Company
Wearable neural interfaces for the moments that count.
Sharper Sense is creating a new category of wearable neurotechnology that keeps people focused, perceptive, and ready when the stakes are high. Born from neuroscience research at Columbia and Cornell, we’re building easy-to-adopt, single-use patches that optimize and measure cognitive state. We’ve gone from the lab to published human studies and real-world programs in defense, healthcare, and human performance.
Team
Neurotech experts who turn research into products.
Charles Rodenkirch, PhD
Founder and CEO
Neural engineer whose Columbia doctoral research became our core technology. Chair of NeuroNYC, with business training from Cornell Tech.
Qi Wang, PhD
Scientific Founder
Harvard-trained neuroscientist, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurosurgery at Columbia, and co-inventor of our core technology. NSF CAREER Award recipient.
Linh Le, MS
Chief Commercial Officer
15+ years commercializing advanced materials and health tech, with 10+ patents. Founded Flextrapower and co-founded Piezo Bio, acquired by PetVivo.
Krishna Badhiwala, PhD
Director, Neural Engineering
Rice-trained neural engineer, formerly at iota Biosciences and Abbott Neuromodulation. Leads our human studies and neural engineering.
Nick Reiser
Director, Product Design
19 years across electronics, software, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. Led product from benchtop hardware to a compact wearable.
Tim Moriarty, MBA
Fractional CFO
Wharton MBA with three decades in startup finance and federal contracting, including two company acquisitions.
Pranhav Sundararajan, MS
Bioelectronic Engineer
Johns Hopkins-trained. Built undersea sensing electronics at STR and co-founded wearable startup Kineura.
Camey Calzolano, MS
Biomedical Engineer
Columbia M.S. in biomedical engineering. Led our first biosensing work and supports human studies and wear testing.
Yahia Abdalla
Electrical Engineering Intern
M.S. candidate at the City College of New York in Marom Bikson’s Neural Engineering Group. Builds and tests our stimulation electronics.
Advisors
Clinical, defense, and commercial experience.
Scientific Advisory Board
Jason Carmel, MD, PhD
Chair · Clinical translation and safety
Professor and Chief of Child Neurology at Columbia University, studying how electrical stimulation strengthens neural pathways.
Audrey Sherman
Wearable materials and manufacturing
Former 3M Division Scientist and 3M’s first woman to reach 100 patents, with 150+ in adhesives, films, and skin-worn devices.
Business Advisory Board
John Sullivan, MBA
Chair · Commercial strategy and partnerships
CEO of Ocustim Medical and Investment Partner at Health Catalyst Capital. Previously at Cardinal Health and Boston Scientific.
Hon. Alex Beehler, JD
Defense strategy and federal acquisition
Former Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of the Army and Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense.
Bob Curtis, MS
Device strategy and commercialization
CEO for 35+ years across 11 medtech and life-science companies, nine with investor exits. Former CEO of Shiley, a Pfizer company.
Laurence Birch, MBA
Corporate finance and scaling
CEO of Prendio and BioProcure. Led Anju Software through its sale and served as CEO of Datatrak and NeoPharm.
Christine Rohan, MBA
Enterprise go-to-market
CEO of Vasowatch. Built a $200 million digital-health pipeline at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and led growth at GE.
Tamar Many
Human factors and product design
Senior lecturer at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, co-founder of MindState, and co-inventor on our device IP.
Paul Quadros, MBA
Life-science financing and board strategy
Four decades financing and governing life-science companies, with seats on five public and 20+ private boards. Chairs Vasowatch and TheraCyte.
Investors and supporters
Backed by investors and programs that know the field.
Investors
Investors
For investment inquiries.
Pre-Series A. Columbia and Cornell spinout. Peer-reviewed science in Nature journals. DoW, NIH, and commercial traction.
Charles Rodenkirch, PhD
Founder and CEO
Dr. Rodenkirch is a computational and systems neuroscientist, biomedical engineer, and founder of Sharper Sense. His doctoral research at Columbia University established key mechanisms by which the brain’s neuromodulatory systems enhance sensory processing and led directly to the company’s core technology. He subsequently helped translate this work from preclinical studies into randomized human studies demonstrating improvements in auditory and visual performance and speech comprehension in noise. His research has been published in Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports, Neuromodulation, and the Journal of Neural Engineering. As CEO since 2020, he has led Sharper Sense’s scientific, product, clinical, manufacturing, intellectual-property, fundraising, and federal-contract strategy, including serving as Principal Investigator for its Army SBIR program. His commercialization experience includes Columbia Technology Ventures and selective programs operated by Cornell Tech, Comcast NBCUniversal, NSF I-Corps, and SOSV HAX.
