Meet 19 of the top PhDs in the country

50Y PhD to VC program

At Fifty Years, we believe more scientists should commercialize their research via tech startups. To do that, we believe we need more scientists in venture capital. Why? Deep experts are needed to diligence technical ideas and support the PhD founders. That’s why we launched a free nights and weekends program called "PhD to VC".

We accepted and trained 19 of the top bio PhD students in the country (5% acceptance rate to our program) on the Fifty Years’ approach to venture capital. Not only have they published top papers in Nature and Science, they’ve spent 9 weeks learning and doing the work of a VC by helping to source, diligence, and support deep tech companies.

The Bio PhDs You Can Meet!

  • Adhirath Sikand - Goodman Lab at USC; expertise in mechanisms/regulation of DNA polymerases that lead to ‘superbugs’ (multi-drug resistant bacteria)

  • Arya Kaul - Baym Lab at Harvard Medical School; bioinformaticist tool builder studying microbial genetics

  • Bingyi Wang - Laboratory for Integrated Nano-Quantum Systems at Stanford; working on brain-machine interface starting with the design of a retinal prosthesis

  • Chaz Hinzman - Cheema Lab at Georgetown University; uses metabolomics to identify disease in pancreatic cancer through extracellular vesicles

  • Chloe Hsu - Berkeley AI Research Lab at UC Berkeley; developing machine learning approaches useful for science and healthcare

  • Elaine Wang - Di Carlo Lab at UCLA; microfluidic devices for next generation cellular characterization

  • Gosia Latallo - Wu Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; single-molecule assays and mathematical modeling for molecular insight into biology

  • Hannah Spinner - Zitnik Lab at Harvard Medical School; gene editing and protein engineering machine learning

  • Joseph Viviano - Applied Research Scientist at the Mila Quebec AI Institute

  • Kelsey Kaeding - Zaret Lab at University of Pennsylvania; research into novel human heterochromatin regulatory proteins 

  • Kristina Li - Arany Lab at University of Pennsylvania; research on the metabolic mechanisms underlying fibrosis

  • Melina Mastrodimos - PhD/MD Student, UCLA/Caltech

  • Michael Retchin - Chodera Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; creating robust tools towards autonomous drug discovery

  • Mohammad Saleh - Garton Lab at University of Toronto; synthetic biologist in the area of immunology

  • Nicholas Sarai - Frances Lab at Caltech; synthetic biologist exploring enzymatic catalysis for recalcitrant compounds

  • Nour Abdulhay - Ramani Lab at UCSF; developing high-throughput technologies to investigate how applied metabolic and genetic perturbations affect protein-DNA interactions and cellular-state changes

  • Pawan Jolly - Advanced Technology Team at Wyss Institute at Harvard University; eRapid diagnostic platform for blood analytes, and leads sensor team on cross-platform projects

  • Shikha Sheth - Haigis Lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; studying allele-specific properties of oncogenic KRAS mutations

  • Zachary Chiang - Buenrostro Lab at Harvard University; next-generation sequencing technologies