2023 SUD Sprint Cohort

Dezocine as a potential treatment for OUD

To help ameliorate the opioid crisis, we propose to repurpose dezocine, a previously approved non-scheduled intravenous opioid analgesic, in a novel intranasal formulation as a treatment strategy in addition to medication-assisted treatments (MAT) of opioid used disorder (OUD). Since dezocine is not a scheduled medication, and that there are no reported addiction or overdose deaths from dezocine, it can potentially prevent or reduce opioid related dependence, addiction, and overdose.

After my Ph.D. work at Carnegie-Mellon, I knew I wanted to study drugs, for both their therapeutic effects and their abuse potential. Thus, I chose to work with Wagner Bridger, at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where we tested the hypothesis that hallucinogens have two distinct effects—hallucinatory under non-stressful conditions and psychotomimetic under conditions of stress. We used animal models in test that hypothesis and the work was funded by an R01 from NIDA. I then moved to Hunter College as a full time faculty and in addition was recruited to join the Department of Developmental Psychobiology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons (headed by Myron Hofer). Within these two environments, I began a series of studies examining the acute and long-term effects of drugs of abuse. Much of this work focused on opioids, was funded by a K02 award and multiple R01 grants from NIH to study how opioid analgesia differed in both receptor pharmacology and neural localizations, and how morphine tolerance and dependence changes during infant development. Our group established paradigms for studying mechanisms of chronic opiate effects during development that are used commonly today.

In 2008 I joined the faculty at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In keeping with my interest in the effects of opioids, including pain, Dr. Renyu Liu and I have been collaborating on the potential of intranasal dezocine to reduce OUD. Dr. Liu established a start-up company, Neurokappa Therapeutics, LLC to explore further dezocine’s potential as a therapeutic. I am the Director of Medication Development at Neurokappa and we are actively seeking support for this endeavour.

I have had extensive experience in the science of drug use and abuse. Now I am deeply involved in the potential of treatment for OUD as part of the start-up NeuroKappa Therapeutics but have little experience in that world. Thus I want to learn the ins-and-outs of the entrepreneurship that I can use going forward.

Next Generation Neurofeedback for Drug Addiction Therapy

NeuromarkR is a device that helps people with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) by monitoring brain reactivity to drug cues. It’s an all-in-one tool that detects potential relapses in advance. The device uses a 5-minute scan to analyze how the brain subconsciously reacts to cues associated with relapse. This method is about 20% more accurate than current clinical predictions.

By identifying patients at the highest risk of relapse, NeuromarkR provides quick, accurate, and consistent measurements for clinicians right at the point of care. This enables targeted interventions like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness, which can improve attendance in outpatient care and clinical outcomes in preventive therapy by 30–40%. By utilizing NeuromarkR, we aim to reduce the average of nine relapses before successful remission, which can lead to savings of up to $700,000 in health claims. The capabilities of NeuromarkR can also be extended to other Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) like chronic cigarette smoking, as well as conditions where brain responses to images are dysregulated, such as depression and eating disorders.

NeuromarkR comes with a clinician dashboard that provides personalized recommendations based on the collected data. It’s an affordable and user-friendly clinical decision support device designed for easy use at the point of care.

Scott Burwell, PhD is CEO and Founder of Neurotype Inc. located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has more than 15 years experience researching brain functions affected by Substance Use Disorders (SUDs), including training at the University of Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research and the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at UC San Diego. Dr. Burwell started Neurotype in 2019 with the aim of improving treatments for drug craving and recurrent drug use brought on by triggers in the environment (e.g., people, places, things linked to drug use). The company has been supported by innovation grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, other awards and cash prizes. Dr. Burwell has also led Neurotype in more than a dozen accelerator and medtech incubator programs, such as Yale University’s Innovation to Impact, NIH’s Innovation Corps (“I-Corps”), and UC Berkeley’s Masters in Translational Medicine programs.

I am excited to participate in the L-SPRINT program to accelerate development and growth at Neurotype Inc., and to bring positive change to the Substance Use Disorder (SUD) community. Additionally, I very much look forward to connecting and networking with other innovators in the SUD space.

Fentanyl test kit

The patented fentanyl test kit is a size of a pocket lighter and is a single use device. It encompasses a pill cutting chamber, a chamber to store the cut pill, a measured water supply and an immunoassay fentanyl test strip that are needed to test street drugs for presence of fentanyl.

I have a MD, PhD (chemistry) and am a practicing medical/surgical dermatologist. I am also an entrepreneur as a board member and practicing physician for an online skin care company.