Qi Wang, PhD
Scientific Founder
Dr. Wang is Sharper Sense’s scientific co-founder, a co-inventor of its core neuromodulation technology, and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurosurgery at Columbia University. He completed postdoctoral training in neuroscience at Harvard University. He directs Columbia’s Neural Engineering and Control Laboratory, where his work spanning systems neuroscience, neural interfaces, and computational modeling established the scientific foundation for Sharper Sense and continues to inform its stimulation strategy and R&D pipeline. His research has received support from NSF, NIH, DARPA, the Army Research Laboratory, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. A recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and IEEE EMBS Early Career Achievement Award, he advises Sharper Sense on neurophysiological mechanisms, stimulation parameters, device validation, and future neural-interface technologies.
Linh Le, MS
Chief Commercial Officer
Linh is a deep-tech entrepreneur, operator, and inventor with more than 15 years of experience commercializing advanced materials and healthcare technologies. Before joining Sharper Sense full-time, he advised the company from its earliest spinout stage, helping it complete Cornell Tech and NSF I-Corps programs and raise multiple rounds of financing. He previously founded and led Flextrapower, where he licensed university-developed graphene technology, raised private and government funding, established strategic partnerships with MetLife and W. L. Gore & Associates, and brought wearable health-monitoring products to market. He has also co-founded BUYO Bioplastics and Piezo Bio, acquired by PetVivo in 2026, and holds more than 10 patents worldwide. At Sharper Sense, Linh leads commercialization, strategic partnerships, customer development, and pilot-to-contract conversion across defense, high-performance, and healthcare markets. He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia.
Krishna Badhiwala, PhD
Director, Neural Engineering
Dr. Badhiwala is a Rice University-trained neural engineer with experience spanning neural-interface development, computational modeling, preclinical validation, clinical translation, and closed-loop neuromodulation. She completed her doctorate in Rice’s Nano-Neurotechnology Laboratory, led by Jacob Robinson, the founder of Motif Neurotech. At Rice she developed multimodal platforms integrating electrophysiology, calcium imaging, microfluidics, and behavioral analysis. She subsequently advanced through data-science, research-scientist, and R&D-management roles at iota Biosciences, leading cross-functional programs that combined benchtop characterization, finite-element modeling, and small- and large-animal studies to guide device and stimulation-system development. Most recently, at Abbott Neuromodulation, she designed preclinical validation studies for chronic-pain targets and supported clinical-feasibility protocols and data-collection frameworks. At Sharper Sense, she leads neural-engineering strategy, human studies, scientific validation, and closed-loop platform development.
Nick Reiser
Director, Product Design
Nick is a multidisciplinary product-development leader with 19 years of experience spanning electronics, software, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. At Sharper Sense, he leads end-to-end product architecture, hardware and firmware integration, design for manufacturability, engineering verification, supplier technical decisions, and production readiness. He has driven the evolution of the company’s technology from laboratory hardware into a compact, self-contained wearable by integrating stimulation electronics, power systems, flexible materials, skin-contact components, user controls, and scalable assembly methods. His systems-level approach combines rapid prototyping with disciplined attention to electrical safety, reliability, cost, supply-chain resilience, and regulatory pre-compliance. Nick currently leads final product integration and manufacturing scale-up for Sharper Sense’s clinical, commercial, and defense programs.
Tim Moriarty, MBA
Fractional CFO
Tim is a Wharton MBA and veteran startup-finance and federal-contracting executive with approximately three decades of experience building compliant financial systems for technology and defense companies. He supported the growth and successful acquisitions of NetworkFab Corporation by Agilent Technologies and Spectranetix by Pacific Defense, serving as Director of Contracts and contributing to program management as Spectranetix scaled from inception to approximately $20–30 million in annual revenue. At Sharper Sense, Tim leads financial planning, federal-contract accounting, indirect-rate modeling, DCAA readiness, and cost strategy as he builds the financial infrastructure required to scale institutional capital and government revenue.
