The How I Built This: ISRII Edition is sponsored by the University of Virginia Center for Behavioral Health & Technology
Modeled after the hugely popular How I Built This with Guy Raz podcast, How I Built This – ISRII Edition are individual interviews with faculty entrepreneurs who have been successful at transitioning to industry, licensing or creating a start-up company around their research. Moderated by ISRII co-founder and past president, Lee Ritterband, hear the origin stories with crisis, failure, tension, discomfort, triumph, and advice for success!
Session Moderator
Lee Ritterband, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology and the Jean and Ronald Butcher Eminent Scholars Professor at the University of Virginia. In 2004, Dr. Ritterband co-founded the International Society for Research on Internet interventions and was President from 2011-2013. He is also co-founder of BeHealth Solutions, LLC, a company dedicated to increasing public access to evidence-based Internet delivered health interventions.
How I Built This: Session 1
Monday, September 19 4:00-5:30 pm CONCURRENT BREAKOUT SESSION C
Tamar Krishnamurti, PhD
Tamar Krishnamurti is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She leads the FemTech Collaborative, housed within the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Innovative Research on Gender Health Equity and is a co-founder of Naima Health LLC, whose flagship product, MyHealthyPregnancy, offers early risk assessment and intervention for adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Julia Hoffman,
PSYD
Julia Hoffman is Head of Mental Health Strategy for Teladoc Health. She was previously National Director of Mobile Health for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). She founded and scaled mobile development for behavioral health at both the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the (VA).
Frances P. Thorndike, PhD
Frances Thorndike serves as the Executive Director of Discovery at Pear Therapeutics. She is a clinical researcher with 18 years of experience in developing and evaluating digital health therapeutics at the University of Virginia Health System (UVA). At Pear, Frances helped bring the first prescription digital therapeutic for chronic insomnia through the FDA authorization process.
How I Built This: Session 2
Tuesday, September 20 3:30-5:00 pm CONCURRENT BREAKOUT SESSION F
Nick Allen, PhD
Nick Allen is the Director of the Center for Digital Mental Health and Ann Swindells Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oregon. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Ksana Health Inc., a company whose mission is to use research evidence and modern technology to revolutionize the delivery of “just-in-time” mental health care through remote behavioral monitoring and adaptive, continuous behavior change support.
Michael Businelle, PhD
Michael Businelle is the director of the Stephenson Cancer Center mHealth Shared Resource, and the Stephenson Endowed Chair in Cancer at the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Oklahoma. His team developed the Insight mHealth platform which enables researchers to rapidly create mobile applications that utilize EMA and sensor data to identify environmental, cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral antecedents of health risk behaviors and then deliver just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs).
Shivdev Rao, MD
Shivdev Rao, MD, a practicing cardiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, is the co-founder and CEO of Abridge, a health-tech company that uses AI to bring context and understanding to every medical conversation. Dr. Rao was also a vice president for UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization and venture capital arm of UPMC, where he led their provider-facing investment portfolio.
TechVibe Radio attended ISRII 11 to record the How I Built This – ISRII Edition interviews. Listen to session 2 here!