drug

metabolism experts.

The JHDD program began as the Johns

Hopkins Brain Science Institute’s NeuroTrans-

lational Drug Discovery Program, which

focused on the development of neuroscience

discoveries. Earlier this year, the program’s

team was tasked by the School of Medicine

with aiding development of discoveries in all

therapeutic areas, not just the brain.

But scaling up in scope required a corre-

sponding scaling up in size, and while Johns

Hopkins has plenty of biologists and special-

ists in the field of medicine, it doesn’t have

as many chemists. The IOCB is selectively

focused on chemistry and has a history of

successful drug translation, including its dis-

covery of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, one

of the most successful antiretroviral drugs on

the market, Slusher says.

The Johns Hopkins-IOCB collaboration,

therefore, is “a strategic marriage between

their expertise and capacity and ours,”

Slusher says. “This gives us the ability to

pursue more ideas than we could on our

own,” and it puts the collaboration’s medicinal

chemistry capacity on par with that of big

pharmaceutical companies.

The two institutions have been working

together on various projects for some years—

several joint patents have been filed—so the

formal collaboration is a natural extension of

the existing relationship.

In drug discovery, biologists identify condi-

tions of the body that could benefit from a

drug, and chemists develop drugs to target

that condition. Biologists then test the drugs

to see if the drugs inhibit the condition or not.

“Drug discovery is very much a team sport,”

Slusher says.

At JHDD, every week starts with a team meet-

ing between the two institutions. “We bring

biological target ideas, assays and expertise

in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics.

They bring medicinal chemistry expertise,

and we work as a team, communicating back

and forth along the path of drug discovery,”

Slusher explains.

The agreement will run for five years, after

which it will be renewable.

| 7


Johns Hopkins, Bayer HealthCare Collaborate to Develop Ophthalmic Therapies

Attendees at the Johns Hopkins – Bayer HealthCare collaboration kick-off eventAttendees at the Johns Hopkins – Bayer HealthCare collaboration kick-off event

The Johns Hopkins University and Bayer HealthCare entered

into a five-year collaboration agreement on June 15 to jointly

develop new ophthalmic therapies targeting retinal diseases.

The goal of the strategic research alliance is to accelerate the

translation of innovative approaches from the laboratory to the clinic,

ultimately offering patients new treatment options for several retinal

diseases.

Under the agreement, researchers at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns

Hopkins and Bayer HealthCare will jointly conduct research activities

evaluating new targets and disease mechanisms, drug delivery

technologies, and biomarkers for back-of-the-eye diseases with high

unmet medical need.

Both parties will contribute personnel and infrastructure to address

important scientific questions. Bayer HealthCare will have an option for

the exclusive use of the collaboration results.

“There is a critical need for new therapies that treat a variety of serious

diseases of the eye,” says Peter McDonnell, director of the Wilmer

Eye Institute and professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins

University School of Medicine. “Additional research will allow us the

opportunity to make significant advances in this area.”

The collaboration aims to discover and develop innovative drugs for

the treatment of serious back-of-the-eye diseases that affect many

people worldwide, such as:

• Age-related macular degeneration

• Diabetic macular edema

• Geographic atrophy

• Stargardt’s disease

• Retinal vein occlusion

“The Wilmer Eye Institute’s deep understanding of eye disease

biology and patient care and Bayer’s expertise in drug discovery and

development in ophthalmology complement each other perfectly,”

says Professor Andreas Busch, head of global drug discovery at Bayer

HealthCare and a member of Bayer HealthCare’s executive committee.

“We are pleased to partner with this renowned institute, which is

among the leading scientific and clinical institutions in ophthalmology

worldwide.”

Work on projects that are a part of this exciting collaboration will begin

later this summer.

| 8


Johns Hopkins Team Wins Entrepreneurs’ Choice Award at Venture Capital Competition

Johns Hopkins works not only to foster

startups whose products have the

potential to improve the well-being of

people all over the world, but also to produce

savvy investors with business acumen and a

strong sense of market dynamics.

Earlier this year, a team of Johns Hopkins

University graduate student investors-in-

training won the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award

at the 2015 mid-Atlantic regional final of the

Global Venture Capital Investment Competition

(VCIC), during which judges evaluate the

competencies of teams of student venture

capitalists.

Global VCIC takes place among graduate

students at more than 70 business schools

around the world. Teams of student venture

capitalists participate by competing in one of

12 regional finals held during the winter on

three continents to qualify for the Global VCIC

competition held in the spring. Throughout

the rounds of the competition, students act as

venture capitalists, evaluating real start-ups

and interacting with entrepreneurs. Actual

venture capitalists judge how well the student

venture capital teams evaluate the startups,

according to VCIC’s website.