I hope to connect with others who are pursuing in the endeavor to help with the opioid crisis. My hope is to learn how to make this kit available widely to the public so that testing drugs can be conveniently and accurately performed.

Casa Mia Recovery Care Model for Women and Children

Casa Mia (“My Home”), created by Dr. Lisa Cleveland at the U.T. Health San Antonio, School of Nursing (SON) is a comprehensive substance use recovery program where mothers live with their children. With state funding, Casa Mia opened in 2018 and is unique because it capitalizes on the SON’s clinical expertise and practice. Now being replicated in two additional Texas communities, Casa Mia is expanding to a new comprehensive San Antonio Women’s Wellness Campus that will provide on-site primary/behavioral healthcare services and a specialized nursery where prenatally substance-exposed newborns can recover with their caregiver in a home-like environment while supported by 24/7 nursing care. A permanent supportive housing program that provides rental/leasing assistance and supportive services is now being added to this care model.

Dr. Lisa Cleveland is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, a Mary Jane Ihle Clark Professor in Caregiving, and a tenured Professor at UT Health San Antonio, School of Nursing and School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics. Her innovative research with mother-infant dyads impacted by opioid use has contributed to changes in clinical practice and improved outcomes. Her recovery residence, Casa Mia, is a collaborative partnership between the School of Nursing and the nonprofit, Crosspoint, Inc. Casa Mia provides safe and supportive housing for women and children impacted by substance use. This successful model is now being replicated in Ft. Worth and Corpus Christi and expanded to a new comprehensive Women’s Wellness Campus and supportive housing program in San Antonio.

In addition, the findings of Dr. Cleveland’s Maternal Opioid Morbidity Study are providing insight into the contextual factors surrounding maternal return to opioid use and overdose death, a leading cause of maternal mortality in Texas and a growing national concern. She is a leader in the Texas Targeted Opioid Response to ensure access to overdose prevention education and naloxone: moreNARCANplease.com. Further, she has led the statewide expansion of community paramedicine teams that provide overdose follow-up care and improve access to treatment and recovery support services. Dr. Cleveland has also established and is now overseeing six community-based overdose resource centers throughout Texas and administers the only legal and government funded syringe services program in the state, the Bexar County Harm Reduction Initiative.

Scalability and sustainability of novel approaches to substance use disorder (SUD) recovery for unique populations is critical. My ultimate goal is for the Casa Mia Model to become the national model of best practices in the care of women and children impacted by SUD. What I hope to gain from Babson College’s L-SPRINT Entrepreneurship Immersion is the knowledge and strategies I will need to successfully scale this model nationally while maintaining integrity to its key philosophical tenets. I also hope to receive mentorship as I work toward my future goal of conducting multi-site testing of the model’s outcomes to demonstrate its worth to managed care organizations and other payors as a reimbursable healthcare service that is fully sustainable.

Personalized Addiction Risk Program

I have developed an algorithm that combines information about an individual’s genetic make-up and their behavioral and environmental conditions to provide an estimate of how at risk they are for developing addiction, based on my 20+ year career of NIDA/NIAAA funded research. I am working on a personalized feedback program that would provide individual risk estimates and then match individuals with tailored evidence-based resources designed to reduce the likelihood they will go on to develop problems.

Danielle M. Dick, Ph.D. is a tenured Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where she serves as the inaugural director of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center at the Brain Health Institute and holds the Greg Brown Endowed Chair in Neuroscience. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology in 2001 from Indiana University and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics. She was on the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis from 2003–2007, and Virginia Commonwealth University from 2007–2022, before joining Rutgers University. Her research involves studying how genetic predispositions interact with environmental factors to contribute to patterns of substance use/dependence and related behavioral disorders across development. She has served as a Principal Investigator (PI) on 15 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, and Co-Investigator on another 9 NIH grants, with grant funding totaling >55 million dollars. She has >400 peer-reviewed publications, and has won numerous national and international awards. She has been named as one of the top 1.5% most highly cited researchers in the world across all fields of science. She is passionate about bringing research to the public in ways that are engaging and accessible; her first book “The Child Code: Understanding your child’s unique nature for happier, more effective parenting” is out now from Penguin Random House.

I am excited to learn more about the process of commercialization and entrepreneurship. My passion for research comes from a desire to make a difference in people's lives. But at my mid-career point, I found myself wondering: is my work really making a difference? I realized that academics spend nearly all their time presenting to other academics, writing their work up for other scientists. I became increasingly interested in doing more to get our work into the hands of people who can use it. I don't want my work to simply sit in scientific journals; I want it to be translated meaningfully to make a difference in people's lives. My desire to learn more about entrepreneurship and commercialization is the latest step in my journey to be more proactive about making our research make a difference in the world.

