Richa Agrawal ’27 MBA

Richa is interested in the convergence of research, design, and commercialization, specifically how early-stage ventures are evaluated across technical merit, market timing, and founder narrative. She has been considering how effective leadership often depends on sound judgment under uncertainty rather than complete information. She would choose to spend a day inside a frontier AI lab, observing how teams balance experimentation against deployment pressures.

Unofficial title: Chief Curiosity Officer.

Jack Chen ’26

Jack was drawn to Yale Ventures for its integrated approach to research, entrepreneurship, funding, and community, the kind of cross-disciplinary execution he hopes to build a career around. This summer, he is developing skills in large-scale event logistics, registration systems, and cross-industry coordination. 

Unofficial title: Innovation Event Builder and Cross-Team Connector.

Anjali Deshpande ’27 MBA

Anjali was drawn to the opportunity to work alongside faculty and founders translating research into impact, particularly through Yale Ventures' faculty innovation leadership. She has been considering how successful innovation often depends more on timing and distribution than on the underlying idea itself. She would choose to spend a day at Anthropic, observing how a team balances speed against deliberateness. 

Unofficial title: Chief Enthusiasm Officer.

Zoe Dong ’27 MPH

Zoe is drawn to the intersection of research and creativity, particularly entrepreneurship and the range of backgrounds represented among the people who build within it. This summer, she is focused on gaining hands-on experience with early-stage commercialization, while independently studying social psychology. 

Unofficial title: Director of Calm Under Pressure.

Bryn Erickson ’27

Bryn was drawn to Yale Ventures by its mission to translate novel ideas into real-world outcomes, and by the opportunity to combine her interests in science, communication, and strategy. This summer, she is working with the Innovation Community team to help document and present the people and projects that contribute to Yale Ventures' ecosystem. Her primary interest is the intersection of healthcare and technology, with a focus on building systems that are more equitable and accessible. She is also conducting an independent research project examining the metabolic shift embryos undergo during development. She recommends Lovable, a web application builder that allows individuals with limited coding experience to construct functional platforms. 

Unofficial title: Chief Content Officer (her main responsibility is the social media pages).

Ellie Gang ’27 MPH

Ellie joined Yale Ventures primarily for its community, and has developed a strong interest in how artificial intelligence will reshape industries such as healthcare, robotics, and financial technology. She is currently leading a small team supporting a Yale faculty member with market sizing, and would choose to spend a day at SpaceX. She recommends The Power Law to anyone interested in how venture capital functions in practice.

Logan Gillingham ’28 ARCH

Logan brings a background in nonprofit development and a longstanding interest in accessibility, both social and architectural, into a summer focused on design and expanding their marketing capabilities. As part of an M.Arch cohort, Logan is currently helping construct a house that will be donated to early education teachers upon completion. Their interest centers on inclusive design and community engagement

Unofficial title: Team Morale Lead.

Victoria Guerrier ’27

Victoria brings direct experience to her interest in strategic commercialization, having founded a startup through the Tsai CITY Launchpad and studied FDA regulatory pathways through a medical devices course. She has also been studying cinematic color grading independently, sharpening the storytelling instincts she hopes to apply at an executive level. As a competitive international athlete training toward 2028, she would choose to observe an International Olympic Committee board meeting. 

Unofficial title: Idea-to-Market Narrative Builder.

Maya Miro Johnson ’26 MUSIC

Maya is spending the summer developing grant writing skills in service of her broader interest in the medical humanities and the role the arts can play within clinical medicine. She has also been studying the Adobe Creative Cloud suite independently. Given a free afternoon, she would choose to spend it backstage at the Metropolitan Opera. 

Unofficial title: Interdisciplinary Arts Innovator and Project Lead.

Nikiel Kim ’27 MBA

Nikiel built his career in early-stage venture capital, where he frequently encountered strong founders with promising technology who needed support reaching fundraise readiness. Having grown up in Oklahoma, he has a particular interest in decarbonization across the U.S. Heartland, spanning petrochemicals, manufacturing, and energy infrastructure. He would choose to spend a day at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, interested in how company culture develops around a multi-decade product timeline. 

Unofficial title: Strategic Sounding Board.

