2025 Judges
Margaret Cartiera, Ph.D.
Innovation Director, Yale’s Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT)
Margaret Cartiera serves as the Innovation Director at Yale’s Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT) and the YNHHS Center for Healthcare Innovation (CHI). She is also a Venture Advisor at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (TsaiCITY).
Dr. Cartiera has a passion for early stage innovation and holds nearly 20 years of experience working across the medical device, diagnostics, health IT, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology sectors. She's held various leadership positions and has expertise in investments, competitive intelligence, operations, team building, and business development. She successfully transferred technology from the academic setting, secured funding, and negotiated collaborative agreements with leading industry partners. Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Cartiera led Connecticut’s $200M 10-year Bioscience Innovation Fund and the Regenerative Medicine Research Fund.
Dr. Cartiera earned a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. from Yale University in biomedical engineering.
W. Mark Saltzman
Engineer, Professor
W. Mark Saltzman is an engineer and educator. His research has impacted the fields of drug delivery, biomaterials, nanobiotechnology, and tissue engineering. This work is described in more than 350 research papers and patents. He is also the sole author of three textbooks: Biomedical Engineering, Tissue Engineering, and Drug Delivery. During more than 35 years leading independent research programs at Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Yale, he has introduced mathematical models for guiding the design of drug delivery systems, developed new methods for drug delivery to brain tumors, produced the first controlled delivery systems for nerve growth factors, the first delivery systems for long-term protection against STDs using antibodies, and new materials for delivery of DNA and RNA. In the course of this work, he has been the primary mentor for 43 doctoral students and 27 postdoctoral associates; many of these scholars are now leading their own independent research programs at top-rate universities.
Prof. Saltzman graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in chemical engineering and received MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering and medical engineering from MIT. He was appointed the Goizueta Foundation Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Yale in 2002. He was the founding chair of Yale’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and served in that role for 12 years. From 2016-2022, he was the Head of Jonathan Edwards College, one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges.
Prof. Saltzman is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and the US National Academy of Engineering.
Kaakpema "KP"
Global Entrepreneur and Public Health Practitioner
Kaakpema, who goes by “KP,” is a global entrepreneur and public health practitioner with experience working across the public and private sectors in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. He is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and the Faculty Director for InnovateHealth Yale. Kaakpema Co-Founded InOn Health in 2018. The company improved access to care in the United States using digital communication channels and consumer insights to better connect multicultural populations to healthcare services. Prior to InOn Health, he also founded access.mobile International. access.mobile was a global digital health company that developed solutions to improve access to health information and services in African countries. KP served as one of the early employees of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and worked as a management consultant for Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He is a member of the External Equity and Innovation Advisory Board for the American Medical Association and was appointed by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the Colorado eHealth Commission, which he chairs. Kaakpema received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Brown University and a Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a 2023 Rock Health Top 50 in Digital Health Luminaries honoree.
Michael Hund, MBA
Chief Executive Officer
Michael Hund joined EBRP as the CEO in 2017. Under his leadership EBRP has accelerated the EB landscape from 2 to over 40 clinical trials and via their award-winning venture philanthropy methodology helped fund the first FDA approved treatment for EB in 2023, the first ever topical gene therapy. EBRP’s innovative business model has garnered recognition from Harvard Business School, Yale University, MIT, Stanford, Rolling Stone, and Forbes. Previously Michael served as the Director of Development for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the $100 million Curing Cancer Now campaign, which led to more than 10 FDA approved treatments and the tripling of patient life expectancy. He also served for over a decade at Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Fund, working on behalf of children and families battling life threatening illnesses. He has dedicated his career to transforming healthcare.
Michael received his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Yale University, CORe credential from Harvard Business School, and a degree in Philosophy from the University of Kansas. He is the recipient of the MIT Solve Horizon Innovation Award, iHeart Media’s CEOs You Should Know, the Milken Institute’s FasterCures Changemaker and LeadersLink mentor, Social Innovations Journal Leadership Award, Top 100 Magazine Innovators, and Authority Magazine’s Social Innovators. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Sarah and four daughters.
Rajit Manohar, Ph.D.
John C. Malone Professor
Rajit Manohar is the John C. Malone Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Yale. He received his B.S. (1994), M.S. (1995), and Ph.D. (1998) from Caltech. He has been on the Yale faculty since 2017, where his group conducts research on the design, analysis, and implementation of self-timed systems. He is the recipient of twelve best paper awards, nine teaching awards, and was named to MIT technology review's top 35 young innovators under 35 for contributions to low power microprocessor design. His work includes the design and implementation of a number of self-timed VLSI chips including the first high-performance asynchronous microprocessor, the first microprocessor for sensor networks, the first asynchronous dataflow FPGA, the first radiation hardened SRAM-based FPGA, and the first deterministic large-scale neuromorphic architecture. Most recently, his group developed the first true ASIC flow for asynchronous circuits. Prior to Yale, he was Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell. He founded the Computer Systems Lab at both Cornell and Yale. He has served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate studies at Cornell Engineering, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Cornell Tech, the Associate Dean for Research at Cornell Tech, and the Deputy Dean for Research at Yale's School of Engineering and Applied Science. He founded Achronix Semiconductor to commercialize high-performance asynchronous FPGAs. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Walter Lindop, MBA
Lead Innovation Consultant, YNHHS Center for Healthcare Innovation
Walter Lindop is a dedicated champion of healthcare transformation, guiding innovators and clinicians to develop and scale digital health solutions that address urgent clinical needs. As Lead Innovation Consultant at the YNHHS Center for Healthcare Innovation, he mentors teams throughout the innovation lifecycle, from ideation to implementation, drawing on his expertise in product management, data analytics, and patient-centric design. Walter also leads the early-stage digital health venture investments portfolio, where his team sources, vets, and invests in technologies poised to transform the standard of care for hospitals and health systems.
Before joining Yale New Haven Health, Walter helped create and build a novel spin-out, where he led cross-functional teams to develop and launch disease management and big data platforms, significantly improving care coordination for patients with chronic conditions.
Recognized for his leadership in health AI, Walter oversees the strategic selection and co-development of advanced administrative and clinical solutions, accelerating transformative improvements in patient care and outcomes. His expertise in both healthcare and technology is shaping tomorrow’s breakthroughs in patient care.
Ons M’Saad, PhD.
Scientist, Entrepreneur
Dr. M’Saad is a scientist and entrepreneur who is dedicating her career to advancing optical tools for precision medicine. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University in 2021, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017. Her research has led to the development of an innovative all-optical toolset called pan-OptiX, which is designed to significantly improve the speed and reliability of biomarker discovery. As CEO and co-founder of panluminate, she is spearheading the capital-raising efforts and driving business growth to successfully bring this transformative technology to market.
Maxwell Laurans, M.D.
Doctor, Vice President, Professor
Maxwell Laurans is an assistant professor of Neurosurgery at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Laurans received his M.D. with honors from the Yale School of Medicine where he was a Howard Hughes Fellow. After a neurosurgical residency at Yale, he joined the Yale faculty in 2010. He specializes in minimally invasive spine surgery, spine tumor surgery, and spine radiosurgery. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgeons.
Dr. Laurans is also Vice President of Surgical Services and Clinical Chief of Perioperative Services at Yale-New Haven Hospital and provides leadership and direction for all aspects of surgical services for the hospital and the health system. He is an Advisory Board Member of the Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT) at Yale and the YNHH Innovation Executive Committee.