Mount Sinai Innovation Awards

The Mount Sinai Inventor of the Year Award has been created to recognize individual or collaborative investigators in the Mount Sinai Health System whose research is making, or has the potential to make, significant positive and product-driven impacts on health. The Mount Sinai Deal of the Year award recognizes a notable technology from the Mount Sinai Health System that represents a major breakthrough in research and a strong commercial partnership for advancement.

Winner: Charlotte Cunningham-Rundles, MD, PhD, Hsi-En Ho, MD, Lin Radigan

Description: Mount Sinai investigators, honored as Inventors and Deal of the Year, uncovered Sanofi’s BTK inhibitor Rilzabrutinib for Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID). The team validated its ability to regulate immune activation, leading to the launch of a pivotal clinical trial.

The Mount Sinai Pitch Challenge is the capstone event for MSIP’s Entrepreneurship Program, where finalists compete for a cash prize and pro-bono services to continue the development of healthcare solutions. Teams are judged by entrepreneurship and venture capital experts.

Winner: RiverTide  –  Alexander Malinick, PhD, Desiree Malinick, PhD, Zhili Guo, PhD, Min Xue, PhD, Kai Chen, PhD, Peter J. Bonitatibus, PhD, Daniel Naimey, Nathan Guevara, PhD

Description: A special PET probe that finds a protein (MMP2) which helps many aggressive cancers spread and hide.

Winner: Discovery Viewer – Valentin Fauveau, MS, Trevor Rhone, PhD, Deborah McGuinness, PhD

Description: A secure, web-based platform enabling AI model development, multi-modal medical data visualization, and collaborative research in the medical AI community.

Winner: NeuroSelect – Chris Puleo, PhD, Jack Devlin, Brian Kim, MD

Description: Delivering neuromodulatory drugs directly to specific nerves using non-invasive microbubble and ultrasound technology to treat asthma and other conditions via targeted neuroimmune activation.

The i3 Prism fund aims to foster innovators and innovations that will support equitable provision of healthcare and help bring new solutions to patients and society while advancing technologies to the next level from a commercial perspective.

Winner: Isabella Morgan, BS

Description: Development of a novel hybrid ACDF plate using angled and straight screws to improve access and fixation in challenging cervical levels, enabling safer, more effective anterior fusion without posterior approaches, supported by prototype development, biomechanical validation, and commercialization planning.

Winner: Matteo Ghiringhelli, DVM, PhD

Description: This project develops a selective mRNA therapy enhancing cardiomyocyte-specific translation to improve cardiac regeneration and donor heart preservation, using optimized RNA cocktails and large-animal validation to establish a novel platform for transplantation medicine and future clinical translation.

Winner: Ubong Ekperikpe, PhD

Description: This project applies prime editing to correct high-risk Xor promoter variants in hepatocytes, targeting obesity-driven mechanisms of chronic kidney disease to reduce progression and provide a novel gene-based therapeutic strategy beyond dialysis or transplantation.

The Annual Dean’s Healthcare System Award, sponsored by Conduits, the Institute for Translational Sciences, has been established to acknowledge and underscore the emerging importance of interdisciplinary teams to the translation of research discoveries into clinical applications.

Winner: The East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP) Mental Health Clinic

Description: The East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP) is the Mount Sinai student-run free clinic with a 20+ year history of serving uninsured patients in East Harlem. The EHHOP Mental Health Clinic (MHC) provides mental health services, trains medical students as therapy providers and performs impactful research in a population that is largely less represented in science and medicine. With an interdisciplinary team of volunteer clinicians, basic and clinical researchers working together to seamlessly integrate research and clinical care in a student-run free clinic, the MHC research team not only improves the delivery of critical mental health services to uninsured residents but also generates actionable insights that drive systemic change. Our mission prioritizes interdisciplinary collaboration, community participation, and real-world impact to translate research into innovative solutions.

This award aims to support a collaborative, innovative, research idea by junior faculty that can potentially be translated into a marketable product through the development of therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, digital health applications, and/or data driven educational or community-based interventions.

Winner: Xucheng Hou, PhD and Shuang Wang, PhD

Description: Liver fibrosis is driven by activated hepatic stellate cells. We will inject mice with a library of barcoded lipid nanoparticles or ligand conjugates. Extraction of barcodes from hepatic stellate cells will identify formulations that target these disease-driving cells.

