Launched in 2022, Yale Ventures helps to translate ideas and discoveries born at Yale into practical solutions—and quickly bring them to market.
Under Yale Ventures, several donor-funded endeavors—including the health accelerator HealthTech Works (Robert Morse ’77 and the Morse Family Foundation); the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation (the Blavatnik Family Foundation); the Roberts Innovation Fund (William Roberts ’90); and participation in the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub—have been launched to find solutions to pressing health and engineering problems. Yale Ventures helps faculty and students get these innovations to the people who need them, as quickly and safely as possible.
The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale, launched in 2016, has stimulated biomedical entrepreneurship across the Yale community. It also fosters the careers of promising entrepreneurs through the Blavatnik Associates and the Blavatnik Fellows in Life Science Entrepreneurship programs. The fund’s $40 million expansion in 2023 supports even more world-changing innovations, while fostering careers in life science research.
HealthTech Works builds on the foundation of Yale’s Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT), which for more than a decade has fostered student innovation, clinical hackathons, and early-stage startup mentorship. With the launch of HealthTech Works, CBIT will formally transition into this new accelerator, ensuring its mission evolves to meet the commercialization needs of Yale’s health innovators. The hackathon, originally a CBIT event, represents the way that HealthTech Works continues the existing efforts at Yale in the health accelerator space.
“There is vast potential for advancements in AI and other technologies to improve the speed and reduce the cost of developing new therapies and diagnostics, improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare, and address urgent public health needs,” says Josh Geballe ’97, ’02 MBA, the senior associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation and the managing director of Yale Ventures.