Updates:

• Change in venue: Summit now being held at Prof. B. Nag Auditorium, Ground floor, Victor Menezes Convention Centre, IIT Bombay

• Registrations are now closed! We thank you all for the interest.

About Wadhwani Research Centre for Bioengineering:

Wadhwani Research Centre for Bioengineering (WRCB) was set up to be a world-class translational research centre in bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB). WRCB supports faculty members across various departments of IITB in undertaking breakthrough interdisciplinary translational research. The projects carried out by the faculty members associated with WRCB have resulted in several patents and spin-off companies in diverse areas ranging from diagnostics to drug discovery.

Currently in its 7^th year, the centre was established through a generous donation by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani - a successful serial entrepreneur and a signatory to the ‘giving pledge’. Dr. Wadhwani envisioned WRCB as a catalyst to enable India to be at the forefront of the bioengineering industry. WRCB’s focus areas include medical devices, diagnostics, drug discovery, drug delivery, biomaterials, biomanufacturing, synthetic biology, and other associated areas of bioengineering.

WRCB supports faculty members in IITB in multiple ways. The centre provides direct funding support for research projects with commercialization potential. It also helps faculty members identify external public and private funding opportunities, and assists them in preparing grant proposals. When these projects reach technological maturity, WRCB provides further catalyst funding for commercialization and assists in raising additional funds through angel investors and VCs. In addition, faculty members are actively matched with potential industry partners for research collaborations and consultations. Further commercialization support such as market assessment, IP-related, legal aspects, and other supporting services are provided through WRCB’s extended network of expert consultants.

Since its founding, WRCB has undertaken 666+ research projects creating an active pipeline of potential products and technologies. These projects have resulted in 63 publications, 12 patent applications, 3 recent entrepreneurial ventures, several IPs and industry collaborations. Recent spin-offs from WRCB include ImmunoACT- a CAR-T cell therapy company, Clarity Biosystems – a company specializing in a highly accurate new-born screening platform, and Algorithmic Biologics, whose technology greatly simplifies large scale pooled molecular testing which is useful in situations such as the covid pandemic and other applications that warrant large numbers of samples to be tested. In addition to these recent spin-offs, the centre has an active year-to-year commercialization pipeline.