How LifeX pairs academic spinouts with the operating leaders who turn breakthrough science into venture-ready companies
Great science rarely turns into a great company on its own. The founders who make the initial breakthrough possible, the clinicians, researchers, and engineers behind a spinout’s core technology, are rarely the same people equipped to run commercialization strategy, build a fundraising narrative, or stand up the operational infrastructure a venture-backed company needs. That gap, between deep scientific credibility and venture-ready execution, is where LifeX Connect operates.
LifeX Connect is a talent matching program that embeds experienced operators into spinouts to bridge the gap between academic innovation and venture-ready execution. The operators LifeX places are called Embedded Entrepreneurs, and the distinction matters: they are not advisors dropping in for a quarterly check-in, and they are not mentors offering opinions from the sidelines. They join the founding team, take on real operating responsibility, and stay engaged well beyond LifeX’s own programming.
How LifeX Connect Works
Before a founder ever meets a candidate, LifeX runs the process through four stages.
Selective Engagement
LifeX starts by evaluating alignment with its university partners and the founding team itself, assessing whether the company is ready for an Embedded Entrepreneur and whether the timing makes sense.
Recruitment & Curation
Once a spinout is a fit, LifeX runs targeted outreach to identify qualified candidates. This typically spans several weeks and includes background review and meet-and-greet conversations before anyone sits across the table from a founder.
Mutual Match
The founding team leads the evaluation from there, weighing vision alignment, the specific capabilities the company needs, and whether both sides are ready for a real commitment. As LifeX puts it, the decision of who to bring onto your team always remains yours.
Structured Programming & Compensation
Once a match is confirmed and the company is accepted into LifeX Accelerator or LifeX Launchpad, the Embedded Entrepreneur comes on with fractional compensation and milestone-driven progress tracking, not an open-ended advisory arrangement.
Two companies working through that process, Netramind Innovations and Advanced Respiratory Technologies, show what it looks like when the match works.
Netramind Innovations and Justin Shaka
Netramind Innovations is a 2024 spinout from the University of Pittsburgh, founded by clinicians and researchers Jay Chhablani (CEO), Sandeep Chandra Bollepalli, Kiran Vupparaboina, and Jose-Alain Sahel.
The team built an AI-powered multimodal ophthalmic screening platform that turns routine eye scans into actionable clinical insight, extracting biomarkers from ocular imaging to catch diseases like Age-Related Macular Degeneration and Myopia earlier than standard screening allows.
The science was strong from the start. What the founding team didn’t have, as clinician-led founders, was the operational leadership to translate that science into a commercial company.
Founders (L-R)
In the summer of 2024, LifeX Connect introduced them to Justin Shaka, a medical device entrepreneur with direct experience founding companies in eye-screening disease detection and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon. Shaka was based in Boston at the time, but his domain expertise and ties to Pittsburgh’s innovation ecosystem made the match compelling on both sides.
When Netramind entered the LifeX Accelerator that fall, Shaka joined Netramind’s founding team in an active leadership capacity, guiding commercialization strategy, organizational structure, and execution priorities rather than offering advice from outside the company. Once the Accelerator ended in December 2024, the team retained him in a continued fractional role. By 2026, he had relocated to Pittsburgh to deepen his involvement with Netramind and the broader ecosystem.
❝ LifeX Connect created a perfect match between our scientific vision and business execution. Partnering with Justin Shaka as our Entrepreneurial Lead gave us the structure, energy, and entrepreneurial mindset we needed to accelerate our progress.❞
– Jay Chhablani, CEO Netramind Innovations
The results followed: initial product sales of Netramind’s research tools, and outside investment from LifeX Ventures and the R.K. Mellon Social Impact Investment Fund.
Advanced Respiratory Technologies and David Gibel
Advanced Respiratory Technologies (ART) is a Carnegie Mellon University spinout founded by David Skoog (Chief Scientific Officer), Matthew Bacchetta (Chief Medical Officer), and Keith Cook (Chief Strategy Officer), leaders in extracorporeal life support and biomedical engineering.
engaging with LifeX, the Pittsburgh-based team had already secured more than $24 million in non-dilutive funding from the Department of Defense, DARPA, and the National Institutes of Health.
As the company’s commercialization priorities came into focus, ART engaged LifeX to support their forward looking progress. Through LifeX Connect, the ART team was matched with David Gibel, a healthcare executive who has held leadership roles at Boston Scientific, Guidant, and Philips alongside operating roles at multiple venture-backed startups through exits, with a focus on commercialization, business development, and growth strategy.
at the LifeX Startup Summit – Spring 2026
Gibel’s Embedded Entrepreneur role took shape during ART’s participation in the Spring 2026 LifeX Accelerator where we was responsible for bridging day-to-day execution with the demands of venture-scale growth. As a fractional leader, his mandate was centered on investor readiness: identifying the milestones that create value, sharpening ART’s pitch, and validating physician feedback to ground the commercial strategy in real clinical workflows.
The company has since sharpened its market entry strategy, built a more structured approach to investor engagement, and continues advancing toward its next clinical milestones and financing round, with Gibel taking over as Cheif Executive Officer (CEO).
❝ Working with David Gibel through the LifeX Connect program added a seasoned layer of support that helped align our team, sharpen our strategy, and accelerate execution through the accelerator, keeping us focused on what matters most to investors and how we translate our work into a clear, fundable path forward.❞
– David Skoog,
Founder & CSO, ART
Ready to Make the Match?
Whether you’re a spinout ready for the right operating partner, or an experienced executive ready to build alongside a founding team instead of advising one from the outside, LifeX Connect is built to make that match.
Learn More & Apply: https://lifexglobal.com/connect/