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March 23, 2018

New Haven genomics pioneer offers $25,000 prize for medical device innovation

Contributed Photo | 4Catalyzer New Haven genomics pioneer Jonathan Rothberg is offering a $25,000 prize at Yale and three other schools to spark innovation in the medical device space.
By Natalie Missakian

Jonathan Rothberg, the Elm City native who invented high-speed DNA sequencing and more recently founded the Guilford bioscience accelerator 4Catalyzer, hopes to inspire new life-changing medical devices by offering a $25,000 prize to students at Yale and three other schools.

The Rothberg Catalyzer Prize at Yale will go to a student-led team with the most innovative hardware solution to a medical challenge, said the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), manager of the Yale prize.

“Instead of just developing hardware, I want ideas that mix hardware and software, and I’d like it to be able to affect the life of a person,” Rothberg told Yale News, saying he’s particularly interested in epilepsy, which one of his daughters has.

Rothberg, a Yale alumnus who won the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2015, is also offering $25,000 prizes at Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania and Brown University.

Applications for the Yale prize are due March 28. Finalists will be announced April 10 and winners will be selected after a pitch-off event at Startup Yale  on April 20, Tsai CITY said.

A serial entrepreneur who founded one of the first genomics companies, Curagen, in 1991 while a graduate student at Yale, Rothberg launched 4Catalzyer in Guilford in 2014.

Startups housed at the incubator include Butterfly Network, creator of an affordable handheld ultrasound scanner, and LAM Therapeutics, which uses artificial intelligence to develop drugs for leukemia and other cancers.

Natalie Missakian can be reached at news@newhavenbiz.com

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