PumpKin began with a problem familiar to many parents.
When Justin Silpe, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular Biology, and his wife, Katie, welcomed their second daughter into their family, they faced the challenge of balancing work and parenthood. They first tried to store breastmilk to feed their daughter, but the baby refused to drink the stored milk — the taste and quality of the milk had changed.
For Silpe, the search for a solution quickly became personal and professional. He brought his experiences and ideas to the Bassler Lab at Princeton, where he was already studying bacterial cell communication under Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology Bonnie Bassler. There, the vision for PumpKin took shape: a natural, infant-safe formulation to preserve breastmilk and help all breastfeeding parents.
On campus, the entrepreneurial space for researchers looks a bit different from that of undergraduate students. While undergraduates grapple with whether to focus on their entrepreneurial ventures or their education, researchers may be balancing independent research, legal obligations as employees of the University, and care for their children. They also contend with conflicts of interest, such as contracts involving intellectual property, files for patents, or commitments between different research groups.
On Oct. 4, 2024, the University officially announced the new Office of Innovation, a central hub for faculty, researchers, and entrepreneurs. The Office will be led by Craig Arnold, who serves as the vice dean of innovation, and intends to serve as a point of coordination to the many innovation-related activities happening across campus every day.
“We focus mostly on things that are related to technology and patents, but if we can be a sympathetic ear, if we can relate to a problem, if we can help in some way, support anybody on our campus — that’s what we want to do,” Arnold said. “I don’t want people to feel like they’re not a part of the ecosystem.”
According to Arnold, while the University’s entrepreneurship community spans across many age groups and disciplines, they share many commonalities, from the desire to translate ideas into applications to stress and the fear of failure.
“Innovation is alive and well at Princeton,” Arnold said. “We want to support [our organizations]. We want to support our faculty. We want to support our postdocs, our staff, and our students.”
The ‘Prince’ sat down with three teams of researchers and a pair of educators who transformed their ideas into ventures.
Formulating PumpKin: Merging parental and professional passions
PumpKin had started small — an idea in Silpe’s family — but with the support of the Bassler Lab and the University’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, it quickly grew into an infant-safe preservative that can be added to pumped breastmilk to maintain its freshness and nutrition.
“At the very outset, if somebody says, ‘That’s not a good idea,’ it can very easily stop somebody from doing something,” Silpe said. “It didn’t happen, because Bonnie was so supportive. My wife was so supportive. My wife provided all of the first milk for our team, and today, Bonnie is still a part of [PumpKin].”
In the lab, Silpe and his team screened human milk for beneficial compounds, eventually finding ones that led to PumpKin’s three-ingredient formulation today. Their approach focuses on compounds already known to be food-safe to infants. A key challenge was relying on donations from breastfeeding parents, but Silpe noted the warm support they received from the New Jersey community.
“It’s an emotional and stressful time having a newborn, [and] it’s crazy to be on the research side of that. Then, [you] see other people who are presumably stressed out about their own situation, and they’re still willing to donate milk to your study,” Silpe said. “I found that really motivating and uplifting.”
With support from his community, Silpe engaged with Princeton’s entrepreneurship ecosystem to further develop his ideas. He participated in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) I-Corps Northeast Hub, where he met his co-founder and acquired initial funding from the Faculty New Venture Assistance Fund and the Intellectual Property Accelerator Fund.
Through PumpKin, Silpe and his team aim to alleviate the stress faced by parents, providing a research-backed formula and an accessible and understandable solution.
“It’s known that breast milk is the gold standard for infant nutrition, and there is definitely a need for infant formula,” Silpe said. “But I think in some cases, people are forced into one choice, or [they have] to make difficult decisions about their work or their life. If we can reduce that and allow people to reach those goals, I think we’ll have succeeded.”
For his work on PumpKin, the Office of Innovation awarded Silpe the inaugural 2024 Tiger Entrepreneur of the Year Award, which recognizes the entrepreneurial achievement of students, early-career alumni, and postdoctoral researchers.
Justin Silpe, right, posing with Craig Arnold, left, as Silpe receives the inaugural 2024 Tiger Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Photo courtesy of the Office of Innovation.
