Unlocking Transformative Diagnostic Insights

Vision

BLASTID is empowering clinicians with transformative insights to personalize care and improve patient outcomes.

Mission

BLASTID is pioneering breakthrough diagnostic insights by integrating advanced microfluidics, novel optics, and predictive machine learning.

Who we are

BLASTID is developing innovative diagnostic solutions to solve the most pressing global healthcare threats.

Backed by the largest government grant in Harvard University's history (read more about the award here), the Paulsson lab has created a groundbreaking set of technologies that can rapidly identify and assay individual cells, including drug-resistant pathogens.

These breakthroughs form the cornerstone of BLASTID's approach stemming the growing antimicrobial resistance crisis. With its unique platform and innovative market position, BLASTID is poised to become the worldwide leader in next-generation diagnostic innovation, setting a new clinical standard for speed, accuracy, and patient impact.

Clinical Focus

At 50 million patients affected annually, sepsis is a critical global health crisis driving significant mortality and healthcare challenges.

11 million deaths worldwide, 1 every 2.8 seconds
Leading mortality cause in US hospitals
$62 billion annual healthcare costs and losses
Current diagnostics are slow and inefficient
Resultant antibiotic misuse drives AMR crisis

Advisory Board

Dr. Johan Paulsson, Ph.D.

Scientific • Harvard Medical School

Dr. Johan Paulsson, Ph.D., is a Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor and Principal Investigator (PI) on the $104M ARPA-H DARTS grant on AMR solutions. Dr. Paulsson has led advancements in super-resolution microscopy, advanced microfluidics, and machine learning (ML) for real-time pathogen detection and manipulation, not just in DARTS but in several NIH and DARPA programs.

Harvard’s continued contributions will focus on increasing microfluidic throughput (>5 mL/min) to shorten the time-to-results while retaining high-sensitivity pathogen detection. Dr. Paulsson’s pioneering work forms the scientific foundation for BLASTID and brings the latest innovations in bacterial imaging and diagnostics to our ongoing and future efforts.

Dr. Jan Funke, Ph.D.

Scientific • HHMI Janelia

Dr. Jan Funke is a group leader at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus. His lab develops methods and tools to analyze large microscopy image data sets. Specifically, Dr. Funke and his team research computer-vision and machine-learning techniques that are designed to work hand in hand with human annotators, as well as explainable AI methods that reveal the decision processes of machine learning models.

Dr. Jan Funke received his Diploma in computer science (master equivalent) from the Technical University in Dresden, Germany. He then got excited about neuroscience and in particular connectomics, and pursued a PhD at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he worked under the supervision of Matthew Cook at the Institute for Neuroinformatics. Following a post-doc in Barcelona at the UPC with Fancesc Moreno-Noguer, he joined HHMI Janelia in 2018 as a group leader in the Computation and Theory department.

Dr. Laura Waller, Ph.D.

Scientific • UC Berkeley

Dr. Laura Waller is the Charles A. Desoer Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She received B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, 2005 and 2010. After that, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer of Physics at Princeton University from 2010-2012. She is a Packard Fellow for Science & Engineering, Moore Foundation Data-driven Investigator, OSA Fellow, and Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She has received the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, the SPIE Early Career Award and the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal.

Devon Campbell

Product Development

Devon is the founder of Prodct LLC, Chief Product Officer at myBiometry, and NIH RADx Content Expert, bringing over 25 years of experience in regulated medical device development, quality systems, and risk management. An award-winning design engineer, Devon holds dozens of patents and has successfully exited three companies. Devon specializes in developing robust strategies and ISO 13485:2016 compliant processes tailored for regulated diagnostics, ensuring that emerging technologies align with regulatory, quality, and clinical demands from early development through scale-up. With prior leadership at diagnostics companies like Ventana (Roche), Novartis, and Quanterix, Devon provides key advice for early-stage ventures.

