The MIT-Royalty Pharma Faculty Founder Initiative, recently renamed in recognition of a gift by Royalty Pharma, runs a two-year program that supports biotech innovators and faculty entrepreneurs interested in commercializing their solutions. The $3 million gift will support four years of the initiative.
Over the course of two years, participants receive wide-ranging support to help advance and grow their biotech solutions into startups and companies ready for commercialization. This includes various workshops, executive education classes, and mentorship from world-leading entrepreneurs and investors. The program culminates in MIT-Royalty Pharma Prize Competition Showcase, with the next iteration scheduled for 2027.
“Since the initiative’s launch in 2021, we have supported 21 faculty entrepreneurs, advanced life-saving innovations towards patients, sparked the creation of 16 startups that have collectively raised over $70 million in seed funding, created a community of cofounders, and spread our mission to collaborating universities,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, and faculty director of the MIT-Royalty Pharma Faculty Founder Initiative. “We are grateful for Royalty Pharma in supporting our mission and being a part of our ambitious goal to reach 40 faculty-founded life science ventures by 2029.”
In support of this goal, the initiative recently announced 12 members for its third cohort, six each from MIT and the University of Oxford.
“We’re deeply grateful for Royalty Pharma’s support, which ensures that biotech entrepreneurs at MIT and Oxford have the resources and mentorship to help bring breakthrough ideas to market and, ultimately, to improve lives,” adds Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering at MIT and the William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “The MIT-Royalty Pharma Faculty Founder Initiative has already shown how effectively this model can empower talented biotech innovators, and I look forward to seeing the transformative solutions this latest cohort will develop.”
In 2021, the Faculty Founder Initiative launched its first cohort, supported by Northpond Ventures. Eight of the nine MIT participants have continued their entrepreneurial journeys. Ellen Roche, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor and associate department head for research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, won the grand prize at the inaugural prize competition.
In 2023, Royalty Pharma supported a second cohort with 12 participants, seven from MIT and five from Brown University. Anne Carpenter, senior director of the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, won the grand prize at that cohort’s prize competition.
“Royalty Pharma’s support of the 2023–2024 MIT–Royalty Pharma Prize Competition with its cohort of 12 researchers from MIT and Brown University laid the foundation for continued support of the initiative through 2029,” says Pablo Legorreta, founder and CEO of Royalty Pharma. “As the initiative expands internationally with the new Oxford University partnership, we look forward to enabling two additional cohorts of innovators to pursue bold ideas which can lead to transformative medicines.”
“Oxford’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, combined with the MIT-Royalty Pharma Faculty Founder Initiative's proven model for expanding the number of faculty-founded biotech ventures creates a powerful collaboration. I’m particularly grateful to Professor Dame Molly Stevens, who serves as the academic lead for the initiative at Oxford and contributes extensive experience as a world-renowned expert in biosensing technologies and a seasoned entrepreneur,” adds Bhatia.