Straight Up Care, Peer Specialist training, administrative and compliant tools and app

Straight Up Care is a turn-key web-based platform that connects peer specialists to clients in one easy-to-use space and provides resources for them to share their lived experiences. This ultimately helps build a positive connection with those in the recovery community. The platform consists of a nationally accredited certification training course, a tele-health app for text, audio, and video chat, along with location-based scheduling. Straight Up Care also provides numerous free resources for those seeking help.

Dr. Mo, (Melissa Dittberner), PhD, CPS, PS, LMT, is a lecturer in the Addiction Counseling and Prevention department at the University of South Dakota. She has a Ph.D. in Counseling and Psychology in Education, a master’s in Addiction Studies and a bachelor’s in Health Sciences. Dr. Mo is a TEDx speaker, prevention specialist and peer specialist. She is the CEO of Straight Up Care, a telehealth platform for peer supports. Dr. Mo is a co-author of The Alcohol Reset. She does research on college students’ substance use, pedagogy, addiction, trauma, body brokering, tattoos as healing and harm reduction. Dr. Mo is a person in long-term recovery and her mission is to help people learn to help themselves.

I want to be part of this cohort to have an understanding space to learn, network and build the page in my business playbook.

AI-powered Entrepreneurial Mindset Development Platform for women in SUD recovery programs

AI-powered, entrepreneurial mindset development platform that helps women in, or seeking, SUD recovery support to gain understanding of their natural talents, to explore passions, dreams, and goals, and connects them to employment or volunteer opportunities in the community of their choice. Our innovative digital health solution addresses social determinants of health and offers a unique combination of self-discovery and practical support. With a focus on building intrinsic motivation, our platform is a digital tool that supports women in their journey towards recovery and economic independence.

Galina Fedorova is an entrepreneur, social change leader, educator and philanthropist.

For the last 25 years she has been empowering women to tap into their natural talents, develop them into strengths and use them to spur personal and professional growth.

Co-Founder of GOODdler (Tech-enabled platform that matches local needs with local resources), President of Gooddler Foundation and Co-Founder of the Gooddler Social Innovation Youth Summit. Galina is a member of the strategic group of the United Nations initiative the "Compact for Young People in Humanitarian Actions".

Galina is an avid triathlete, cyclist and skier. In her spare time she trains for Ironman races (she completed a few) and can be found either backcountry skiing or climbing the mountains on her bike all around the globe. Catch her, if you can!

I am eager to participate in this program as it is tailored to support the commercialization of cutting-edge solutions for Substance Use Disorder prevention and treatment, which aligns perfectly with our needs. Additionally, I look forward to connecting with other like-minded entrepreneurs selected for the program, to contribute to the collective efforts in finding innovative solutions to the addiction epidemic and exploring potential collaboration opportunities.

Overdose Guardian

Overdose Guardian is a safety net for opioid overdose. Our wearable devices detect opioid overdoses using non-invasive biomarkers and machine learning to then rapidly connect users to naloxone intervention.

Chandra is committed to making social impact for marginalized populations using technology. As an EMT and SUD research assistant, he has seen the destruction of communities by the opioid epidemic first-hand. As a Clinton Global Initiative University fellow, he is an advocate for harm reduction policy initiatives and comprehensive solutions for SUD patients. As the co-founder of Overdose Guardian, he has received support from the NIH, Amazon, Verizon, and more to reduce inequities OUD populations face.

Chandra studies Neuroscience at Yale University and intends to take Overdose Guardian full-time post-graduation. In his free time, he enjoys running triathlons and playing Catan.

As a SUD researcher and innovator from an underrepresented community, the values of Babson's program align with my personal and professional values, as I am committed to creating social impact and making a difference in the lives of those affected by substance use disorders.

L.I.V.E. Project

The L.I.V.E project involves integrating evidence-based assessments for SUDs and burnout, and common co-morbidities, including those impacted by gender, with a confidential digital health intervention. My initial goal is to support health and behavioral health care providers as well as other public health leaders who are struggling with co-morbidities associated with overwork, burnout, and the all-too-common coping strategies that lead to the overuse of substances that create a downward spiral of dependency. The approach will be based on a trauma-informed harm reduction model that will be accessible from smart devices for underserved professionals who may not seek treatment due to concern regarding public exposure and impact on career. Both the health education aspects and the intervention side of the digital health solution will consider common co-morbidities and SUD risk factors for healthcare professionals.

