Disruptive ideas, findings, and products
A second score for Hopkins alumni Matt ’99 and Susan, A&S ’99, Daimler, the husband/ wife team that sold their airlines eating website, SeatGuru.com, to Expedia in 2007. Now, Seattle-based online real estate marketplace Zillow has purchased their New York–based home shopping platform, Buyfolio, for an undisclosed amount. The couple will stay on, run the business, and expand Buyfolio nationwide. The industry-changing idea enables house hunters and their real estate agents to search, track, organize, and discuss for-sale listings in a private online forum. The idea was inspired by the couple’s frustration while house hunting in New York. Says Susan Daimler: “If you have a problem, chances are there are other people out there with the same problem … good business ideas come from finding the solutions.”
Biological systems, either healthy or diseased, are too complex to be understood without quantitative models that can capture what we know, and Feilim Mac Gabhann, PhD ’07, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Institute for Computational Medicine, is at the forefront of this rapidly emerging discipline. His approach: using high-resolution imaging, computational modeling, and vascular remodeling experiments to build a computer model capable of predicting the outcomes of certain therapeutic interventions for diseases such as peripheral artery disease.
Hopkins Engineering parent Mukesh Chatter shared his tales of riding the boom-and-bust roller coaster of serial entrepreneurship when he delivered the Sydney and Mitzi Blumenthal Lecture in September. Chatter recounted years of working 24/7 to start his router company, Nexabit Networks, which he sold to Lucent Technologies in 1999 for $900 million. He and his wife, Priti Chatter, today operate neoSaej Corp., an online auction site that enables consumers to find rates on bank CDs and high-yield savings accounts. His advice: “You have to know if you want to build a palace or a Motel 6. They may both have the same number of rooms, but they are very, very different buildings.”
Eight biomedical engineering students plan to turn a promising prototype into a successful new medical device. In what began as an undergraduate design project, the group has developed a safer way to close tough abdominal muscle, called the fascia, after surgery. FastStitch is a disposable suturing tool that looks like a cross between pliers and a hole-puncher. The device makes it easier to stitch together the fascia, located just below the skin, without accidentally penetrating bowels. Already, the team has received $90,000 in grants, and won first place in the 2012 Collegiate Inventors Competition. Next up: raising $2 million in venture capital to fund testing and FDA clearance.
Melody Swartz ’91 has received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation for her work investigating the human lymphatic system, which she believes may play an important role in changing the body’s immune response to cancerous tumors. A bioengineer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Swartz started as a chemical engineer. “I know it is scary in science to go into a new field because you risk looking stupid,” she says. “But you have to do that in order to cross boundaries.”