At this year’s Global VCIC mid-Atlantic regional

final, hosted by Georgetown University’s

McDonough School of Business on Jan. 30, the

Johns Hopkins University team of Ali Afshar,

Christopher Bailey, Sean Grant, Tim Xu and

Kimi Yang ranked third in the meeting and

negotiations category in addition to winning

the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award. The team

was the first Johns Hopkins University VCIC

team to win that award. At VCIC competitions,

Entrepreneurs’ Choice award winners are

selected by entrepreneurs representing the

startups evaluated by the student venture

capital teams. For their Entrepreneurs’ Choice

award, the Johns Hopkins University team

received a recognition plaque, which now

hangs at The Johns Hopkins University Carey

Business School.

A week before the regional final, The Johns

Hopkins University hosted an internal

VCIC competition to determine a winner

to represent the university at that regional

competition. The winning team of Afshar,

Bailey, Grant, Xu and Yang competed against

13 other self-formed, multidisciplinary teams

of Johns Hopkins University graduate student

venture capitalists.

This internal competition was organized by

The Johns Hopkins University’s Innovation

Factory, a student-led organization promoting

entrepreneurship and innovation, and was

judged by nine venture capitalists from across

the country. The teams each evaluated four

startups affiliated with Johns Hopkins—

Quantified Care (specializing in medical

technology), Proscia (bioinformatics), Urban

Pastoral Collective (hydroponics) and Full

Society (payment applications).

Johns Hopkins’ team had only one week

to gear up for the Global VCIC mid-Atlantic

regional final after winning The Johns Hopkins

University’s internal VCIC competition, but they

pulled it off.

“The fact that our team won the

Entrepreneurs’ Choice award shows what a

multidisciplinary Johns Hopkins University

team can accomplish in short order,” says Jim

Liew, assistant professor of entrepreneurial

finance at the Carey Business School and

one of the participating judges. “I was

extremely impressed by their enthusiasm,

professionalism and intensity.”

From left to right: Christopher Bailey, Tim Xu, Sean Grant, Kimi Yang, Ali Afshar

| 9


For example, the Neighborhood Watch app,

developed in the lab this year by undergrad-

uate students Elana Stroud, a computer

science major, and Camilla Dohlman, a public

health studies major, aims to provide Balti-

more residents with a way to bring attention

to issues plaguing their communities. App us-

ers might, for example, propose ways in which

to revitalize a vacant lot, says Darius Graham,

the lab’s director.

The students behind Urban Pastoral, another

project this year, hope to create the first com-

mercial-scale, urban hydroponic farm to sup-

ply Baltimore schools with fresh produce and

Baltimore residents with green jobs, Graham

says. In the process, the students hope to find

ways to reduce the environmental impact of

large-scale industrial farming, eliminate the

need for pesticide use, increase the ability to

buy locally and provide job opportunities in

the Baltimore community.

This year’s cohort of emerging social ventures

included:

• Urban Pastoral (Julie Buisson and Mark Verdecia, graduate students at Carey Busi-ness School, and J. Reidy, who earned his master’s degree in business administration in 2015 from Carey): Building Baltimore’s

first commercial-scale, urban hydroponic farm.

• Aezon (Neil Rens, Tatiana Rypinski, Ned Samson and Ryan Walter, undergrad-uate students at the Whiting School of Engineering, and team): Creating a device and companion smartphone app to test for multiple illnesses and conditions, from sleep apnea to diabetes, without the assis-tance of a physician.

• Mustard Seed Pillow (Anwesha Majumder, a graduate student at Bloomberg School of Public Health): Redesigning a centu-ries-old pillow to support proper infant skull development.

• RetinEye (Whiting School of Engineering

graduate students Aaron Chang, Hanh Le and Allie Sibole and undergraduate student Monica Rex): Pairing traditional ophthalmic lenses with a smartphone app using new image technology to support low-cost glaucoma screenings where tra-ditional screening machines aren’t easily accessible.

• ShapeU (Seal-Bin Han, Jordan Matelsky and Richard Shi, undergraduate students at the Whiting School of Engineering): Harnessing the power of teamwork and social networking to help individuals exer-cise more and meet their health goals.

• Wodagro (Justin Falcone, an archaeolo-

gy undergraduate student at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences): Devel-oping a new type of green roof that aims to be more lightweight, energy-efficient and affordable than traditional green roof designs.

• WalkThrough (Rome Chopra, a finance graduate student at Carey Business School): Helping Internet novices, espe-cially the elderly, stay connected with their communities and families via a digital tool that helps conduct basic functions such as email, online banking and social media.

