From Labs to Global Companies
Join us at CIC Cambridge for an evening co-hosted by KIST & Kendall On Air.
Partnered with One Way Ventures, Sazze Partners & Venture Café Cambridge.
Breakthrough technologies often begin in research labs, but only a few become companies that shape global industries. This panel brings together leading scientists, founders, and ecosystem builders from the Boston innovation community to discuss how breakthrough research becomes real companies.
Drawing on experiences building ventures such as Form Energy, Amogy, LabCentral and leading biotech startups, the conversation will explore the journey from scientific discovery to global-scale impact.
What You’ll Learn
From lab breakthroughs to venture-backed companies
Scaling deep-tech startups
Why Boston leads global science innovation
AGENDA
05:30 - 06:00 PM : Registration
06:00 - 07:00 PM : Panel
07:00 - 08:00 PM : Dinner and Drinks
This event is hosted in partnership with Venture Café. Please bring a government-issued ID to access the building from the first-floor lobby and register with Venture Café on the 5th floor.
About Speakers
Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang is a pioneering materials scientist and serial entrepreneur whose work has helped shape the modern battery industry. A professor at MIT, he earned both his BS (1980) and PhD (1985) in materials science and engineering from the Institute. Over the past two decades, Chiang has repeatedly translated laboratory discoveries into global companies. He co-founded A123 Systems, a pioneer in lithium iron phosphate batteries, and Form Energy, which is developing ultra-low-cost iron-air batteries for multi-day grid storage. His ventures have collectively raised more than $2.5 billion to scale next-generation energy technologies. His research spans energy storage, advanced materials manufacturing, and industrial decarbonization. In addition to his work on next-generation batteries, Chiang is also developing electrochemical approaches to dramatically reduce emissions in cement production—one of the world’s largest industrial sources of CO₂. He currently co-directs a flagship project under the MIT Climate Grand Challenges focused on decarbonizing industrial materials production. Chiang is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Ceramic Society, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Seonghoon Woo is the founding CEO of Amogy, leading the commercialization of the company’s proprietary ammonia cracking technology — an innovative system that converts ammonia into hydrogen to generate zero-carbon power. By positioning ammonia as a scalable and practical hydrogen carrier, Amogy is enabling new decarbonization pathways for hard-to-abate sectors including distribute power, maritime, and heavy industry. Under Seonghoon’s leadership, the company has evolved from early laboratory breakthroughs to fully integrated systems and commercial-scale deployment. Since its founding in 2021, Amogy has raised more than $300 million from leading global investors such as Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Aramco Ventures, Temasek, SK Innovation, Samsung Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corporation. The company has expanded its global footprint across the United States, Singapore, South Korea, and other key markets. In recent years, Amogy has accelerated its transition to commercialization, securing multi-megawatt distributed power pilots in APAC, forming strategic manufacturing partnerships with Samsung, and pursuing deployments in industrial and data center applications. Seonghoon Woo earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, where his research focused on spin-electronics and its applications. He subsequently conducted research at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center before founding Amogy.
Johannes Fruehauf MD, PhD is a physician-scientist and life-science entrepreneur. He is the Founder and CEO of BioLabs and Founder and Executive Chairman of LabCentral, the leading international network for co-working laboratory spaces for life-science startup companies. Together, BioLabs/LabCentral have helped launch over 850 primarily venture funded startup companies in the life sciences in 17 different cities with a presence in the United States, Canada, Germany, France and Japan. The concept of these facilities is built around openness, transparency and shared resources and has changed the way biotech companies are built around the world. Companies launched at BioLabs/LabCentral have raised over $30bn while in residence since 2010. LabCentral and BioLabs were also the recipient of the prestigious Prix Galien Award in 2022 for the best biotech startup launchpads in the “Incubators, Accelerators and Equity” category. Dr. Fruehauf is also a Founding General Partner at Mission BioCapital, an early-stage venture capital fund providing capital to start-up companies in the life sciences. MBC collaborates closely with lab partners to offer support/expertise and opportunities for funding to both resident companies in the lab network including BioLabs, LabCentral and MBC BioLabs in San Francisco and additional high-quality start-ups. Dr. Fruehauf studied medicine in Germany and France, while also conducting field work in Africa (Zimbabwe and Guinea). Thereafter, he practiced medicine (internal medicine and OB/Gyn) for several years in Germany before coming to Boston for a post-doc at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. He is a graduate of the University of Frankfurt and received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. He is also the author of over 30 peer reviewed publications and is named inventor on 9 issued patents on drug delivery and RNAi-based therapeutics.
