The MIT Faculty Founder Initiative was created after a research project done by Sangeeta Bhatia, Susan Hockfield, and Nancy Hopkins revealed that women had founded less than ten percent of the 250 biotech startups created by MIT professors, even though 22 percent of MIT faculty are women.

From this data, the study estimated that if female faculty had been founding startups at the rate of male faculty, there would be forty additional biotech firms today.

In response to this study, the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative was launched in 2020 by the School of Engineering, in collaboration with the Martin Trust Center.

Our aim is to increase the number of female faculty members at MIT who start biotechnology companies through the MIT Faculty Founder Prize Competition, supported by Royalty Pharma. We believe this is important to level the playing field for female faculty while also bringing high-impact technologies to the world that are not currently being commercialized.

The Initiative is led by Sangeeta Bhatia (Wilson Professor of Engineering; member of four national academies; Lemelson Prize winner; 7-time founder including Glympse Bio and Satellite Bio) and Kit Hickey (Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan; serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Ministry of Supply) in collaboration with Susan Hockfield (MIT President Emerita and Professor of Neuroscience).

“What that means is 40 more potential medicines. The societal impact of that is really important. It’s a lost opportunity.“

Sangeeta Bhatia

MIT Wilson Professor of Engineering