Julia Kirshner

Can’t sleep on Julia Kirshner, this woman is the real deal, straight-up science ninja turned startup queen. So, she’s got a Ph.D. in cancer biology from City of Hope, which is like the Harvard of cancer research, right? She’s done the whole academic grind, postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley and Cross Cancer Institute, and even taught at Purdue, where she was a tenured assistant prof. She’s not just doing lab work for fun, she’s out here leading the charge on cancer development and metastasis research. The kind of stuff that sounds like sci-fi but is totally real.

But here’s where it gets crazy. In 2014, she jumps into the startup game with zPREDICTA, a biotech company that’s all about building 3D cell models to test cancer drugs. No bullshit, she took that thing all the way through Y Combinator’s S15 batch, that’s the big leagues, right? And she crushed it, leading zPREDICTA to a multimillion-dollar exit. That’s not just a small win, that’s a straight-up proof that she can take her crazy good research and turn it into real, money-making tech.

She’s funded by NIH and the Department of Defense, so her work isn’t just academic fluff, it’s legit, effective, and considered top-tier in the world of cancer research. She’s published in top journals like PNAS, JBC, Cancer Research, Blood, basically the hall of fame of science. Plus, she’s a killer teacher, having mentored students at Purdue, Santa Clara, and Cali State, pushing active learning and inspiring the next gen.

Now, she’s not stopping. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Great Voyage Labs, an edtech startup that’s all about making science education more interactive and personalized. Think real-world, hands-on learning but for science, super relevant, super modern. Her process from the lab bench to the startup scene shows she’s driven by a mix of curiosity, a hunger to solve big problems, and a knack for turning ideas into real-world impact.

Basically, Julia’s story is about someone who started in the trenches of cancer biology, learned how to do effective research, then took that knowledge and built something that could change how we fight cancer and teach science at the same time. She’s proof that if you’re passionate and willing to jump into the deep end, you can turn your science into real change. No Cap, she’s a total boss, someone who’s not just talking about the future, but actually building it.