Dr. Green is a Research Fellow in the Sheps Center for Health Services Research and an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She has had a distinguished 35-plus year career focused on increasing access to gender and trauma-informed integrative substance use disorder (SUD) care and on reducing barriers to evidence-based treatments. Prior to her academic life, Dr. Green worked in the early efforts by SAMHSA, the Children’s Bureau, NIDA, and representatives from the Women’s Service Network and National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, as well as non-profit companies, on state and national efforts to develop, deliver, and evaluate gender- and trauma-informed perinatal and maternal substance use disorder services. Her clinical, consultation, leadership, and coaching experience, and her public health research have been largely at the intersections of health and behavioral health for women, children, and families affected by substance use disorders and chronic health conditions amplified by experiences of trauma, racial and ethnic bias, poverty, and rural access to care barriers.

Two of her recent projects were funded by AHRQ and NIDA, one an intervention with primary care and rural health providers using an intervention designed to encourage adoption of evidence-based medication-assisted treatment in rural primary care, and the other, with her Co-PI and Co-Investigator, an experiment designed to examine the responsiveness of primary care providers to pro-social and financial incentives to participate in a learning collaborative for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). During the last 10 years of her career, Dr. Green shifted focus from directly supporting development of and evaluation of perinatal and maternal SUD treatment services and related policy research work to supporting and training primary care providers and other health professionals on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. During this time in which she worked more directly with her interventions and research at the provider vs the patient level she witnessed first-hand the burnout and struggles of providers who too often suffer in silence with overwork, family stress, and addictions until they are in a crisis with their own health or career.

This program could better prepare me to understand the necessary steps and risks to successfully bring my innovation ideas related to provider health, SUDs, and women’s health to market and to get a better grasp on the types of partners I will need to do so. This opportunity comes at an ideal point in my career as I can dedicate the time needed to move from thought to action with this innovation. I have participated in faculty and public health leadership programs, but never one focused on entrepreneurship, an area of personal interest to me.

YourPath

YourPath is a solution for payers or government entities looking to address issues related to substance across large populations. Through our unique care model and ecosystem platform, we improve the performance of entire systems of care.

Jordan Hansen is an experienced leader in healthcare focused on supporting recovery for people with issues related to substance use. He is especially passionate about improving access to care for underserved populations.

We want to improve and refine our commercialization strategy.

IPill dispenser

The iPill—a digital health hardware platform to improve access and treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD).

iPill consists of a pill dispenser operated by a mobile app for secure opioid storage, real-time remote medication adherence monitoring with bidirectional alerts for missed dose detection and remediation, biometric active controlled dispensing, and destruction of unused pills if tampered and automatic destruction at the end of 30 days.

Many patients with OUD are limited by education, income, SDoH, Health literacy and access to OUD treatment. iPill is trying to address these issues with technology by bringing medications to them. iPill can be prefilled with MOUD and sent directly to patient homes.

Dr. John Hsu worked 29 years in anesthesia, chronic pain management, and addiction medicine. Previously, Dr. Hsu founded Quivivepharma to produce a combined opioid-respiratory stimulant oral pill to address opioid induced respiratory depression and abuse deterrence. He was awarded a $1.9 million two-year NIDA NIH grant. He founded Fentavive, an oral abuse deterrent Fentanyl patch. He co-founded NAOMI systems, a digital platform for practice management. He has eight granted patents in digital medicine, medical devices and drug development.

Quivivepharma: Quivive takes generic opioids and adds an inseparable respirator stimulant to support breathing and also deter abuse. Quivive reduces opioid side effects to reduce healthcare costs.

Recovery Digital Coach

In addition to all the other barriers to addiction recovery, many continue to suffer because behavior change is hard and there are four primary reasons why even the most well-meaning patients never make the transition to healthy behaviors.

• Behavioral Learning is quickly forgotten: Unless new information is immediately practiced and reinforced, humans tend to forget 75% of what they hear or learn within 6 days.
• Learning happens at the wrong time: Applying knowledge in the real world is crucial to effective recall, but therapy and other behavioral learning tends to happen on a therapy or institutional schedule, not in the flow of day to day life.
• Learning is not reinforced over time: The human brain quickly forgets most of what it does not incorporate into daily practice, but when learning is reinforced at regular, frequent intervals, recall increases from a meager 25% to an enormous 80%, even 60 days later.
• Learning is not personalized: Most therapy or behavioral training does not adapt to the individual's learning style. Research shows that individuals acquire and process information in different ways. RevMyLife nudge notifications align with the learning receptivity of the specific user, which can vary with mental state, interest, time of day, learning style and level of development.

