Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Moss Amer works at the Maryland Venture Fund, where he serves as a board observer for several portfolio companies, including Aledade, Fugue, and Harpoon Medical.

Prior to joining the Fund, Moss worked as a Senior Analyst at TCP Venture Capital, where he helped to build a 10-company portfolio with significant positive write-ups. Select investments include RedOwl Analytics (acquired by Forcepoint), WellDoc, and ZeroFOX.

Moss graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, where he studied entrepreneurship and technology management. He is a 2013 Venture for America fellow.

Ronan Perry is a sophomore at the Johns Hopkins University, double majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Math, and originally from Ithaca, NY.

Founder, Shrenik was motivated to work on Sunrise Health after watching fellow first responders struggle with PTSD and substance use issues in silence due to the social stigma surrounding getting help. After meeting Ravi while at Johns Hopkins, he decided to put his undergraduate education on hold to found Sunrise Health, a mobile application for text-based group psychotherapy that harnesses AI to make mental health care more accessible for patients and more cost-effective for providers. Beyond Sunrise, Shrenik has experience working in business development at multiple medical technology startups, and conducting academic research at Johns Hopkins and the NIH.

Our team project, "ABSP - Active Bed Sore Prevention," was a creative concept and prototype model to prevent bed sores through a sensor-based pad that may be placed on an existing patient bed. The idea was to detect the location and magnitude of pressure differences, then use a feedback mechanism to create an air pocket at the target site in order to alleviate the pressure. Our presentation included a consideration of the potential for a large public health impact across the world, as pressure ulcers currently result in a largely preventable mortality risk and incur a heavy economic burden.

Julia Spicer serves as the Executive Director for the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA) and fosters innovation and company building by bringing together private and public investment capital and high growth enterprises across stage and industry. As head of MAVA, Ms. Spicer presents industry thought-leaders and best practices in support of emerging as well as established companies. From helping the earliest of innovators secure seed capital to discussing the latest in market intelligence important to high growth enterprises, she supports the full life cycle of company growth and investment interests. Her corporate technology career, experience in private investment, and most notably, her early entrepreneurial roots as company founder provide a useful foundation for fostering the success of high growth technology companies, from start-up to exit. She joined MAVA from Columbia Capital, a private equity growth capital firm specializing in communications technology. Previously, she served as Corporate Vice President of Strategic Planning and Communications for GTE Corporation, with responsibilities for investor relations and both public policy and strategic positioning for the company’s $4B emerging technology businesses which included wireless, mobile, air-to-ground, satellite, and R&D operations. Ms. Spicer also served as President of the GTE Foundation, one of the top 20 corporate foundations in the United States, focusing principally on science and mathematics education and the arts. An industry leader, Spicer founded TechBUZZ which to date over a five year period has helped launch more than 330 early market-entry companies, which have collectively raised more than $700M in reported seed and follow-on investments. In 2008, she was instrumental in launching a first-ever Mid-Atlantic Bio initiative to further support the biotechnology industry and encourage collaboration among investors, industry, academia and companies from laboratory to exit. Spicer has served or is currently on the boards of the Network of Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an international organization assisting disadvantaged children through chapters located in 33 countries; the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering Board of Visitors; Summit Executive Resources; and Able Flight, a scholarship program providing assistance to individuals with disabilities by challenging them through flight training. Through a gubernatorial appointment, Ms. Spicer serves on the Commonwealth Health Research Board, which has the primary responsibility to make grants for human health research, especially for those efforts that have the potential of maximizing human health benefits for citizens of the Commonwealth. Ms. Spicer is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

Dr. Jennifer Reynolds is an experienced and entrepreneurial executive with more than twenty years of experience growing companies in start - up/early stage biotechnology and high technology environments. She is currently overseeing the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s 60+ company incubation/acceleration program in life sciences, cybersecurity and clean technology and has a deep passion and interest in advancing the commercialization of new technologies within diverse high-technology sectors. Previously, she served in a COO capacity at a molecular diagnostics platform company in MD, growing the company from the ground up. She has also served as a DNA Forensics Expert and Crime Laboratory Director at one of the nation’s most prestigious private forensics testing laboratories. Jennifer has a B.S. degree in Biology from Virginia Tech, a PhD in Human Genetics from the Medical College of Virginia (VCU), and an MBA degree from the Executive MBA program at Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland College Park.

Dr. Miriam Boer is the founder of Sonify Biosciences, an ultrasound-based hyperthermia device company based in the Alexandria LaunchLabs incubator in New York City. Dr. Boer founded Sonify Biosciences in 2012 after receiving her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland College Park, where she studied mechanosensation in bacterial cell membranes. Prior to that, Dr. Boer studied chemistry at New York University and worked as a color and flavor chemist in international research and development at PepsiCo.

Sarah Jennings started building things as soon as she was big enough to hold a hammer, and hasn't stopped since. As the Creative Director of Brand and Ad Innovation at OATH, she is obsessed with making the advertising world a better place for consumers of content. Sarah came to Oath through AOL and Millennial Media, where she built mind blowing creatives for big brands on every kind of small screen since phones had internet. She was named one of Business Insider's 30 most creative people in mobile advertising, and loves sharing her excitement about the power of technology with anyone who will listen. Sarah's previous life was as a propsmaster and costumer, graduating from UVA and working at opera houses and other theaters around Europe and the United States. Sarah learned how to build pretty much any physical object during that time, but became more and more interested in what could be built on computers. She got her masters in Publication Design from the University of Baltimore and started working in ad tech. Sarah always tries to bring an element of spectacle to every project, digital or otherwise. When she's not getting paid to play on her phone, she spends her time with the best thing she ever made - her daughter Riley.