HIT Fund Announces 2025-26 Awardee Cohort

Stanford’s High Impact Technology (HIT) Fund is pleased to introduce its fourth cohort of Stanford innovators spanning 16 teams working on areas as diverse as next-generation manufacturing and neurostimulation. The HIT Fund offers guidance and funding to Stanford innovators working to commercialize their technologies, helping bring impactful technologies to market.

“The HIT Fund exists to bridge the gap between innovation and real-world impact,” says Nitin Parekh, the Director of the HIT Fund. “Every one of these teams has a brilliant idea, and we’re excited to give them the resources they need to bring their vision to life.”

The HIT Fund, within Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing, offers a broad range of resources for aspiring entrepreneurs within Stanford and access to mentors with industry and domain expertise. During their tenure, teams address key aspects of commercialization including product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, strategic partnering, and early funding helping create a “critical path” that derisks issues important to investors.

Teams get crucial hands-on support at every step, with regular check-ins, commercialization-focused seminars, and embedded MBA fellows who provide crucial business skills to supplement teams’ scientific expertise. Awardees are also able to leverage the HIT Fund’s extensive network of VCs and potential collaborators in Silicon Valley, giving them the opportunity to vet ideas and form the strategic partnerships and relations critical for success.

The journey from lab to market can be long and difficult, and laying the groundwork for future success in a safe, Stanford-affiliated environment gives teams the skills and confidence to take their next step. Dozens of past cohort members have found successful paths to commercialization, including founding startups and securing licensing deals for their technologies. 

“The benefit of the HIT Fund goes way beyond financial support: It’s all about the people,” says professor of anesthesiology, perioperative, and pain medicine in the School of Medicine Patrick Purdon, a 2025-26 HIT Fund awardee. “Our MBA Fellow interviewed key opinion leaders in the field to refine product-market fit, while our advisors — serial entrepreneurs in our space — gave us guidance informed by years of experience and introduced us to top-tier VCs. Our MBA Fellow, advisors, and the HIT Fund team are core members of our ‘family’ for this innovation.”

This year’s cohort is addressing critical needs in industrial automation, manufacturing, climate technology, drug development, and devices for mental health therapies among others. Teams include Stanford undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff, and faculty, each with a distinct vision for building the technology of tomorrow. Over the next year, these projects will tackle many of the biggest challenges that lie between the lab and commercialization, including targeting the appropriate market, technical and economic derisking, and establishing strategic partnerships with vendors and customers. Here, find brief profiles of four exciting new projects supported by the HIT Fund, and a full list of this year’s awardees at the bottom.

Kerra: Turning Waste Wool Into Skin Products, Textiles and More

Team Members:
David Myung (Principal Investigator)
Charlotte McCurdy (Co-Investigator)
Alexander Chon
Jacob Dunlop
Caraoisa O’Farrell
Euisun Song

Restorative hand creams, sweat-wicking t-shirts, and Ziploc bags are all modern luxuries that come with a hidden cost. These petroleum-based products release microplastics, tiny particles that may cause harm to both our health and the environment.

High-performing, oil-free alternatives have been hard to find. But a new generation of naturally-derived materials, made with the help of some clever chemistry, could change that. Kerra, a project that grew out of a Stanford d.school class on biomaterials and the future of fashion taught by Charlotte McCurdy, aims to turn waste wool into a sustainable, drop-in upgrade to petroleum polymers.

The secret ingredient is keratin, the same building block that makes up our hair, skin, and fingernails. Using a recyclable solvent, Kerra breaks down leftover wool into keratin molecules which can then be built into longer protein chains with tunable properties.

“Keratin has really exceptional film-forming capabilities,” says team member Caraiosa O’Farrell, a Stanford materials science student. “We're tapping into that to essentially replace synthetic chemicals across industries.”

Kerra’s innovation yields longer molecular chains than other keratin extraction processes, which gives it sought-after properties like higher viscosity and slower drying times, says Kerra team member and Doerr School of Sustainability student Jacob Dunlop. With different formulations, their keratin product could be the basis for moisturizing skin lotions, stretchy exercise clothing, or even new bioplastics. 

The team, which also includes Stanford Sustainability master’s student Alexander Chon, envisions their keratin product as a platform that could eventually replace many petroleum-based ingredients across industries. To start, O’Farrell says the team is focusing on the cosmetics industry, where Kerra’s solution could improve upon current inputs such as polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and acrylate, and act as a binding agent and stabilizer. Next up could be finishing agents for textiles, where Kerra’s product could provide properties like wrinkle resistance or water repellency.

