Founder Spotlight 04: From PhD Research to a Product People Wear
About Jia
Jia Xi Chen is a materials science PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the co-founder and CEO of Morphace, a Toronto skin-tech company building wearable devices that bring clinical-grade skincare into the home.
Most founders our students meet build software. Jia builds hardware — a physical device that has to be designed, prototyped, manufactured, patented, and shipped to real customers. Morphace's wearable reads three skin health metrics in about a minute and delivers treatment at home, and the work behind it has taken her from the lab bench to a patent filing, a national competition circuit, and her first paying customers.
She is a Next 36 alum, has pitched on the Startup Stage at Elevate Festival, and is backed by University of Toronto Entrepreneurship and ventureLAB.
Jia's story is a reminder that a research question can become a company — and that the hardest part is usually everything that happens after the science works.
What We'll Cover
Jia will open with a short walkthrough of her research and the science behind Morphace, then we'll go into conversation.
From research to company — When she realized this could be a business and not just a thesis, and what actually changed
Building hardware, not software — What it takes to make a physical product, and what every student should understand before they try
The hardest part — What almost didn't work, and how the team got through it
Patents and IP — Most students have never thought about this. When does it start to matter, and how did she approach it?
Getting the first customers — How Morphace found them, what surprised her, and what she got wrong about what people wanted
Testing demand before you build — Why she treated a presale campaign as an experiment, and what the results told her
Starting with nothing — For a 15-year-old with an idea for a real product, no budget and no manufacturer: what's actually possible, and what's step one?
What actually helped — The programs, communities and resources that mattered, and the ones that were overhyped
🟧 About Built Young:
Business is changing fast. The teens who learn to think like founders now won't just adapt to that future — they'll lead it. Built Young runs hands-on bootcamps that give teens 12–18 the business fundamentals, founder mindset, and real mentorship to build their first company — before college. To learn more: https://builtyoung.org/.