Pranhav Sundararajan, MS
Bioelectronic Engineer
Pranhav is a bioelectronic and embedded-systems engineer trained in biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, and applied mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Sharper Sense, he developed low-power embedded electronics, PCB designs, control firmware, and signal-processing algorithms for undersea sensing systems at STR. He also co-founded Kineura, where he led hardware and firmware development for a wearable EMG platform integrating low-noise biosignal acquisition, inertial sensing, onboard processing, wireless communication, and cloud-connected analytics. At Sharper Sense, Pranhav expands the company’s hands-on capacity for stimulation and sensing electronics, embedded firmware, prototype bring-up, verification testing, design for manufacturability, and production readiness. His combined experience in defense sensing and wearable bioelectronics supports the development of reliable, manufacturable, and ultimately closed-loop neural-interface systems.
Camey Calzolano, MS
Biomedical Engineer
Camey holds an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University and a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of Notre Dame. Before joining Sharper Sense, she conducted neural-circuit and decision-making research at Northwestern University. At Sharper Sense, she led the company’s initial multimodal biosensing work, demonstrating preliminary cardiac and respiratory measurements from its neck-worn interface to support the closed-loop platform roadmap. She also contributes to human-subject research, skin-interface and wear testing, device documentation, and federal grant execution. Her work bridges neuroscience, physiological sensing, and practical wearable-device development.
Yahia Abdalla
Electrical Engineering Intern
Yahia is a biomedical engineer completing an M.S. at the City College of New York and conducting research in Professor Marom Bikson’s Neural Engineering Group. At Sharper Sense, he supports embedded electronics, firmware, PCB development, prototype assembly, and bench validation. His work has included implementing higher-efficiency boost circuitry, updating schematics and board layouts, modifying stimulation waveforms and polarity, and supporting PCBA bring-up and verification. His combination of academic neuromodulation research and hands-on engineering strengthens the company’s ability to iterate stimulation hardware and advance prototypes toward reliable production.
Jason Carmel, MD, PhD
Chair · Clinical translation and safety
Dr. Carmel is a neurologist, translational neuroscientist, and Professor and Chief of Child Neurology at Columbia University. He directs the Weinberg Family Cerebral Palsy Center and Movement Recovery Laboratory, where his research combines electrical stimulation and behavioral training to strengthen neural pathways and restore function following central nervous system injury. His work spans mechanistic studies, clinical neuromodulation, and human-subject trials, supported by NIH and Department of Defense funding. As Chair of Sharper Sense’s Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Carmel has advised the company since its early development and provides clinical and scientific guidance on stimulation strategy, human-study design, safety oversight, outcome interpretation, and translation into future therapeutic applications.
Audrey Sherman
Wearable materials and manufacturing
Audrey is an innovation executive and polymer scientist with more than 35 years of experience developing and scaling adhesive, film, and polymer technologies at 3M. A former Division Scientist in 3M’s Medical Solutions Division, she became the company’s top female patent holder and first woman to reach 100 patents. She is named on more than 150 patents spanning medical tapes, wound dressings, skin-worn devices, films, and pressure-sensitive adhesives. At Sharper Sense, Audrey advises the team on the complete skin-contact material stack, including adhesive selection, release liners, backing films, multilayer integration, moisture management, comfortable wear and removal, and roll-to-roll manufacturability. Her systems-level expertise helps translate the patch from a functional prototype into a reliable, scalable wearable product.
John Sullivan, MBA
Chair · Commercial strategy and partnerships
John is a healthcare executive, medtech operator, and investor with more than 30 years of experience commercializing healthcare technologies. He is currently CEO of Ocustim Medical and an Investment Partner at Health Catalyst Capital. Previously, as an Entrepreneur in Residence supporting NIH-funded ventures, he advised life-science companies on product, regulatory, financing, and commercialization strategy. John also served as a Partner at Foundation Medical Partners, where he invested in and supported healthcare companies through multiple successful acquisitions, and as a Vice President at Cardinal Health, leading strategy, partnerships, and M&A. Earlier, he helped launch Boston Scientific’s first coronary stent program and supported a biotechnology startup through $68 million in venture financing and acquisition by Qiagen. At Sharper Sense, John advises on fundraising, market positioning, strategic partnerships, and company-building.
