Dr. Margaret Cartiera is the Venture Advisor and Lead for Strategy & New Initiatives at Yale’s TsaiCITY and Director at the Center for Health Care Innovation (CHI). 

Dr. Cartiera has a passion for early-stage innovation and holds nearly 20 years of experience working across the medical device, diagnostics, health IT, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology sectors. She's held various leadership positions and has expertise in investments, competitive intelligence, operations, team building, and business development. She successfully transferred technology from the academic setting, secured funding, and negotiated collaborative agreements with leading industry partners. Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Cartiera led Connecticut’s $200M 10-year Bioscience Innovation Fund and the Regenerative Medicine Research Fund.

Dr. Cartiera earned a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. from Yale University in biomedical engineering.

Kaakpema, who goes by “KP,” is a global entrepreneur and public health practitioner with experience working across the public and private sectors in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. He is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and the Faculty Director for InnovateHealth Yale. Kaakpema Co-Founded InOn Health in 2018. The company improved access to care in the United States using digital communication channels and consumer insights to better connect multicultural populations to healthcare services. Prior to InOn Health, he also founded access.mobile International. access.mobile was a global digital health company that developed solutions to improve access to health information and services in African countries. KP served as one of the early employees of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and worked as a management consultant for Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He is a member of the External Equity and Innovation Advisory Board for the American Medical Association and was appointed by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the Colorado eHealth Commission, which he chairs. Kaakpema received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Brown University and a Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a 2023 Rock Health Top 50 in Digital Health Luminaries honoree. 

W. Mark Saltzman is an engineer and educator. His research has impacted the fields of drug delivery, biomaterials, nanobiotechnology, and tissue engineering. This work is described in more than 350 research papers and patents. He is also the sole author of three textbooks: Biomedical Engineering, Tissue Engineering, and Drug Delivery. During more than 35 years leading independent research programs at Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Yale, he has introduced mathematical models for guiding the design of drug delivery systems, developed new methods for drug delivery to brain tumors, produced the first controlled delivery systems for nerve growth factors, the first delivery systems for long-term protection against STDs using antibodies, and new materials for delivery of DNA and RNA. In the course of this work, he has been the primary mentor for 43 doctoral students and 27 postdoctoral associates; many of these scholars are now leading their own independent research programs at top-rate universities. 

Prof. Saltzman graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in chemical engineering and received MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering and medical engineering from MIT. He was appointed the Goizueta Foundation Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Yale in 2002. He was the founding chair of Yale’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and served in that role for 12 years. From 2016-2022, he was the Head of Jonathan Edwards College, one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges. 

Prof. Saltzman is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and the US National Academy of Engineering. 

Dr. Shawn Ong is a physician–scientist and clinical innovator at Yale School of Medicine, where he integrates patient care with translational research and healthcare innovation. His work is centered on improving clinical outcomes through data-driven approaches, digital health solutions, and system-level innovation that strengthens how care is delivered across diverse settings. In his academic and clinical roles, Dr. Ong collaborates closely with interdisciplinary teams spanning medicine, technology, and health systems to translate emerging evidence into practical tools and workflows that support clinicians and patients. He has contributed to initiatives aimed at advancing evidence-based care, strengthening clinical decision-making, and accelerating the responsible adoption of innovative technologies within academic medicine and healthcare delivery organizations. Trained through rigorous medical and doctoral pathways, Dr. Ong also supports the next generation of clinicians and researchers through mentorship and professional development, while remaining actively engaged in Yale’s broader ecosystem of clinical research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Mohamed MohamedAli is a medical doctor turned healthcare innovation and venture capital specialist, drawing on experience across clinical medicine, research, and investment diligence. He serves as an Innovation Consultant and Diligence Lead at Yale New Haven Health’s Center for Healthcare Innovation, where he leads investment and co-development diligence for early-stage healthcare technologies and supports the external Yale New Haven Health investment team. His work focuses on medical devices, diagnostics, digital health, and health-system and hospital operational and administrative solutions, with an emphasis on translational readiness and health-system implementation.