AxisMED

AxisMED is a biomedical pre-incubation program intended to fill the gaps between a university’s academic resources and entrepreneurial accelerator programs by connecting students through interdisciplinary teams and the tools necessary to navigate early-stage medical ventures. AxisMED’s program strengthens UIUC’s existing entrepreneurship ecosystem by establishing a new, accessible entry point for students to gain experience in medical entrepreneurship and innovation before pursuing further acceleration.

Success Stories

Meet the Founders


In August 2020, four students from the Class of 2024 banded together to forge a new pathway for entrepreneurial education at the new Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Many students starting at Carle Illinois have little or no experience in starting ventures. These four students, Al Smith, Diana Wu, Alex Teague, and Ariana Barreau, were driven to support early education for students interested in entrepreneurship and design. With experience in several startups, curricular development, the Saint Louis Incubator and Accelerator landscape, and the Stanford Biodesign Program, this team set out to create a new incubator intended for Phase 1 medical students, undergraduate students, and graduate students from Carle Illinois College of Medicine and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. AxisMED began to take shape, and hosted their first full-cohort in 2021-2022 with four teams. Ferritiva and Nephra, two teams that underwent incubation with AxisMED, have achieved widespread success across our campus community, raising over $50,000 in funding each so far.

Student-Leadership

AxisMED's leadership is proud to be student-developed and student-run. Our organization believes that peer-to-peer mentorship is a key to success in medical innovation and entrepreneurship. The leaders come from broad backgrounds, including medicine, engineering, and business, and all have experience in R&D teams in industry or in startups of their own.

Contact Us

Cris Medrano, MD

Faculty Advisor

Neddie Byron

President

Annie Tigranyan

VP/Curriculum Chair

Shreya Rangarajan

General Exec

Al Smith

General Exec

Mukul Govande

General Exec

Kyra Hulse

General Exec

Maaz Imam

General Exec

Bilal Karim

General Exec

Support Innovation

Interested in Sponsoring AxisMED's Efforts?