During their HIT Fund tenure, the team will continue to refine their material’s properties and production processes, solidify the go-to-market strategy and form early partnerships across the supply chain. Using pilot projects, the team will demonstrate cost-effectiveness and sustainability through a combined techno-economic analysis and life-cycle assessment.

Better Drug Delivery With CARTs

Team Members:
Paul Wender (Principal Investigator)
Zhijian Li
Jennifer Hamad

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines like the Moderna COVID shot let the body efficiently train immune cells to recognize pathogens. But before the mRNA cargo can begin its work, it needs to get to the right place in the body, a process that requires a safe, efficient delivery mechanism.

A team of Stanford researchers working with Francis W. Bergstrom Professor of chemical and systems biology Paul Wender has developed a new and more effective way to get drug molecules into the right cells, potentially expanding the reach and effectiveness of not only vaccines, but gene therapies, small molecule drugs, and more.

Their innovation is called CARTs, short for charge-altering releasable transporters. It’s made of a positively-charged shell of ammonium and guanidinium ions, which can slip through negatively-charged cell membranes. Once inside a cell, the CARTs respond to the change in pH by rapidly degrading, releasing their cargo.

CARTs have multiple advantages over the lipid nanoparticles and viruses currently used to deliver drugs to cells, says Zhijian Li, a project co-lead and coauthor of a 2025 Nature Communications paper describing the technology.

“Lipid nanoparticles and lentiviruses are really costly and complicated to manufacture,” he says. “Our solution is a single component system which is much easier to work with.”

In lab tests, CARTs are 2.5 times as efficient at delivering cargoes than the lipid nanoparticles used by the Moderna vaccine, a current gold standard. And, while the nanoparticles are drawn primarily to liver cells, CARTs can more easily find many targets including lungs, spleen, and blood extrahepatically without any targeting ligands.

“It really is a platform technology,” says Jennifer Hamad, a research scientist in the Wender Lab and CARTs co-inventor. “In principle, you can selectively deliver cargoes of interest to virtually any organ or cell type. That makes it a disease-agnostic solution with applicability to many different conditions.”

Working with the HIT Fund, Li and Hamad say they will explore ways to improve product-market fit for the CARTs and continue to optimize them to efficiently engineer immune cells in vivo, while benchmarking them against other delivery methods.

The ultimate goal is to “find a way to put the innovation and the discoveries we have made here in the lab on a fast track towards the clinic to reach patients. The HIT Fund will facilitate the commercialization needed to make that possible” Hamad says.

SeqControl Provides Precision Guidance for Brain Stimulation

Team Members:
Anish Mitra (Principal Investigator)
Patrycja Dzialecka
Adam Pines
Cephra Raja

A team of Stanford researchers has developed a way to deliver more targeted, controlled brain stimulation treatments, an advance that could improve care for patients with a range of psychiatric disorders.

Brain stimulation uses electrodes to send targeted pulses of electricity to the brain, altering activity in ways that can be therapeutic for those with depression, PTSD, and other things. But knowing exactly where to deliver those electrical jolts is challenging, in part because brain activity propagates through networks in a specific order. Trigger a node in that network out of sequence, and you may not get the effect you want.

The SeqControl project, led by assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences Anish Mitra, relies on computational tools that allow for a more nuanced look at how activity flows within brain networks, allowing researchers to pinpoint where sequences of brain activity begin and end. Knowing where a sequence begins is crucial for accurately stimulating a specific network in the brain involved in, for example, depression.

“Understanding those effects can really help target the treatment in a very specific direction, making it a lot more efficient,” says Patrycja Dzialecka, a Stanford postdoc specializing in electrical brain stimulation and the technical lead for SeqControl.

SeqControl makes finding those nodes of activity possible, opening the door to brain stimulation treatments that may be far more effective. What’s more, the technology can both upregulate and downregulate activity, something called bidirectional control, a capability not demonstrated reliably before, Dzialecka says.

Working with the HIT Fund, the SeqControl team plans to do a preclinical study of their technology in an animal model of PTSD, and begin laying the groundwork for commercialization. That could take the form of licensing their software to existing brain stimulation hardware makers, or perhaps creating the full stack of software and hardware themselves.

“I love that working with the HIT Fund forces us to think about the business needs now and forces me to take time to work on that alongside their team,” Dzialecka says.

Storing Carbon and Fertilizing Crops, Simultaneously

Team Members:
Matt Kanan (Principal Investigator)
Jade Marcus 

One big challenge of addressing climate change is simply economics: Many solutions are expensive to implement. With a new product that can both fertilize plants and draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the same time, Mafix is pioneering a solution that’s both effective and economical.

Their product takes the form of small silicate granules that can be spread alongside traditional fertilizers on farm fields. Once in the soil, the granules react with CO2 in rainwater to form bicarbonate, which locks carbon away, and simultaneously release silicon in a form that protects plants against disease and improves yields. 