Entrepreneurship allows PolyGone Systems to bring “concept into reality”
Yidian Liu GS ’21 and Nathaniel Banks GS ’21 were working on their Architecture design thesis on waste infrastructure when they noticed a gap in technologies for aquatic plastics filtering. While most systems blocked larger plastics, they were largely unsuccessful in stopping more pervasive and dangerous microplastics pollutants.
However, the problem Liu and Banks discovered diverged from the Department of Architecture’s typical theoretical topics like urban planning and affordable housing.
“My co-founder and I have a strong passion for turning a concept into a real world solution, and we were not happy that as designers, we’re often limited to a concept proposal,” Liu said.
Liu and Banks instead turned to innovation and entrepreneurship for support. They attended University programs for researchers pursuing entrepreneurship, such as the Innovation Forum and Princeton Startup Bootcamp, and connected with Ph.D. candidates and postdocs from the Chemistry and Environmental Science departments to develop their first prototype. Liu also became involved with the Keller Center and served as a teaching assistant for several entrepreneurship courses, learning alongside students to craft business plans, tailor solutions, and develop marketing and financial strategies.
“Being an entrepreneur really enabled us to bring our concept into reality,” Liu said.
In 2021, Liu and Banks, along with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Environmental Science, launched PolyGone Systems, a company that designs, manufactures, and deploys filtration devices for microplastics in waterways.
PolyGone’s solution took shape as an artificial root system. Using plant roots as inspiration, they created a fiber-like structure using material adhesive to microplastics. The filter takes up the top 30 centimeters of a water column, where 80 percent of microplastics are located, effectively trapping microplastics without needing to introduce real plants into the ecosystem.
“It’s a very non-intrusive, passive, bio-mimic solution for microprocessing pollutants in the waterways,” Liu explained.
Later, PolyGone Systems moved onto work with NSF’s I-Corps, where they secured their initial funding. Some of their most recent achievements include a $1.9 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Grant and recognition as Forbes 30 Under 30 founders in social impact.
“We want to have our system deployed in as many entryways to the water as possible,” Liu said. “We want to provide comprehensive solutions for microplastic monitoring to remove all [microplastics] from the entire ecosystem.”
Now, although Yidian and her co-founder have moved onto full-time focus on PolyGone, they maintain strong ties with the University, hiring interns and full-time staff.
Yidian Liu GS ’21 and Nathaniel Banks GS ’21, founders of PolyGone Systems, pose for a picture at the microplastic removal project in Atlantic City.
Photo courtesy of the Office of Innovation.
Navigating insurance denials with machine learning: Cofactor AI
Adi Tantravahi, a former research specialist at the University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Lab (ESOC), was shadowing his aunt, a physician, when he realized how much of her time was spent responding to insurance denials.
A healthcare denial happens when an insurance company refuses to cover a medical service or treatment, opening conflicts between providers, patients, and insurers. In response, the hospital submits an appeal letter to contest the decision and reopen the discussion on payment.
Although Tantravahi did not have a healthcare background, he felt compelled to find a solution. He and Juan Lozano, a former research specialist from ESOC, co-founded Cofactor AI — a health-tech company leveraging machine learning techniques to streamline insurance conflicts.
At the University, Tantravahi and Lozano’s research involved applying machine learning techniques to social science questions — Tantravahi analyzed how financial markets reflect violence and conflict, and Lozano predicted mining across Africa. Through Cofactor AI, Tantravahi and Lozano combined both of their technical skills to focus on healthcare denials management.
“What we want to build is the world’s first financial intelligence layer for healthcare,” Tantravahi said. “We want to be the layer that validates [transactions in healthcare], [ensuring] that payers are fairly paying to providers and providers are not unfairly charging payers.”
When a medical provider appeals an insurance denial, lots of documents and legal guidelines are at play. Cofactor AI intends to harness machine learning techniques to process the vast amounts of information within each denial — like doctor’s diagnoses, medical codes, and insurance contracts — assisting medical teams in resolving denial disputes and increasing administrative complexity.
“[Healthcare] has its own language. It has its own infrastructure. It has its own IT stack. It has its own data issues,” Lozano said. “For us, the biggest challenge is figuring out [how to] weave between all these different challenges in the healthcare space.”
