First Dartmouth Innovation Accelerator for Engineering Is a Resounding Success

Professor Fridon Shubitidze and Max Orman-Kollmar '20 Th'21 Th'26 attend DIAEn's "Mentor Mixer." (Photo by Angela Presley)

"One of Thayer's measures of success is our positive impact on the world," said Professor Doug Van Citters '99 Th'03 Th'06, dean of Dartmouth Engineering. “We often refer to it as the 'number of lives touched' and celebrate our faculty and students who choose to translate ideas out of the lab."

The technology showcased in DIAEn ranged from medical devices to consumer electronics. Six teams, each including a faculty member with a Thayer appointment, were chosen from a larger pool of applicants, based on the strength and potential of their innovations.  

While many Thayer faculty and students have participated in the Magnuson Center's other Accelerators, including the Dartmouth Innovation Accelerator for Cancer and the Dartmouth Innovation Accelerator for Digital Health, the new engineering Accelerator opened the door to teams with more varied projects.

"By opening the aperture to include any innovation coming out of Thayer, we wanted to provide a space for new ideas," said Barry Schweitzer '82, associate director of the Magnuson Center, and lecturer at Thayer.

The partnership between Thayer and Magnuson, he added, is an organic one.

"Thayer naturally embraces entrepreneurship," Schweitzer said, "because innovation goes hand-in-hand with engineering."

Broadening the reach of a Thayer innovation for soft tissue repair

The winning project was from Tensara Medical, which is developing reabsorbable scaffolding for soft-tissue repair. The team—led by Thayer post-doc Becca Thomson '20 Th'21 Th'25—received $100,000 in funding, which will be used to conduct full proof-of-concept animal studies over the next year.

In addition to the funding, Thomson gained something even more valuable: a co-founder. Through the accelerator, she connected with venture partner and biotech entrepreneur Kevin Isett Th'11. Isett initially served as an expert mentor—one of many alumni in that role during the accelerator—but officially joined Tensara Medical as co-founder in March.

Thomson developed her technology to address women's health issues, including urinary incontinence. However, with Isett's guidance throughout the accelerator she began thinking about broader applications of her technology.

"He's pushed me to think more of this as a platform," Thomson said. "That was truly instrumental."

Together, they overhauled the company's strategy and business model, including rebranding the business from NovaGyn to Tensara Medical.

"Our vision is straightforward: an ideal medical device should integrate seamlessly into established clinical procedures, restore the function of damaged tissue, and then safely disappear once healing is complete," Isett said. "We believe Tensara's technology has the potential to achieve exactly that, representing an important step forward in the evolution of medical interventions for a broad range of tissue injuries."

Isett has a proven track record when it comes to innovation. He spent nine years as co-founder and CEO of Avitide, a life science technology company that was acquired by Repligen Corporation in 2021.

"Avitide was born at Thayer of School of Engineering and benefited significantly from the strength of the Dartmouth entrepreneurial ecosystem," Isett said.

Today, that community is strengthened by the addition of DIAEn.

"We deeply value the support we have received early in our journey," Isett said. "Without that ecosystem, overcoming the inertia of translating scientific discoveries into businesses making meaningful patient impacts would likely not happen."

Thomson agreed, adding that the collaborative environment with her peers who are also trying to bring new technologies to market was critical.

"Entrepreneurship can be really isolating," she said. "The accelerator provides a huge sense of community."

Noninvasive detection of potentially dangerous pipes

The second team to receive funding, DeepSense Electromagnetics, is developing a noninvasive way to identify lead, copper and galvanized pipes—some of which need to be replaced to meet current guidelines from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The team—led by Thayer Professor Fridon Shubitidze and Max Orman-Kollmar '20 Th'21 Th'26 (a recent graduate of Thayer's PhD Innovation Program), and including Tuck School alumnus Jack O'Toole and Thayer Research Associate Irma Shamatava—received $40,000 in funding.

That money will be used to continue testing in conjunction with the EPA this summer, Shubitidze said. Some of the funding will also be used to explore whether the technology can be harnessed to safely detect mines and other explosives.

While DeepSense Electromagnetics is based on more than 26 years of research, the company was just formed in February. Participating in DIAEn so close to business formation helped the co-founders hone their pitch.

"It really changed our thinking," Shubitidze said. As an engineer, he loves to explain the technical side of the business, but mentors helped him learn to be "very pointed about the business," setting aside the technical explanation in favor of a punchier pitch.

Like Thomson, Shubitidze found the interactions with the rest of the cohort to be instrumental.

"They were giving us feedback in real time about why certain information was useful or not useful," he said. "Even small comments were helpful, so I am very thankful for all the participants."

From organizers to mentors to Tuck student interns, DIAEn "was very, very well-taught, and well-organized," Shubitidze said.

"It helped make engineers think a different way," he said. "Out of the box."

An amplified impact for Dartmouth innovation

Guiding engineers to shift their thinking—including through interactions with the other participant teams—was a key component of DIAEn's format, according to Schweitzer.

"The curriculum included discussion sessions and assignments that required the teams to work together to challenge their ideas from new angles," he said. "This commercialization thinking can be a difficult ask for engineers who have been working on the technical aspects of a technology for years, but the teams embraced the opportunity and rose to the challenge."

Participants left the Accelerator with a greater understanding of bringing technology to market.

"Through DIAEn, we built an invaluable network of mentors and Tuck students who helped us solidify our business plan and think beyond the technology itself," one participant shared. "The rigorous weekly feedback challenged us to refine our presentation skills, deepen our market and financial analyses, and strengthen our business road mapping. DIAEn has truly accelerated our path to success."

DIAEn was paid for fully though alumni donations.

"I'm so pleased to be able to demonstrate this high potential for impact to the generous donors who gave their time and resources to make the program possible," Van Critters said.

That impact will likely extend far behind this DIAEn cohort.

"Because the innovations, education, and prize money stay close to home, it helps keep the virtuous flywheel spinning," Van Citters said, "so that we might inspire new students and faculty to have new ideas and create ventures of their own."

Already, there's a strong demand for future programming.

"We easily could have had twice the number of teams, but we intentionally kept the numbers small for the inaugural cohort," Schweitzer said. "We hope to continue offering DIAEn in the future and are looking for opportunities to grow the program."