Mount Sinai Learning Health System Innovation Award

KiiLN Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Award

The KiiLN Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Award is designed to highlight entrepreneurial endeavors of Mount Sinai postdoctoral fellows who co-found or lead companies by advancing their discoveries beyond the bench to create diagnostics, devices, and therapeutic products or by applying other solutions, in order to address unmet needs in life sciences.

Winner: RiverTide –  Alexander Scott Malinick, PhD (Desiree Aispuro Malinick, PhD, Zhili Guo, PhD, Nathan Guevara, PhD)

Description: RiverTide develops modular peptide platforms for precise cancer imaging, oral biologic delivery, and targeted therapeutics. By combining innovative peptide chemistry and molecular engineering, we create scalable, versatile, and clinically impactful solutions across multiple disease areas.

The Discovery and Innovation Hub – Partners award gives recognition, appreciation and acknowledgement to a key partner that has advanced the efforts of the Hub to create and increase the diversity in the entrepreneurship space.

Winner: Vibhor Mahajan, PhD

Description: Dr. Vibhor Mahajan has been an invaluable partner to the Hub, helping reimagine our Entrepreneur Suite programs to connect passionate learners with innovators and entrepreneurs, while fostering collaboration and driving innovation across our growing community.

The Discovery and Innovation Hub – Innovators Award aims to recognize an innovator/entrepreneur who launched or created a meaningful innovation that addressed social determinants of health for the Mount Sinai Community.

Winner: Roshane Sasson, CEO of BirthVue

Description: Roshane is recognized for his dedication to advancing maternal health outcomes and helping women across NYC achieve supportive, natural, and unbiased childbirth experiences with fewer unnecessary C-sections and related complications.

The Discovery and Innovation Hub – Fellows Award to recognize one DIH Fellow based on the impact they create through their Scholarly Year products.

Winner: Edward Sarfo

Description: Edward, a third-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine, is recognized for his work advancing community-centered telehealth efforts across Harlem in partnership with Sinai’s Digital Technology Partners and for helping reimagine the student experience within the Hub’s scholarly offerings.

The Discovery and Innovation Hub – Rising Stars Award to recognize a rising entrepreneur/ innovator as part of the Diversity Innovation Hub programming.

Winner: Fares Al-lahabi, CEO of CarbonCLAIR

Description: Fares is a rising star in green innovation, recognized for CarbonCLAIR, his solution focused on advancing urban sustainability through carbon-capturing systems that improve air quality and support the health and livelihoods of vulnerable communities.

The Discovery and Innovation Hub – Emerging Entrepreneur Award aims to recognize an upcoming local New Yorker innovator/entrepreneur who launched in the last year impacting in the Mount Sinai Community.

Winner: MiChaela Barker, CEO of Matcha Scrubs

Description: MiChaela is recognized for advancing inclusivity in medical attire, designing products that enhance comfort and representation for healthcare workers, including those in the Sinai community, with her innovative designs now proudly featured in the hospital bookstore.

THRIVE is Mount Sinai’s Targeted Healthcare Innovation Fellowship, a 6-month program for participants from diverse professional backgrounds to develop technology-driven healthcare innovations.

Winner: RiverTide – Alexander Scott Malinick, PhD, Madison Leone, BS, Selena Ding, BA

Description: Novel imaging probe that enables earlier, more accurate detection of aggressive tumors using MMP2-targeted PET technology

Winner: Balma Health – Alejandro Abraham, MS, Bibi Maryam, MHA, David D’Onofrio, BS, Sophia De Oliveira, BA

Description: Interactive education kits – featuring storybooks and disease models – to help children understand chronic conditions affecting them or their loved ones.

Winner: Precision Flow – Helen Gordan, BS, Ishani Bansal, BE, Michael Li, BS, Sabrina Liu, BS, Tanner Frahm, BS, Thomas Perillo, M.Eng, Vlad Obsekov, MD, Yang Lu, BS

Description: Drop-and-go device that automates syringe refills during cerebral angiograms while detecting and preventing harmful micro emboli like air or lint – reducing stroke risk and improving procedural efficiency

Trainee Innovation Idea Award