Hon. Alex Beehler, JD
Defense strategy and federal acquisition
Alex is a former Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of the Army and senior Department of Defense executive with extensive experience in military policy, readiness, safety, and federal decision-making. As Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, he advised the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army and oversaw policies affecting installations, operational resilience, occupational health, and soldier safety. He previously served in senior Office of the Secretary of Defense roles, including as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. Alex currently serves as an Attorney Advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy. At Sharper Sense, he advises on defense-market strategy, Army requirements, stakeholder engagement, technology transition, and acquisition pathways, helping align product development and evidence generation with the needs of military users and potential government transition partners.
Bob Curtis, MS
Device strategy and commercialization
Bob is a medical-technology executive, engineer, and investor with more than 45 years of operating experience, including more than 35 years as a CEO. He has led 11 medical-device and life-science startups spanning seed-stage formation, clinical development, commercialization, and turnarounds, with nine subsequently achieving investor liquidity events. Bob previously served as President and CEO of Shiley, a Pfizer medical-device subsidiary, and later led MedTech Ventures, MyoScience, and Respira Therapeutics. Across his career, he has raised or invested more than $200 million, guided regulated products through development and commercialization, and participated in strategic acquisitions and venture-backed company formation. At Sharper Sense, Bob advises on medical-device strategy, regulatory and commercialization pathways, capital formation, strategic partnerships, and positioning the company for institutional investment or acquisition.
Laurence Birch, MBA
Corporate finance and scaling
Larry is a life-science executive, board member, and financial operator with more than 30 years of experience building, scaling, restructuring, and selling healthcare and technology companies. He is CEO of Prendio and BioProcure, where he leads a procurement, payments, and data platform serving hundreds of biotechnology companies and managing billions of dollars in annual spend. Previously, he led Anju Software through its sale to Valsoft and served as CEO of Datatrak, NeoPharm, Evolve Audiology, and Aksys. Across these roles, he has restored distressed companies to growth, raised institutional capital, executed strategic transactions, and managed clinical, regulatory, quality, manufacturing, and financial operations. At Sharper Sense, Larry advises on corporate finance, operating metrics, capital efficiency, organizational scale-up, and investor readiness.
Christine Rohan, MBA
Enterprise go-to-market
Christine is a healthcare technology CEO and commercialization executive with more than 30 years of experience scaling businesses, developing new markets, and building strategic partnerships. She is CEO of Vasowatch, where she leads development and commercialization of a software-enabled system for predicting postpartum hemorrhage risk. Previously, as Managing Director of Innovation at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, she developed a $200 million digital-health pipeline and launched partnerships across its national payer network. During her career at GE, she led global growth, commercial, and operating initiatives across large technology businesses. She also helped scale a healthcare software company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition. At Sharper Sense, Christine advises on go-to-market strategy, enterprise adoption, strategic partnerships, and conversion of pilot programs into repeatable commercial growth.
Tamar Many
Human factors and product design
Tamar is a multidisciplinary designer, educator, and innovation leader specializing in human-centered design, visual communication, and the integration of physical and digital experiences. She serves as a senior lecturer at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, teaches design thinking at Tel Aviv University, and co-founded MindState. Tamar has advised Sharper Sense since its early product-development stage and is named as an inventor on company device intellectual property. At Sharper Sense, she guides human-factors design, usability, product interaction, visual communication, and brand positioning, helping ensure that advanced neuromodulation technology becomes an intuitive, credible, and adoption-ready wearable product.
Paul Quadros, MBA
Life-science financing and board strategy
Paul is a life-science investor, board leader, and company builder with four decades of experience financing, governing, and scaling biotechnology and medical-device companies. He has served on the boards of five public and more than 20 private companies. He currently chairs Vasowatch and TheraCyte and serves on the board of BMI OrganBank. Paul co-founded and formerly chaired Corautus Genetics and Cardiac Science, both later acquired, and co-founded and led GenStar Therapeutics as President and CEO. He was also Managing Partner of Tenex Greenhouse Ventures and previously held senior investment leadership roles at Technology Funding, which invested $300 million across life sciences and information technology. At Sharper Sense, Paul advises on financing strategy, board development, investor positioning, strategic transactions, and the operating and governance capabilities required to scale a venture-backed neurotechnology company.
Investors
For investment inquiries.