Innovation Showcase Pitch Challenge at Oregon Bio 2025 Spotlights Research Projects and Startups

The Oregon Life Sciences Innovation Showcase Pitch Challenge each year serves as the much-anticipated centerpiece of the annual conference, featuring Oregon and southwest Washington-based researchers and entrepreneurs competing in tracks of Basic and Translational Research and Early or Later Stage Startups. 

This work was highlighted at our September annual conference, Oregon Bio 2025: Innovation and Workforce in Focus, held just prior to our rebrand. The competition winners were awarded as the climax of the event. Industry experts judged each entry and conference attendees participated through votes in the People’s Choice category. 

The Research Fast Pitch categories cover two tenets: Basic and Translational/Applied Research. Entry into either category was open solely to students to present the critical need for their research and the veracity of the science they are developing to address their topic issue. 

The Early-stage Startup category looked at companies with less than $500,000 in investor funding or revenue and a strong business acumen. The Later-stage Startup category evaluated proven, more mature companies with greater than $500,000 in investments, strategic partner funding or revenue.

Real-world impact was the focus for each of the projects presented.

The judging jury included biotech and clinical leaders including Nick Anderson, senior director of Customer Experience at GE HealthCare; Keith Gary, Ph.D., a retired neuroscientist; Bobby Kandaswarmy, senior investment director at National Grid Partners; Douglas Kawahara, principal at DJK BioConsult; Jennifer Matson, owner and principal at JKM Health Research LLC; Joshua Owens, senior vice president of Finance and Administration at Sedia Biosciences; and Andrew Watson, Laboratory Services and Partnership at Mayo Clinic.

Winner: Basic Research Category
Congratulations to Kenneth Riley, Jr., Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Oregon Health & Science for his project Reconstruction of the Epigenetic Landscape from Fragmented DNA in Blood, a first-in-class sequencing platform to advance cancer diagnostics. Kenneth won both the Judges and People’s Choice awards. Judges rated Kenneth highly on his Problem/Opportunity solution and his research’s Value Proposition.

Winner: Translational Research
Congratulations to Danica Bojovic, a graduating Ph.D. as a neuroscience student at OHSU’s Vollum Institute, who also received both the Judges and People’s Choice Awards for her research entitled  Vascular Dysfunction: Early Warning Sign for Dementia which shows her work on astrocytes, a major class of glial cells that play a critical role in brain health. Her work explores how astrocyte and vascular dysfunction may drive neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, stroke and traumatic brain injury. Judges collectively rated Danica highest on both Problem identification and Market Opportunity.

Winner: Early-stage Startup, Judges Award
Congratulations to Danielle Benoit, Ph.D., professor of Engineering at the University of Oregon’s Knight Campus  and co-founder, AsteriaRx Inc. for her young company’s prospects of Musculoskeletal Healing Through Advanced Drug Delivery. Her presentation highlights the company’s strong and viable commercialization prospects, including partnerships to effect pre-IND derisking studies and mapped regulatory milestones, along with toxicity and manufacturability studies, followed by seeking a $20 -50 million seed round and entry into Phase I trials. Danielle received favorable judging results for Market Opportunity and Next Milestone.

Winner: Early-stage Startup, People’s Choice Award
Congratulations to Nataliia Shchotkina, Ph.D., Post-doc scholar at the UO’s Knight Campus and founder/CEO, Sokolife for her company’s proposition New-Gen Tissue Repair Scaffolds for Affordable Regenerative Medicine. Her presentation centers on how millions of patients worldwide suffer from wounds, congenital defects, and traumatic injuries—but lack access to affordable, effective tissue repair options. Their pioneering new scaffold platform is built on decellularized bovine pericardium, which implements proprietary processing to preserve critical extracellular matrix structure while eliminating immunogenicity, resulting in a biologically compatible, ready-to-use patch. Already deployed in her home country of Ukraine for trauma and burn care, this technology is designed for global scalability and rapid deployment in both clinical and humanitarian settings. 

Winner: Later-stage Startup
Craig Stolarczyk, MBA, CEO and co-founder of SynPlexity, a spinout of the University of Oregon won both the Judges and People’s Choice award for his company’s growth proposition of Enabling High-Throughput Screening to Advance Biology. SynPlexity’s technology unlocks a new generation of high-throughput screening by delivering large, diverse gene libraries at low cost and high precision, with its platform supporting multiplexed gene synthesis at scales (>10,000 genes per pool) not feasible with existing tools, making it ideal for applications such as deep mutational scanning, pathway optimization, and AI-guided design cycles. The initial product is NucleoPools™, custom libraries delivered in a tube, ready for cloning or screening. Judges gave Craig high marks for Business Model, Market Opportunity  and Overall Presentation.

Thanks to the other finalists who, although not chosen, provided groundbreaking thought and pursuit of discovery and commercialization, including in the Basic Research category:  Arielle Isakharov, Ph.D. candidate, OHSU regarding Exploring Overlooked Neurons in the Retina. In the Translational Research category, thanks to both Maryam Sarlak, Ph.D. candidate at Portland State University, for work entitled Glucose Biosensor; and to Tim Valuev, M.D. candidate at OHSU, for presenting Anatora: 3D Printing for Medical Education and Surgical Precision.

Thanks to finalists in the Startups categories, including the Early-Stage Startup category, with Daniel Gareau, Ph.D., founder, SurgiVance for his presentation entitled SurgiVance: Advanced Pathology for the Future of Medicine. And thanks to two presenting finalists in the Later-Stage Startup category including Eduardo Ceballos, CEO, xBiologix for his presentation xBiologix: Color Biopsies in Clinics and to Linta Mustafa, MSc., CEO and co-founder of Vitract for her entry Gut Microbiome Genomics Platform for Precision Health.