Jaspaul Singh is Co-Founder and CEO of Interon Laboratories, Inc., a VC-backed biotechnology firm pioneering immunotherapy for brain disorders, beginning with Autism. Jaspaul previously managed hedge funds with a focus on healthcare and life sciences. From 2014 to 2020, Jaspaul Singh was the Founder, Managing Partner, and Portfolio Manager of Fort Warren Capital Management, a Boston-based hedge fund. Previously, Jaspaul was at Regiment Capital Advisors, a $5bln credit hedge fund that was spun out of Harvard Management Company. Jaspaul began his career as an Analyst in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. Jaspaul is a member of the National Board of Advisors of the Sikh Coalition, a civil rights advocacy group. He is also a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Jaspaul has an MBA from Harvard University, an MPHIL from the University of Cambridge (UK), and a BA with Honors from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a University Scholar.
Sabrina Yang is Vice President, Global Initiatives at Flagship Pioneering, where she leads strategic efforts to expand and scale Flagship’s global presence and initiatives. In this role, Sabrina focuses on developing strategic institutional partnerships across the U.S., Europe, APAC, and emerging hubs to scale Flagship’s innovation model. Since joining in 2017, she has helped conceive, create, and develop first-in-category therapeutic platform companies and now works across the enterprise to drive Flagship’s international growth. Sabrina is the Co-Founder and former Chief Innovation Officer of Empress Therapeutics, where she pioneered a novel metagenomics and synthetic biology platform for small molecule drug discovery. Before joining Flagship, she was a postdoctoral researcher and NSF-funded translational fellow at MIT, where she worked to translate her academic research into commercial opportunities. During her Ph.D., Sabrina worked in the lab of Darrell Irvine and developed a cell membrane-penetrating nanoparticle technology to deliver drug payloads to T-cells in vivo, overcoming tumor-mediated immunosuppression and improving cancer immunotherapy efficacy. Her graduate work resulted in publication in multiple peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Communications and several pending patents. She also pursued research as an undergraduate, engineering nanomaterials for MRI/CT dual molecular imaging contrast agents, which resulted in several publications and an issued patent. Sabrina holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in materials science and engineering from MIT and a B.S. in materials science and engineering from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, where she graduated summa cum laude and was valedictorian.
This insightful discussion will be facilitated by Rhie Lim, a Partner at One Way Ventures, where she supports immigrant founders building frontier technologies across AI, digital health and deep tech. She is also a former CNBC reporter turned entrepreneur. As co-founder of LifeCanvas Technologies, Inc., a company revolutionizing 3D bioimaging, Rhie helped grow the startup from inception into a sustainable, profitable business. She led a cross-functional team across science, AI/ML, finance, sales, marketing, and HR, and secured over $17M in funding from institutional investors and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Rhie previously spearheaded MIT’s first Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp in Seoul, South Korea, which fostered a network of 1,200 alumni and led to the launch of 100+ ventures that have collectively raised over $70M. Prior to her work in startups, she was a financial news reporter for CNBC Asia, where she covered South Korea’s leading companies, including Samsung, and conducted exclusive interviews with global opinion leaders such as Warren Buffett. Passionate about bridging market gaps and supporting visionary founders, Rhie is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build impactful, scalable solutions. She holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and hosts Kendall On Air, a YouTube series spotlighting innovators, technologies, and founders from the world’s most innovative square mile - Kendall Square.