Business Development Fellows | Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Alyx Volzer

Business Development Fellow

Alyx Volzer is a Ph.D. student in Economic Geography and a community developer who is working to create sustainable organizational models and resilient polycentric governance systems for undifferentiated markets characterized by strong inelastic consumer demand.

Shanice Taylor

Business Development Fellow

Shanice Taylor is a Ph.D. student in chemical engineering, who is developing and characterizing protein biologics from transgenic plants to advance sustainable biomanufacturing of therapeutics, particularly for low-resource environments such as outer space.

Shannon Perna

Business Development Fellow

Shannon Perna is a master’s student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, focusing on integrated circuits. As an undergraduate, she conducted research related to the applications of metasurfaces and micro-electro-mechanical systems.

Katie Haddad

Katie Haddad is a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Her current work involves the production of recombinant protein therapies using plant and fungal systems for low-cost, scalable, and sustainable protein manufacturing methods.

Makan Farhoodimoghadam

Business Development Fellow

Makan Farhoodimoghadam is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science specializing in applied AI within veterinary and human medicine. His recent research focuses on leveraging AI for the early diagnosis of diseases in both animals and humans, with the goal of improving and automating diagnostic processes in clinical settings.

Andrew Dominguez

Business Development Fellow

Andrew Dominguez is a graduate student researcher examining the process by which RNA is processed and packaged before being translated into protein. He has worked in numerous industry and academic research positions focusing on the development of personalized immuno-oncology therapies.

Kaitlyn Clark

Business Development Fellow

Kaitlin Clark is a postdoctoral fellow specializing in regenerative medicine and translational research. She investigates the use of placenta-derived mesenchymal stem cells for treating spina bifida and studies their immunoregulatory properties and possible applications for central nervous system disorders.

Kelly Chau

Business Development Fellow

Kelly Chau is a Ph.D. candidate in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics program. Her research interests include investigating how prenatal exposures to polychlorinated biphenyls alters the genome and identifying epigenetic biomarkers of prenatal exposures and neurodevelopmental disorders in the fetal brain and placenta.

Alec Avey

Business Development Fellow

Alec Avey studies how pro- and anti-inflammatory signals alter connective tissue function in response to exercise. He hopes to further understand the ideal timing of these signals to help prevent injury, accelerate rehabilitation time, and maximize performance.

Jahnavi Akula

Business Development Fellow

Jahnavi Akula is pursuing a degree in Epidemiology and Preventive Veterinary Medicine. Her research focuses on epidemiological data analysis in wildlife, specifically studying the health dynamics of bighorn sheep populations.