We can have a positive impact on addiction behavior because our technology takes behavioral learning content and super-charges it. Gone are the days where patients see a therapist or case worker week after week with no support in between sessions. Mobile nudge messaging, quick tips and micro-learning related to addiction recovery are integrated with calendared day-to-day events at the user's discretion. And a therapist or institution can also reach out with nudge messages of encouragement, helpful info or relevant event announcements.

Denise is the Chief Executive Officer of Rev Solutions Global, LLC, an operating company for multiple brands that utilize a B2B behavioral reinforcement SaaS platform. The patented machine learning and Just in Time nudge messaging assists individuals and organizations with behavior change in real time around actual daily events. Their clients include FedEx, Intuit, IDEXX, Cox, Lockheed and many more. She is also a Start-Up coach, a fractional and interim CEO and an Angel Investor. Based on Ms. Hummel’s decades of experience in Diversity & Inclusion, the first use-case of the technology was with the behavior of inclusion, the content built by RevWork’s Lead Inclusively division. Predominant current use cases are in the mental health vertical from addiction recovery to depression recovery eating disorder treatments and other digital healthcare transformation goals.

An attorney, with a history of landmark cases, she is a serial entrepreneur and business consultant who scaled and sold her org culture firm to Ernst & Young (EY), joining them as a Principal.

Her cross-cultural strategy model is being is used throughout the world by EY, Deloitte and Aon Hewitt. She is also the author of two books, a Ted Talk finalist, a former HBA Board member, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches ™ Legacy team, chosen from over 16,000 applicants globally.

Highlights of her career include establishing Ernst & Young’s (EY) Talent, Innovation and Culture Transformation offerings client-facing, and a tech team of PhD software engineers to operationalize her I.P. internally. At EY, she won their Innovation Award in 2015, led a major global M&A integration for a high-tech client merger and developed EY's client-facing methodology for Diversity & Inclusion client engagements.

As the Founder and former CEO of Universal Consensus, LLC, she implemented her cross-border business optimization model to generate double digit profit increases for clients, scaled the business to 65 countries, designed and executed the people integration for AIG’s operating companies in Japan and increased cross-cultural process performance for clients including FedEx, Roche, State of California Tourism, and EY’s shared services.

Earlier in her career Denise was a practicing attorney, a Law Clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives, General Counsel for the Overseas Education Association with a jurisdiction of Western Europe, Bermuda, Cuba and Iceland. She litigated and won the first class action under the Americans With Disabilities Act as a solo. She received her Juris Doctor from American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Columbia University, Barnard College in New York, N.Y.. She also participated in international studies in advanced literature at the University of Florence in Italy. She has lived in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy and executed for clients in every continent. She is fluent in English and Italian with conversational skills in French and Spanish.

To learn more about the science of addiction, the sufferers we want to serve, the barriers to serving them with our technology and the ways to change the tech or the market approach to maximize our chances of successfully helping this group of users.

A non-addicting replacement therapy for stimulant use disorder

Substitution pharmacotherapy is an effective approach for treating opioid and nicotine dependence, and there is strong evidence to support a similar approach for the management of stimulant (cocaine, methamphetamine) use disorder. Despite this, no stimulant replacement therapy has advanced to the clinic, largely owing to the high abuse potential of such treatments. Our technology combines d-amphetamine with a novel adjuvant that i) enhances the anti-craving effects of d-amphetamine, and ii) removes its abuse liability. Our research indicates that this combination approach may be an effective pharmacotherapy for maintaining abstinence during initial abstinence/detoxification from stimulants.

I am an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers University where I lead an addiction neuroscience lab. A major focus of our work is preclinical development of new medications to treat substance use disorders.

This course comes at an extremely opportune time as we begin the process of incorporating a spin-out company to develop our technology. This course offers an extremely unique opportunity to up-skill in entrepreneurism, which will be critical to our success as we embark on our commercialization journey. I am particularly excited that this course will be focused on the commercial landscape for SUD treatments, as this appears to be a very unique market to which the 'normal rules' of entrepreneurism do not necessarily apply.

