An International Perspective on the American Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Launched earlier this year, iGEM EPIC aims to support the next generation of synthetic biology (SynBio) founders and entrepreneurs. Supporting the iGEM Foundation’s advocacy of the global SynBio community, EPIC seeks to promote SynBio entrepreneurship by helping aspiring founders launch their first ventures. This blog post highlights the importance of entrepreneurial ecosystems and the impact one involved member can have on their creation and success.

Radhakrishna Sanka, better known as Krishna, is a Computer Engineering Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, focusing his studies on design automation and synthetic biology. Krishna spent his early academic career in India, before getting his undergraduate degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Dubai campus. In this time, he founded Geeks which became one of the first web and app development companies for businesses in the region. He now spends much of his time developing new techniques in microfluidics and the Innovate@BU program.

Radhakrishna Sanka

In founding Geeks, Krishna identified an utter lack of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in his university, making company expansion extremely difficult. In fact, the university went as far as suggesting they cease operation. Krishna and his partner, still enjoying their entrepreneurial work, decided to continue contracting for a year thereafter, before Geeks finally decided to close their doors when the founders moved onto new career opportunities.

The first iteration of the student leadership council at Innovate@BU

Arriving at Boston University (BU) in 2014 for a master’s degree, Krishna again noticed an apparent lack of entrepreneurial support in an otherwise innovative city. Taking into account his experiences in Dubai, he sought to tackle this issue and support the entrepreneurial ambitions of his current and future peers. Starting small, he first identified the most pressing issues, topics and questions within the BU Ph.D. and grad student communities that needed more support and presented them to the student leadership council of the innovation program, on which he proudly serves. This gave the program a new life, inspiring a basis for operation and an immediate student population whose needs it could help to fill. For Krishna, many of these questions pertained to the difficulties of founding a company in the US as a non-citizen. Since then, the innovation hub's daily operations have grown robustly to support a plethora of aspiring entrepreneurs, including a team of his own that will be competing for a spot in the iCorps program

The iGEM BU Team at the Giant Jamboree

In addition to his contribution to the entrepreneurial community, Krishna has contributed to the iGEM program at BU for several years as a mentor for the university’s hardware team and a judge at the Giant Jamboree. He is ambitiously looking to expand this role to mentoring the BU software team in future years! Krishna’s involvement with BU’s synbio research and innovation serves as a perfect example of one of the many facets that make the iGEM community so vibrant and conducive to not only the development of valuable career skills, but also immense personal growth.

Krishna concludes that a large portion of an individual’s success can always be contributed to the communities one is able to immerse in. Regarding the US entrepreneurial landscape for a non-citizen, he suggests reaching out to a local IP lawyer, who more often than not, provides free consultations for students.

Krishna has generously provided his email if you would like to learn more about or from him.

Thank you Krishna for sharing this outstanding experience with the iGEM EPIC program.

- Alec Brewer | Americas Media & Outreach