• Neighborhood Watch App (Elana Stroud, a computer science undergraduate student at the Whiting School of Engineering, and Camilla Dohlman, a public health studies undergraduate student at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences): Providing a digital platform for Baltimore residents to bring attention to issues in their neighborhoods.

• White River Medical Fellowship (Kevin Burns, a resident in the General Preventive Medicine Residency at the Bloomberg School of Public Health): Creating a path-way for new doctors to work and learn in hospitals serving rural and Native Ameri-can communities.

Johns Hopkins Faculty Members and Researchers Present Continued from page 1

NEW JHTV Inventor PortalGot an invention?

Submitting your invention disclosure is now easier than ever. Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures’ new user-friendly, simplified electronic portal includes fewer questions and forms, making invention disclosures less complex and time-consuming. Anyone with a JHED identification account can access the portal.

For questions or support, contact Tina Preston at 410-516-4561.

| 10


FastForward East to Quadruple in Size, Fuel Baltimore Tech Boom

NEWS

Official groundbreaking for 1812 Ashland Ave.Official groundbreaking for 1812 Ashland Ave.

The May 15 groundbreaking ceremony for Johns Hopkins

Technology Ventures’ new FastForward East location at 1812

Ashland Ave. was about more than just the much-needed

additional space the new location will provide the innovation hub.

The ceremony represented the robust growth of the Johns Hopkins

innovation culture that is driving economic development in Baltimore,

and it signified Baltimore’s strong prospects for becoming a home for

tech-savvy companies, offering a wide range of new jobs to Baltimore

residents and cultivating a booming, technology-based economy.

As Baltimore’s movers and shakers gathered that Friday morning—

standing room only—under a fluttering white tent beneath a clear blue

sky next to the 1812 Ashland Ave. construction site, there were no

clouds—real or metaphorical—to dampen the speakers’ ardor.

“This new, larger space for our FastForward East innovation hub will help

meet demand in the market for affordable space so that startups will

start and stay here in Baltimore,” Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor to the

president of The Johns Hopkins University, said during the ceremony.

Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake added that the mere

existence of waiting lists for desk and laboratory space at Johns Hopkins’

FastForward innovation hubs signified growth in Baltimore.

The new and larger innovation hub’s job creation potential was evident

throughout the ceremony, as the industrious hum of new construction

work rang out from the construction site, indicative of jobs already

created to construct the building.

“The cornerstone of a healthy community has got to be about jobs, and

the building we’re celebrating today is tied inextricably to job creation,”

said Ronald J. Daniels, president of The Johns Hopkins University, at the

ceremony.

The future FastForward East innovation hub will be across the street

from the current FastForward East, which occupies 6,000 square feet

in the Rangos Building at 855 N. Wolfe St. FastForward East opened

there in early 2015 to complement the original FastForward location

near the university’s Homewood campus, but it didn’t take long before

names started piling up on the waiting lists to which the mayor referred.

| 11


FastForward space always has been at a

premium.

The new seven-level, 165,000-square-

foot, $65.6 million building is scheduled for

completion by fall 2016. FastForward East will

occupy 25,000 square feet and will offer open,

communal spaces encouraging spontaneous

collaboration and impromptu cross-pollination

of ideas among FastForward innovators, to

include both early- and later-stage companies.

But even 25,000 square feet ultimately may

not be enough, if Baltimore continues along

such a fast-paced technological trajectory.

As Jamar Whitehead, a fourth-grade student

at Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins

Partnership School in East Baltimore, noted in

his speech at the ceremony, “in a few years,

[Johns Hopkins] may need another one of

these buildings because my classmates and I

have some ideas of our own.”

Other speakers at the ceremony included

Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns

Hopkins Hospital and Health System and

executive vice president of Johns Hopkins

Medicine; Paul B. Rothman, dean of the

medical faculty of the Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins

Medicine; Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, a

representative of East Baltimore in Maryland’s

General Assembly; The Rev. LaReesa Smith-

Horn, pastor for East Baltimore’s Christ United

Methodist Church; Scott Levitan, development

director for Forest City – New East Baltimore

Partnership, the building’s developer; and

Raymond Skinner, president and CEO of East

Baltimore Development Inc., an organization

revitalizing the neighborhood.

About 100 Johns Hopkins employees—including many nurses—attended a Nurses Week happy hour at FastForward East (855 N. Wolfe St.,

Baltimore) on May 6 to celebrate nursing and to learn about some of the ways in which technology is revolutionizing the field. The event was hosted

by Microsoft, a sponsor of the FastForward accelerator program.

Johns Hopkins UniversityOffice of Technology Ventures100 North Charles Street, 5th floor

Baltimore, MD 21201

Phone: 410.516.8300

Fax: 410.516.4411

newsletter - johns hopkins university · in this issue of the johns hopkins technology ventures...

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