Meet Our Advisors
Guidance shaped by deep expertise
Strategic guidance shaped by decades at the leading edge of industry and innovation. Trusted influence across the life sciences ecosystem. They bring the clarity, foresight, and rigor that elevate the work happening within the Sphere. Meet the advisors who help advance our mission.
-
ADVISORDr. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie is President and Senior Fellow of the American International Institute of Medical Sciences, Engineering, and Innovation (AIIMSEI.org). He currently also serves as a Senior Dresden Fellow and Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Technical University of Dresden, and as a TEES Collaborator at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Guiseppi-Elie brings over three decades of experience bridging academia, industry, and innovation. He has spent 15 years in industrial research and product development, and 18 years as a tenured, titled, and endowed professor at leading institutions including Virginia Commonwealth University, Clemson University, Texas A&M University (TAMU), and Anderson University. At TAMU, he was Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and co-founded the Engineering Medicine (ENMED) program, where he also served as the Founding Associate Dean of Engineering Innovation.
At Anderson University, Dr. Guiseppi-Elie held dual leadership roles as Vice President of Industry Relations and Founding Dean of the College of Engineering. His academic appointments span departments of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Emergency Medicine.
He is the Founder, President, and Scientific Director of ABTECH Scientific, Inc., and has co-founded three startup companies. A U.S. citizen born in Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Guiseppi-Elie earned his Sc.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester (UMIST), and a B.Sc. (First Class Honors) in Applied, Analytical, and Biochemistry from the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Dr. Guiseppi-Elie is an accomplished scholar with over 225 peer-reviewed publications, 8 U.S. patents, an h-index of 52, and more than 10,300 citations (as of May 2025). He has been recognized as a 2012–2013 IEEE-EMBS Distinguished Lecturer, the 2013 Avis Visiting Professor in Pharmaceutics at the University of Tennessee, a Fulbright Specialist (2015–2019), with academic engagements in France, Argentina, and Poland and has been named by Stanford University to the top 2% of scientists worldwide.
He is a Fellow of several prestigious societies, including the IEEE, AIMBE, BMES, RSC, and RSM. His research focuses on physiological monitoring during hemorrhagic trauma and allotransplantation, polymeric nanobiomaterials for drug delivery and tissue regeneration, and the development of microanalytical systems for advancing human health and medicine.
-
ADVISORAnthony (Tony) Nolte serves as the primary legal contact for cohort companies. With over 30 years of experience, he focuses his practice on helping companies start, scale, and navigate acquisitions or divestitures. As former General Counsel for fintech and SaaS AI companies, plus nearly three decades at Shell, Tony brings invaluable in-house perspectives to emerging ventures. Tony is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Furman University. Learn more about Tony here.
-
ADVISORBarry Burgdorf, a corporate and finance partner in Hogan Lovells’ Houston office who maintains a global practice, will serve as Hogan Lovells’ relationship partner with InnovaSphere. Barry focuses his practice on public and private companies, emerging companies, venture capital, private equity, and higher education clients, with a variety of complex mergers, acquisitions, financings, IP intensive, corporate transactions in the life sciences and other technology industries (software, AI / semiconductor, energy transition), and higher education (commercialization, development, compliance).
Recently, he has been involved in the design and implementation of several innovation funds and venture studio structures associated with emerging technology areas. His full bio is available here.
-
ADVISORJinxiang (Jin) Zhou is an entrepreneur and business leader with over a decade of experience driving innovation and building businesses at the intersection of science, engineering and market needs. As Co-Founder of Purilogics, he pioneered next-generation membrane chromatography solutions for biologics purification, setting new benchmarks for speed and throughput in bioprocessing. Following Purilogics’ acquisition by Donaldson Company, he served as Business Director, leading integration efforts and expanding commercialization of advanced purification technologies within Donaldson Life Sciences.
Beyond his technical and business achievements, Jinxiang is deeply committed to innovation, mentorship, and translational science. He has a proven record of bridging technical breakthroughs with commercial applications and is now pursuing new entrepreneurial and investment opportunities.
-
ADVISORA Southeast native who brings both a scientist’s rigor and an entrepreneur’s perspective, Russell Cochrane is a PhD candidate at the Medical University of South Carolina, where his research focuses on engineered immune cell therapies. His academic work has resulted in multiple peer-reviewed publications in the life sciences, with a strong emphasis on translational relevance.
In parallel with his scientific training, Russell is actively involved in early-stage life sciences venture and commercialization efforts. He works with venture capital groups and early-stage investors on scientific, commercial, and financial due diligence, contributing directly to investment evaluation and decision-making. He supports startups and innovation programs by helping founders clarify their value proposition, communicate their science effectively to investors, and set development priorities that align with venture expectations.
-
ADVISORDr. VK Gadi was named the Cancer Center Deputy Director in 2022. Dr. Gadi, whose laboratory and clinical research has focused primarily on breast cancer, joined the Cancer Center in 2020 as Associate Director of Translational Medicine when he came to the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) after 20 years in Seattle at the University of Washington, where he did his postgraduate training, and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center.
Working closely with Cancer Center leadership, Dr. Gadi continues to lead efforts to identify and recruit novel molecular assets for clinical trials testing from both big pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotech.
Dr. Gadi’s efforts have increased national-level engagement for cooperative group studies and provided access to Cancer Center disease team leaders for clinical trial development opportunities to ensure trials are written to address the needs of diverse patient populations.
In collaboration with several groups of investigators and UIC technology transfer, Dr. Gadi also is accelerating the process of commercialization of multiple diagnostic and therapeutic intellectual properties to build a sustainable licensing revenue stream to support Cancer Center activities.