This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
All tagged Bioentrepreneurship
Meet Shumvobi Mitra, a high school founder of RhizeUP based in Maryland, in the United States. She began her journey with iGEM Team East Coast BioCrew 2023, engineering rhizobia bacteria to combat fertilizer runoff and protect waterways. After the iGEM Competition, she joined the 2024 iGEM Startups Venture Foundry Program to officially launch RhizeUP.
For many iGEMers, the competition is more than just a project showcase, it’s a launchpad to the next step in their synthetic biology journey. The people you meet, the roles you take on and the networks you build can take you into the many corners of the field, including the startup ecosystem.
At the 2024 iGEM Grand Jamboree, we caught up with Adrian Romberg, formerly working in Product Management at xyna.bio, a startup based in Mainz, Germany, focused on making powerful computation tools and bioinformatics intuitive and accessible.
The 2025 Venture Creation Lab (VCL), held from April 21st to May 16th, hosted by iGEM Startups, brought together aspiring biotech entrepreneurs from around the world to take their first concrete steps toward building a synthetic biology startup. Following the momentum of the BioHackathon, the VCL provided a four-week program designed to turn early ideas into viable venture concepts through lectures, workshops and personalized mentorship.
Jonty Corrin started his career in academia as a bioscientist, but his entrepreneurial journey began during his final year of undergraduate work. While his first startup didn’t thrive, it sparked a passion for early-stage startups and their growth. Along the way, he connected with Nucleate UK, a student-led, nonprofit organization that helps early-stage biotech founders translate academic research into real-world startups with dynamic support.
