Aditya Polsani

Aditya Polsani is the Director of Business Development at Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design (CBID) at Johns Hopkins University where he manages establish partnerships and manage alliances with various medical device companies. In addition, he also mentors and assist engineering development teams with commercialization of medical device technologies.

Aditya held various roles at Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was the Deputy Director of Johns Hopkins Coulter Translational Partnership where he managed a portfolio of over 15 medical device projects, facilitated technology incubation and development with engineers and clinicians and over saw over $3 million in funding. He was co-founder and former Director of Business Development at Academic Drug Discovery Consortium (ADDC) where he managed fund raising, marketing and corporate outreach activities. Prior to joining ADDC, he was the Industrial Liaison Associate for the Biomedical Engineering department and the Brain Science Institute. He managed technology incubation, development and commercialization activities in biomedical engineering and other departments, built strategic research partnerships with medical device, biotech & pharma companies like JNJ, Eisai, Biogen, and raised money from industry and non-profit entities for research programs.

He also managed a portfolio of 125 inventions covering wide array of departments (biomedical engineering, neurology, cardiology, ophthalmology, orthopedic surgery, radiology) and executed over 40 licensing agreements with startups, pharma and medical device companies.

Aditya earned his Bachelors in Dental Surgery from Bapuji Dental College in India, and a Masters degree in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University.

Danda Rawat

Dr. Danda B. Rawat is the Associate Dean for Research & Grad Education in College of Engineering, a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS), Founding Director of the Howard University Data Science & Cybersecurity Center, Founding Director of DoD Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (CoE-AIML), Director of Cyber-security and Wireless Networking Innovations (CWiNs) Research Lab, Graduate Program Director of Howard CS Graduate Programs and Director of Graduate Cybersecurity Certificate Program at Howard University, Washington, DC, USA. Dr. Rawat is engaged in research and teaching in the areas of cybersecurity, machine learning, big data analytics and wireless networking for emerging networked systems including cyber-physical systems (eHealth, energy, transportation), Internet-of-Things, multi domain operations, smart cities, software defined systems and vehicular networks. He has secured over $20 million in research funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US National Security Agency (NSA), US Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DoD and DoD Research Labs, Industry (Microsoft, Intel, PayPal, Mastercard, Meta, BAE, Raytheon etc.) and private Foundations. 

Robert Storey

Bob Storey is a managing partner at The LaunchPort™, a medtech manufacturing accelerator. He has extensive experience in working with NIH initiatives in innovation and investment. He is one of the eight national portfolio managers for the NIBIB RADx program and has been the sole medical device instructor for the biannual national NIH I-Corps program since its inception in 2014. These activities, combined with operations of LaunchPort, have resulted in the assessment of hundreds of early stage medtech and life sciences companies and technologies each year. Storey’s involvement with Johns Hopkins University and its School of Medicine has included a number of neuroscience and technology deployments. LaunchPort, under Storey’s leadership, will support NeuroTech Harbor’s equitech vision and its innovators.

Evaristus Nwulia, MD, MHS

Evaristus Nwulia, M.D. MHS, is a Johns Hopkins trained physician and a neuroscientist, with over 15 years history in leading educational and training programs aimed at enhancing representation of underrepresented minority STEM and MD-Ph.D. students from HBCUs in the neuroscience workforce. He is also a Professor of Neuroscience at Howard University, who pioneered the development of home-based olfactory sensory stimulation platforms as disease modifying interventions for early Alzheimer’s disease. He holds several patents for devices and drugs, and for olfactory transcellular drug delivery methods for CNS disorders. He is co-Founder of three neuromedical device companies, including Evon Medics LLC, a neuroTech company tackling neurodegenerative diseases, traumatic brain injuries and chronic pain; with over 65% employees from URM populations, Evon Medics has become a harbor for nurturing career development of highly talented young minority innovators. Evaristus has been a member of several NIH neuroscience-based scientific peer review panels over the past 10 years and has chaired the NIH Fogarty Global Brain Disorders Special Emphasis Panel. Ergo, he has extensive experience for recognition of projects with potential transformative impact. As a Neuroethicist and Chair of the Institutional Ethics Committee Board at Howard University, he brings substantial expertise in the ethical, legal, and societal implications of neuroscience and neurotech devices, particularly from the standpoint of several under-represented minority populations.