I came to Duke in 2011 to begin a biomedical engineering Ph.D. in the laboratory of Ashutosh Chilkoti. I was particularly drawn to the translational nature of his lab’s research on novel biomaterials and drug delivery. It didn’t take long to realize that I was a small fish in a brilliant pond teeming with innovative talent, supported by cutting-edge resources and world-class faculty. Duke’s rigorous academic environment developed my resilience and challenged me to adopt a growth mindset, attributes that would prove invaluable for my future as an entrepreneur.
After I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis in 2017, Professor Chilkoti presented me with a unique opportunity to start a company. We founded Isolere Bio with the vision to revolutionize the manufacturing of advanced therapeutics and vaccines with a more efficient and scalable purification technology. The dream was to see this technology broaden global access to life-saving therapies.
Throughout this entrepreneurial journey, I have carried the values instilled in me at Duke and relied on its incredible network and resources. Several of my employees, mentors and advisers came from Duke, spanning the schools of engineering, medicine and business. Duke’s Office for Translation and Commercialization was a key partner and its BRiDGE incubator in downtown Durham was Isolere’s first home, providing affordable lab space for generating critical proof-of-concept data. Over the past seven years, Isolere has weathered fundraising, a pandemic, a strategic pivot, two moves into successively larger spaces with manufacturing capacity, two product launches, first purchase orders, and an acquisition and integration into a Fortune 500 company. When I receive requests to give lectures or meet with budding entrepreneurs over coffee, I am both humbled and honored to find myself in a position to pay it forward to the next generation seeking to make their own positive impact on the world. It is a testament to the enduring influence of this remarkable institution.