“By delivering both farmer profitability and climate impact within the same year, Mafix can accelerate the shift toward sustainable agriculture in a way that is commercially viable and economic,” says Jade Marcus, a Ph.D. Student in Chemical Engineering at Stanford and co-leader of the Mafix project, who was recently named to the Forbes 30 under 30 - Energy & Green Tech list.

Their silicon granules are already being tested at 11 field sites in the U.S. and Germany, where the team says that so far they’ve seen rapid and sustained weathering to sequester carbon and boost plant-available silicon in the soil.

A production process using cement kilns also means Mafix needs little expensive capital investment to begin production. Marcus estimates they could reach megaton-scale carbon removal in just a few years using existing infrastructure. During their HIT Fund tenure, the team plans to finalize the manufacturing process and dial in the right granule size, as well as refine their go-to-market strategy, identify the early pilot sites, establish long term supply relationships, and secure a strategic off-take agreement.

“Most technologies that are trying to impact the carbon problem only offer a carbon benefit and face enormous infrastructure barriers,” says Matthew Kanan, professor of chemistry and Mafix co-leader. “Our solution provides real value beyond carbon to help drive adoption, and we can scale it without building new assets.”

Full List of 2025-26 HIT Fund Awardees

Life Science Teams

Efficient, Safe, and Organ-Selective Oligonucleotide Therapeutics
Paul Wender (Principal Investigator)
Zhijian Li
Jennifer Lauren Hamad
Justin Chang - MBA Fellow

SeqControl: Precision Guidance for Neural Control
Anish Mitra (Principal Investigator)
Patrycja Dzialecka
Amanda Tu - MBA Fellow

NOpioid: Addiction-Free Pain Relief
Patrick Purdon (Principal Investigator)
Martin Angst (Principal Investigator)
Rory Vu Mather
Akriti Pandit
Gustavo Balanza
Weldon Walker - MBA Fellow

Usability and Market Validation of a Next-Generation Portable TMS System
Corey Keller (Principal Investigator)
Nolan Williams (Principal Investigator)
Juan Rivas-Davila
Malachi Hornbuckle
Irakli Kaloiani
Derrick Buchanan
Floriane Kameni - MBA Fellow

SafePath: A Precision Tool for Safe and Reproducible Drain Placement
Atman Desai (Principal Investigator)
John Ratliff
Vivek Sanker
Kai Sheng Loh - MBA Fellow

PreFlight AI: Giving Superhuman Pattern Recognition Skills to Doctors
Nima Aghaeepour (Principal Investigator)
Tomin James
Aditi Mahajan - MBA Fellow

Human Skin Organoid for Immune-Modulating Therapeutic Testing
Calvin Kuo (Principal Investigator)
Hudson Horn
Mark Davis
Ana Jimena Pavlovitch Bedzyk
Robert Saxton
Navi Sidhu - MBA Fellow

Remote Assessment of Contact Allergies
Golara Honari (Principal Investigator)
Sergio Mavridis - MBA Fellow

Sustainability Teams

Kerra: Sustainable Products from Waste Wool
David Myung (Principal Investigator)
Charlotte McCurdy (Co-Investigator)
Jacob Dunlop
Caraiosa O’Farrell
Alexander Chon
Euisun Song
Isha Kulkarni - MBA Fellow

Reinventing Cement Through Carbon-Assisted Heating
Yi Cui (Principal Investigator)
Qi Zheng
Mehul Bhatia - MBA Fellow

Mafix: Grow More, Emit Less
Matt Kanan (Principal Investigator)
Jade Marcus
Ryan Davis - MBA Fellow

Physical Science Teams

Diffraction Contrast Electron Projection Lithography
Emilio Nanni (Principal Investigator)
Alex Rousina-Webb
Charlotte Wehner
Nathan Yoho
Jason Sun - MBA Fellow

Photonic Routers for Solid-State Imaging
Shanhui Fan (Principal Investigator)
Peter Catrysse
Derek Chou - MBA Fellow

A Twin-Suit Teleoperation Platform for Robot Training in Dexterous Manufacturing Tasks
Allison Okamura (Principal Investigator)
Cosima du Pasquier
Paola Peraza Calderon - MBA Fellow

Ultra-Fast Nanoscale Manufacturing
Dan Congreve (Principal Investigator)
Jonathan Fan (Principal Investigator)
Qi Zhou
Chenkai Mao
Tracy Schlomer
Maria Fernanda Campos - MBA Fellow

Vital LINAC to Improve Medicine in Developing Countries
Sandra Shaker Zaky (Principal Investigator)