Colby Ko ’27 MBA/MPP

Colby is interested in working alongside people who are genuinely excited about emerging, pre-scale industries: nuclear energy, autonomous vehicles, and advanced manufacturing among them. He has been studying how public support is built around hard-technology sectors, and would choose to spend a day at Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin's advanced development division. He recommends Antifragile as the book that comes closest to articulating the core principles of innovation. 

Unofficial title: Chief Humor Officer.

Alexis Lam ’27

Alexis was drawn to Yale Ventures by its emphasis on rapid translation from idea to impact, with strategy, innovation, and execution operating within a single environment. This summer, she is focused on go-to-market fluency, specifically how strong products identify and reach their first real users. She is also learning to code in HTML, building her own portfolio site in the process, and would choose to spend a day in Google's product marketing division.

Aaron Lin ’28

Aaron became involved with Yale Ventures after attending the Innovation Summit, and is focused this summer on developing the ability to build a strategic plan and carry it through to completion. His primary interest is nonprofit impact, particularly the work organizations such as New Haven Reads accomplish for local students with limited resources. A recent course on Congress reshaped his understanding of how much legislative work is accomplished without the polarization often suggested by media coverage.

Amber Lin ’29

Amber is working to build fluency in market research and competitive landscaping this summer, along with greater confidence presenting complex findings, a skill she has been developing through her college consulting club. She is interested in how companies maintain operational efficiency as they scale, and would choose to spend a day inside a recent YC startup to observe the realities behind its public narrative. 

Unofficial title: Head of Multidimensionality.

Luna Liu ’28 PhD

Luna was drawn to Yale Ventures by an interest in how academic discoveries translate into real-world impact, with a particular focus on the legal frameworks—namely patent law and intellectual property—that determine how innovations are built upon. A scientist by training, she is most engaged when distilling a technical concept down to its fundamentals. Her current interests include machine learning and competitive figure skating.

William Liu ’27

William has long been drawn to groundbreaking science, but is most interested in the less visible process by which a discovery leaves the lab and is applied to a real-world problem. He has studied foundational texts in the field, including Zero to One and various founder memoirs, and is seeking recommendations that offer genuine insight rather than repetition. His primary interest is healthcare, with a growing secondary interest in web-scraping technology. 

Unofficial title (rendered in Morse code): .---.

Casey Ma ’26

Casey was drawn to Yale Ventures by the belief that strong ideas rarely succeed independently, but rather through the people, networks, and environments built around them. This summer, she is focused on ecosystem building, particularly at the intersection of innovation, education, and artificial intelligence. She has been considering how individuals make significant decisions under uncertainty and with imperfect information, whether they are founders, students, or faculty. She would choose to spend a day inside a scaling health-tech or AI startup. 

Unofficial title: Opportunity Architect.

Angela Maalouf ’27 MBA

Angela returns to Yale Ventures after working with the team in 2022 and 2023, drawn back by the range of industries represented and the strength of the community. This summer, she is developing skills in legal technology and cybersecurity, informed by a course on metaverse development taught by a Meta practitioner. She is particularly interested in the negotiation aspects of transactional work. 

Unofficial title: Chief Vibe, Innovation, and Creativity Officer.

Ngozi Okoli ’27 MBA

Ngozi is most engaged at the earliest stages of building a venture, having previously grown a small e-commerce platform from inception to $100,000 in revenue and launched financial products across Nigeria. This summer, she is focused on understanding the U.S. market specifically: consumer behavior, narrative strategy, and cultural context that nearly a decade of marketing experience in Africa did not provide. She would choose to study Anua, the Korean skincare brand, and its approach to building international audiences through storytelling.

 Unofficial title: Head of Morale.

Ashley Owens 

Ashley is interested in the business development side of scientific research, with long-term plans to found her own company. This summer, she is focused on intellectual property protection. Her primary interest is neuroscience, particularly the challenge of advancing research findings despite investor hesitancy in the space. She is also learning to code in R independently, and would choose to spend a day at the FDA.

Maya Quaranta ’29

Maya is working on her undergraduate focusing on the biological side of research. This summer, she is working on the commercialization side, the point where scientific, legal, and business decisions converge. She is particularly interested in gene editing and the gap between the pace of scientific advancement and the early stage of corresponding business models, and would choose to spend a day at Editas Medicine. A course titled The Good Death recently reshaped her understanding of longevity and end-of-life care as fields that are cultural as much as scientific. 

Unofficial title: Chief Complexity Officer.