Framework to Accelerate Substance Use Disorder Genetic Studies through Customizable, EHR-Based Precision Phenotyping

There is a critical need for accurate, efficient, and portable substance use disorder (SUD) identification methods that support large-scale genetic studies in uncovering biological mechanisms helpful in SUD prevention and management. The long-term goal of this work is to support genetic discovery efforts that result in beneficial interventions for prevention and treatment of SUD. The overall objective in this project is to develop and evaluate an SUD phenotyping method that allows investigators to fine-tune phenotypes for their specific projects. Given most large-scale SUD phenotyping for genetics studies have relied on administrative billing codes (that undercount true cases) and binary outcome labels (that induce arbitrary dichotomization), a system which includes a variety of data sources and generates a probabilistic outcome along a continuum is needed. The SUD phenotyping framework will support the inclusion of heterogenous electronic health record data types (including administrative billing codes, medication information, and unstructured text data) and will be evaluated in multiple organizations. Pairing these SUD phenotypes with genetic data will enhance our understanding of SUD mechanisms among individuals.

Dr. Alvin Jeffery is an Assistant Professor of Nursing and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University. He completed his PhD (Nursing Science & Health Services Research) at Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing in 2017 and a Medical Informatics Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Vanderbilt University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2019. Dr. Jeffery previously held an AHRQ/PCORI K12 focused on Learning Healthcare Systems and implementation science. He is currently funded by an NIH/NIDA Avenir DP1 to develop precision phenotypes for substance use disorders with the aim of accelerating genetics studies as well as the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators focused on customizing electronic health record systems for diverse users and settings. He has a background in pediatric critical care nursing and as a staff educator at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He holds board certifications in pediatric critical care nursing and as a Family Nurse Practitioner. He is a former Emerging Leader with the Alliance of Nursing Informatics.

I have a depth of knowledge and skill in conducting research, which is also expanding into the development of software systems now that I have grant funding. I can see potential for commercializing our software in the future so that we can achieve greater scalability of our methods. I envision a greater impact on health & healthcare if we can "hand off" our software to companies that have greater expertise in marketing and scaling. I look forward to learning about the process of moving from idea and prototype to a commercial product.

Comorbid Substance Use Disorders and Serious Mental Illnesses: Combining Evidence-Based Treatment with mHealth to Improve Functional Measures During Active Disorders

This project proposes combining the effective IPSRT with mHealth components shown to be efficacious to develop the first integrated psychosocial mHealth intervention for Black individuals with comorbid affective SMIs (bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder) and SUDs. MHealth enables the unobtrusive collection of functional and behavioral markers and is a promising avenue to provide much-needed quality and low-threshold treatment for those with comorbid SUDs/SMIs—previous research support mHealth as a viable treatment for each standalone condition.

I am the Ann Atherton Hertzler Early Career Professor in Health and Human Development and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University. I completed postdoctoral fellowships in the Departments of Mental Health and Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I received my Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Florida. I am in the early phase of my academic career as I completed my postdoctoral fellowship in 2020, less than four years ago.

My work focuses on understanding the individual and contextual factors contributing to substance use disorders (SUDs) and associated health risks by evaluating and developing interventions targeting multiple levels of analysis (e.g., policy, judicial, and behavioral). I especially focus on the unique circumstances and structural barriers that impact racial/ethnic minorities, women, and other vulnerable populations and communities, often unaccounted for in traditional research. My research agenda has expanded to substance use and comorbid serious mental illness, particularly developing interventions for racially/ethnically minoritized people who use drugs and have comorbid serious mental illnesses (SMIs).

To learn effective ways to use technology and marketing to improve substance use treatment.

Mitigating the opioid epidemic

EvoDenovo is developing non-opioid treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) by targeting a newly discovered receptor called GPR139. This innovative approach aims to manage withdrawal symptoms and lower relapse rates, offering a potential breakthrough in combating the opioid crisis.

As a scientist and entrepreneur, I currently serve as the Co-founder and CEO of EvoDenovo. My focus is on the development of innovative treatments for substance use disorders. With an extensive background in research and business, I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the biotech industry. My previous roles include co-founding several biotech companies and conducting significant scientific research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

A startup like EvoDenovo wants to benefit from participating in a program as it provides an opportunity to receive mentoring, access to industry experts, and a supportive community of like-minded entrepreneurs. The program could also help EvoDenovo refine its business plan, develop its entrepreneurial skills, and make important connections with potential investors or partners. Additionally, the Babson L-SPRINT program specifically focuses on developing new technologies and solutions in the life sciences, which aligns well with EvoDenovo’s goal of developing novel therapies to treat opioid use disorder.