StartMIT, a unique MIT event crafted under the leadership of Prof Anantha Chandrakasan, to inspire MIT students to become entrepreneurs, hosted its Innovation Night on Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 where attendees had a chance to see the amazing array of MIT based interesting startups and listen to an all-star all-woman panel set to inspire budding entrepreneurs.   

The evening opened with a meet-and-greet where guests had the opportunity to see a variety of very unique startups.  Affectiva, a start-up that identifies emotions from a person’s video caught the attention of by-standers as suddenly your own face on the video had an emotion tagged to it. There were several women founded startups including, Bloomertech, that uses a woman’s Bra as a medical device to gather data on Cardiac patients and Tactile that works on real-time translation of text into Braille.  The poster presentation featured dynamic posters where video presentations of the projects were featured. 

The panel for the evening was moderated by Award winning Tech Journalist, Kym McNicholas. Panelists included MIT Professors turned entrepreneurs Angela Belcher, Regina Barzilay, Cynthia Breazeal. Also on the panel was Donna Levin, co-founder of Care.com and Katie Rae, Chairman Techstars Boston. 

The panelists had powerful stories to tell. Each one talked about their amazing vision to do the seemingly impossible that led them to success. It was very touching to hear the story of Regina Barzilay, who, as she was working through her own cancer therapy started to understand the challenges with data in the medical world and used her expertise in Natural Language Processing to work through the challenges.  Tech Stars Chairman Katie Rae talked about her ability to work with teams as a key to success. Care.com co-founder talked about taking a special pain point in her life and creating a solution to address it. 

MIT has launched “The Engine”, a unique program crafted to provide the tools and funding to allow MIT Startups to thrive.  We hope the program will help us see more startups set up base in Massachusetts  rather than move to other areas.