To learn more about the healthcare insurance industry, Tantravahi and Lozano invested significant time engaging with over 100 professionals from executives to medical billing specialists. The conversations were very helpful in understanding the problem they sought to solve.
“More than half of the battle is actually understanding the challenge you’re trying to solve,” said Lozano.
While their connections did not come through the Office of Innovation, they were introduced to the entrepreneurship community by SPIA professor Jacob Shapiro and connected to the alumni network through CofactorAI Chief of Staff Luke Chan ’24.
In the future, Tantravahi and Lozano aim to continue to transform healthcare denials management.
“When the standard is ‘How can I make this better?’ you have a lot more freedom to experiment — we’ll make it one percent better, two percent better, 10 percent better,” Lozano said. “Ideally, you’re making it, you know, 10 times better, right? That’s what our goal is.”
Tackling the ‘wonderful beast’: GradTLC enables graduate student support
GradTLC’s journey began with a shared realization that graduate students face unique challenges — childcare, mental health, and paid employment at other institutions — that require more than conventional academic support.
Founded by Laura Murray, assistant director of learning programs at Princeton’s McGraw Center, and Kate Thorpe GS ’21, a University administrative fellow at the McGraw Center and Ph.D. graduate of the University’s English department, GradTLC took shape when the two connected over Murray’s work developing graduate student programs.
GradTLC is their initiative to bring support programs to graduate students nationwide through coaching, courses, and consulting.
“The type of scholarship that [graduate students] are doing and the type of relationships they have with their faculty are distinct from what undergraduates typically experience,” Murray said. “That’s just one example of how graduate education is its own wonderful beast and deserves tailored, intentional support around it.”
In the beginning, Murray’s work focused on Thriving in the Academy, a McGraw program which helps graduate students and postdoctoral scholars build academic and professional skills, but also teaches them a “hidden curriculum” of mental health, relationship building, and balance between personal and academic life. At the time, Thorpe joined Murray in designing virtual writing groups at the McGraw Center that provided graduate students with a supportive, community-oriented way to stay accountable and connected.
“If you support people beyond the classroom and the lab and think about them as people with complex lives,” noted Murray, “they’re much more likely to meet their scholarly goals.”
As Murray and Thorpe refined the Thriving in the Academy programs, they saw both potential and need to expand it to graduate students at other institutions. This led them to launching GradTLC in earnest.
“I am, first and foremost, a teacher, and I love teaching. I love developing and building up programs,” Thorpe said. “I love the fact that we’re going to be developing these programs and bringing more students in, and what I also realized about creating a venture is that there’s a lot of other work required beyond developing programming.”
They were able to find an outlet for their ideas in the University’s entrepreneurship network. Like PumpKin and PolyGone Systems, GradTLC also participated in NSF I-Corps, where Murray and Thorpe met many facilitators and other affiliate universities pursuing the same goal. They also received funding from the Faculty New Venture Assistance Fund for developing academic research into products or services.
In the coming years, GradTLC aims to establish nonprofit status, as well as a foundation arm to further support their cause. They have also launched a pilot course — Gateway to Graduate School — at Georgetown, the University of Washington, and Pace University, which targets entering graduate students. Now, they are developing a new course, Learning and Thriving in Graduate School, for Ph.D. students at all stages.
Dr. Laura Murray, co-founder of GradTLC, presents her work at the Celebrate Princeton Innovation event.
Photo courtesy of the Office of Innovation.
“The broadest goal is to bring these programs to other institutions and to create communities and cross pollination across graduate programs, so that graduate students can have a sense of community, support from other students, and a full suite of resources,” Thorpe said.
“Another innovation that we’re bringing is our real focus on flourishing and well being,” Murray said. “When you are a person that has positive relationships, you have a sense of meaning in your life. You have a sense of competence and achievement. You have mentors, as well as physical and mental health.”
In the future, the Office of Innovation hopes to support faculty, researchers, and entrepreneurs like these with connections, licensing, and programming, so that they can transform their findings to real-world ventures.
“There’s this burning desire to make a difference,” Arnold said. “You feel it in your bones, like ‘I have something here that’s going to matter, it’s going to matter to people.’”
Coco Gong is a staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.
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