Dr. Eleftherios Mylonakis,
M.D., Ph.D., FIDSA

Clinical • Houston Methodist Hospital

Dr. Eleftherios Mylonakis Chairs the Department of Medicine at Houston Methodist Hospital in the largest contiguous medical center world-wide serving >10 million patients per year. His group is at the forefront of bacterial infections and transplant services and has deep expertise in point-of-care for bacterial infections, AST, dosing regimens and beyond.
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He leads the clinical diagnostics studies at ARPA-H DARTS, oversees the research nurses for clinical samples and patient contacts, and will lead the clinical trials. Prior to joining HMH, Dr. Mylonakis was Charles C.J. Carpenter Professor of Infectious Disease and. Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University where he was also Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and Assistant Dean for Longitudinal Medical Research.
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Prior to his 10 years at Brown, Dr. Mylonakis was Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and rose through the ranks at Harvard Medical School up to Associate Professor.

Dr. Harrison Steel, Ph.D.

Scientific • University of Oxford

Dr. Harrison Steel (https://steel.ac) is an Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Oxford and fellow of Harris Manchester College. His work is at the interface of synthetic biology, algorithms, and robotics, and has been recognised by the 2023 Royal Academy of Engineering's Sir George Macfarlane Medal, and the 2022 Philip Leverhulme Prize. He leads a research team building new technologies that combine electronic and biological components, and applies these to address scientific questions and industrial and environmental applications. Recently this has included building tools that can mitigate the evolution of antibiotic resistance, control microbial ecosystems (such as the gut microbiome), and use bacteria for environmentally-friendly bioproduction. He is the founder of a Bioreactor platform (https://chi.bio) which is widely used in early-stage start-up and academic labs. Prior to establishing his research group Harrison completed a PhD at the University of Oxford funded by the General Sir John Monash Scholarship, and undergraduate degrees from the University of Sydney.

Dr. Erdal Toprak, Ph.D.

Scientific • UT Southwestern

Dr. Erdal Toprak was born in Kurtalan, a small town in southeast Turkey. He obtained his PhD in Computational Biology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he developed several single-molecule microscopy tools. He then moved to Harvard Medical School to study the evolution of antibiotic resistance as a postdoctoral research fellow and developed the Morbidostat, now a commonly used continuous culture device for studying the evolution of drug resistance in dynamically perturbed environments. After starting his lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 2014, his lab's main research focus has been developing highly sensitive molecular and optical detection methods for pathogenic bacteria, as well as engineering novel antibiotics that selectively target antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In the last two years, his lab has also been working on machine learning-augmented, blood-based early detection tools for cancer and neurological disorders. His work aims to address global health challenges, with the potential to significantly advance treatments for antibiotic resistance, cancer, and neurological diseases.

Dr. Gail Radcliffe, Ph.D.

Regulatory Expert

Dr. Radcliffe has more than 25 years of experience assisting medical device and diagnostics companies with technical assessment, market research and clinical/regulatory issues. She has supported start-up and established medical device companies with regulatory strategy (IVD vs. CLIA lab) and submissions, and clinical trial support.

She has a strong background in molecular diagnostics for infectious disease and oncology products. Over the past 6 years, she has led successful De Novo and 510(k) regulatory efforts for products that simultaneously detect microorganisms and associated resistance markers using nucleic acid amplification.

Unlocking Transformative Diagnostic Insights

Vision

Mission

Who we are

Clinical Focus

Rapid, clinically-actionable diagnostic results could transform sepsis management, potentially preventing 80% of sepsis deaths by enabling timely and effective therapy.

Transformative Innovation

Advanced Microfluidics

Novel Optics

Predictive Machine Learning

Board of Directors

Dr. Paulo A. Garcia

Dr. Johan Paulsson

Rahul Dhanda

Operating Team

Dr. Paulo A. Garcia

Michele Giovenelli

Eduardo Latouche

Michael Gutierrez, Ph.D.

Carolina Baez-Giangreco

Megan MacNeal

Tom Feltrup, Ph.D.

Mark Audeh

Matt Lanchantin

Bill Standwill