The University City Science Center has introduced four new Venture Fellows. The early-career group will spend the next year learning health and life sciences investing from inside Philadelphia’s startup ecosystem.
The 12-month paid fellowship is supported by a National Institute on Aging grant. It is open to graduate students and early-career professionals and gives them access to the Science Center’s network of more than 100 startup alumni companies and 30-plus active investors. Fellows embed with portfolio companies and contribute to investment memos on early-stage life sciences, medtech and health tech deals. They also produce monthly research on a specific market segment and meet regularly with practicing investors. The year ends with a capstone: each fellow builds an investment thesis on aging and longevity and defends it before a review board of investors and subject-matter experts next fall.
Meet the cohort
Jacky Chan is pursuing an MS in Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins University. He previously interned at a state venture fund and scouted early-stage healthcare and biotech deals for GoAhead Ventures. His interests include gene therapy delivery, aging and longevity, AI-driven drug discovery, and health infrastructure such as health fintech and biomanufacturing. He was drawn to Philadelphia by its rapid growth, including new manufacturing facilities and companies choosing to build in the region.
Barbara Neves spent six years at Nestlé Nespresso before completing an MS in Precision Health with a concentration in entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago. There, she also worked on go-to-market strategy for a Series A health tech company. Her focus is how health innovations reach commercial adoption, particularly in precision health and clinical trials. She pointed to Philadelphia’s concentration of academic medical centers, research universities and startups, all within a few blocks of each other, as a key draw.
Azure Skye is a Pepperdine-trained biologist who founded a tech-enabled wellness services company. She was a fellow at LongGame Ventures, led due diligence through the Women’s Founder Network, and is a VC University Life Sciences Scholar and current MBA candidate. She is focused on women’s whole-body health beyond reproductive care, including cardiac, cognitive, metabolic and autoimmune conditions, as well as longevity. Citing the city’s proximity to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., she described Philadelphia as “a well-placed bridge connecting all of these.”
Yusuf Sulaiman recently graduated from East Tennessee State University with a degree in finance and economics. While there, he founded and managed a $200,000 student investment portfolio. He interned at VentureSouth, where he built deal flow tools for Tennessee venture firms. His interests include rural health, such as maternal care deserts in the South and Great Plains, along with the regulatory, policy and financial questions behind health ventures.
Source: Science Center. Republished with credit to the original author. Read the original release.
