The 2025 Class of the Bridging Academia and Industry education program concluded on May 22, 2025 with a project competition where six teams of investigators pitched their challenge-driven research projects to teaching faculty and leadership from academia and industry.
The projects pitched this year included a non-invasive diagnostic for assessment of bladder pressure; a small molecule therapeutic for stimulant use disorder; an AI software platform that predicts early signatures of drug toxicity, a microfluidic platform for CAR T-cell manufacturing; a small molecule for broad-spectrum antibiotics, and new technologies for the detection of covert consciousness.
After a lengthy discussion by the faculty judges, the team of Jessica Kreshover, MD, (MGH Urology), Alireza Gholipour, PhD (MGH Sports Medicine), and Daniel Wollin, MD (BWH Urology) were chosen as the winners for their project, Know your flow with SonoFlo: A Novel Non-Invasive Urodynamic Assessment of Bladder Pressure.
The team received a one-year, $150,000 award (funded by philanthropy) to support future development of their project, with the ultimate goal of combining advanced imaging with computational fluid dynamics modeling to accurately evaluate bladder pressure and enhance the diagnosis and treatment of patients with urinary conditions.
2025 Competition Teams and Projects
There were a total of 21 investigators in this year’s program, representing 16 departments, divisions and thematic centers from Mass General, Mass Eye and Ear, Brigham and Women’s, and McLean.
Since the program launched in 2019, a total of 136 investigators have participated, representing 24 clinical departments across the Mass General Brigham system and all five thematic research centers at Mass General, and making up a portfolio of 42 multi-lab projects, 8 of which were awarded $150K each to support a one-year effort to advance the project along the translational pathway to a relevant inflection point.
About Bridging Academia and Industry
The class of 2025 is the seventh to complete the Bridging Academia and Industry education program, which is co-directed by Gabriela Apiou, PhD, Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair in Translational Sciences, and director of Translational Research Core at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, and Bob Tepper, MD, Partner, Third Rock Ventures, and member of the Research Institute Advisory Council.
A key pillar of the Longfellow Project, the program is taught and mentored by more than 90 expert faculty leaders from academia and the biopharmaceutical, venture, consumer, and medical device industries.
Course topics include:
● Fundamentals of translation
● Research and development (therapeutics, diagnostics and intellectual property
● Business development and commercialization (go-to-market planning, exit strategies)
● Translation stories (therapeutics, diagnostics).
“This course is about establishing a new culture and field of investigation,” Apiou says. “Inspiring the trainees to enter the field of translational sciences; learning the academia-industry language; and understanding what it really takes to go from an idea in the lab to a diagnostic or treatment are our overarching goals.”