John Richardson ’27 MA MUSIC

John entered this field through an interest in startups and finance, and arrives candidly aware of the gaps in his current knowledge, viewing the summer as an opportunity to close them. His coursework includes diction training across several languages, which has sharpened his attention to the subtle distinctions between fluency and precision. Given a free afternoon, he would visit a fashion design studio out of general curiosity.

 Unofficial title: Vice President of Optimism.

Shitij Singh ’27 MBA

Shitij brings prior experience in carbon markets and agricultural technology in India, where he observed firsthand how strong climate science can stall at the point of commercialization. This summer, he is focused on assessing commercialization readiness, structuring licensing terms, and pricing early intellectual property. His current interest is the carbon removal sector, particularly biochar and engineered weathering, and he would choose to spend a day at Charm Industrial. 

Unofficial title: Lab-to-Ledger Translator.

Leah Wasserstein ’28

Leah is working to develop outreach and relationship-building skills this summer, in an environment she describes as filled with capable people doing work she wants to understand more deeply. Her primary interest is aging research and Alzheimer's prevention, a focus that developed during a Psychology of Aging course last semester. Given a free afternoon, she would visit a fashion company.

Iris Yan ’27

Iris is focused this summer on technology commercialization: intellectual property licensing, market evaluation, and the methods used to assess early-stage science for commercial viability. Her primary interest is climate technology, particularly which solutions will prove both scientifically sound and investable over the next decade. She would choose to spend a day inside a biotech or pharmaceutical executive meeting, observing how discoveries are translated into therapies. 

Unofficial title: Lifelong Learner and Travel Strategist.

Xiaohui Yu ’26 PhD

Xiaohui joined Yale Ventures to engage with the entrepreneurial dimension of her doctoral research, with particular interest in AI-powered drug discovery. This summer, she is developing the ability to translate complex science for varied audiences across institutions and industries. 

Unofficial title: Spatial Immunology Scientist, Violinist, Scuba Diver, and Culinary Enthusiast.

Chao Zhang ’26 MAM

Chao spent the past year exploring Yale's innovation ecosystem and is now focused on the point where scientific advancement meets commercial strategy, specifically the process of de-risking early technology to make it investment-ready. His current interest is quantum computing, particularly its implications for materials science and cryptography, and he would choose to spend a day at Microsoft Quantum observing the collaboration between hardware and algorithm teams. 

Unofficial title: Chief Firefighter.

Claire Zhong ’28

Claire became involved with Yale Ventures after attending the Yale Innovation Summit, and is focused this summer on understanding how strategic decisions are made within both new ventures and investment firms. She has been studying how cultural intellectual property is developed and scaled, and would choose to spend a day at Anthropic. 

Unofficial title: Connection Construction and Idea Exploration Associate.

Grace Zou PhD

Grace joined Yale Ventures primarily to connect with people across the university, and has since developed a strong interest in the aging crisis as a research and policy challenge. She has been studying the technical foundations of large language model training, and would choose to spend a day at Anthropic.

Where They're Working: A Field Guide to the Teams

Yale Accelerators

Yale Ventures manages five accelerators designed to propel groundbreaking Yale research into real-world impact: Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale, Colton Center for Autoimmunity, HealthTech Works, Planetary Solutions Impact Accelerator, Roberts Innovation Fund

Corporate Strategy & Engagement Office (CSEO)

The Corporate Strategy & Engagement Office (CSEO) builds partnerships between Yale and the private sector, working with researchers and clinicians to identify shared objectives with industry and translate academic expertise into practical collaborations.

Faculty Engagement & Venture Lab

This team works directly with Yale faculty researchers to empower faculty entrepreneurs at every stage of their innovation journey, offering tailored mentorship, curated resources, business strategy support, and funding guidance.

Innovation Community

The Innovation Community team serves as the connective infrastructure of Yale's broader innovation ecosystem, linking the people, spaces, and capital that support entrepreneurship across the sciences, the humanities, and the wider New Haven community. The team hosts innovation events, builds partnerships across the ecosystem, and works to strengthen Yale's innovation talent pipeline.

IP & Licensing

The IP & Licensing team supports the transition of Yale discoveries into usable products, guiding inventions from disclosure through industry partnership while managing the relationships required for Yale technologies to reach the marketplace.

Interested in joining a future cohort? Learn more about open Yale Ventures associate roles for the next academic year.