Build Your Company with Strategic Alliances

Rachele Ryan is the Director of Partnerships at LabCentral, a Massachusetts non-profit organization, founded in 2013 as a launchpad for high-potential life sciences and biotech startups. In this role she is responsible for business development strategy, resident company growth and development, and leading entrepreneurship programming for LabCentral’s newest initiative, LabCentral Ignite.

Rachele’s professional career has revolved around connecting startups to the Boston/Cambridge innovation ecosystem. Prior to joining LabCentral, Rachele led the MassCONNECT mentoring program at MassBio, the Massachusetts biopharma industry association. In that role, she matched life sciences entrepreneurs and founders with seasoned life science professionals to catalyze and commercialize innovation. Previously, as a part of the International Business Development team at the Consulate General of Canada in Boston, she assisted Canadian companies with their expansion efforts into New England and supported fast-growing startups participating in the Canadian Technology Accelerator in Boston (CTA@Boston).

Rachele holds a BA from College of the Holy Cross and an MA from Middlebury College. She currently serves as an Advisory Board member for the digital-health focused accelerator PharmStars.

Anh Hoang is the founder of Sofregen Medical, a company that is re-inventing ancient silk technologies for medical treatments. At Sofregen, Anh operates as the chief science officer and serves on the board of directors.  Under her leadership, Sofregen received the first FDA cleared product made from reconstituted silk protein for the treatment of vocal fold insufficiency.

Outside of Sofregen,  Anh is a faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Catalyst LinQ program   and serves on the Steering Committee of MassMedic Ignite Program. She was a recipient of the 2018  Medtech Boston 40 under 40 Healthcare Innovators. Anh completed her doctorate degree (Ph.D) in material science engineering from Vanderbilt University and her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital as an Executive Committee on Research fellow. Anh is a proud graduate of Mount Holyoke College where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry.

Aaron has been Senior Director in the Pharma and Biotech Business Development team at Ginkgo Bioworks since 2021.  In this role, Aaron is responsible for establishing new partnerships with Pharma and Biotech from early discovery through process optimization/scale-up.  Before joining Ginkgo, Aaron was a Director in Novo Nordisk’s Search & Evaluation team for Global Drug Discovery from 2016. During this time, Aaron was responsible for the search and evaluation of new therapeutics and enabling technologies for protein, peptide, and antibody drugs. He helped Novo Nordisk access over 70 different external opportunities during this time.  Prior to joining Novo Nordisk, Aaron worked in the MIT Technology Licensing Office for 13.5 years. During this time, he worked on license and sponsored research agreements with life sciences companies from startups to big biotech/pharma and everything in between. He also managed a portfolio of over 650 technologies. Before Aaron’s time at MIT, he was a management consultant to big pharma and a startup. Aaron has an undergrad degree in biology from the University of Chicago and a Masters degree in biology from MIT.

A serial entrepreneur in IoT, medical devices and wearables, Sridhar was a founder of Misfit, makers of elegant wearable products acquired by Fossil in 2015. Prior to Misfit, he founded AgaMatrix based on his PhD research, a blood glucose monitoring company that made the world’s first iPhone-connected medical device. Sridhar holds more than 50 U.S. and international patents and received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar.