This very special second edition of the Nucleate Network is brought to you in celebration of Women's History Month! In this article we highlight two incredible women in our network: Deepti Singh and Hannah Payette Peterson.
Nucleate is committed to amplifying the voices of women in biotech and entrepreneurship through intentional leadership representation, strategic partnerships, and dedicated initiatives. We have intentionally increased female participation in Nucleate leadership and the Activator program while collaborating with NGOs to create opportunities for underrepresented founders. As part of our PATH (Professional Advancement and Training Hub) initiatives, the Women Leading Life Sciences program connects aspiring female leaders with accomplished mentors through in-person and virtual events. By fostering mentorship, visibility, and support, we aim to empower women like Deepti and Hannah to shape the future of the life sciences.
Deepti is a 2022 Activator alumnus and the CSO and co-founder of InGel Therapeutics. Hannah is a founding leadership member and current co-managing director of Nucleate Berlin. Both women were an inspiration to speak with and their stories represent the drive to follow interests and curiosities wherever they may lead, personally, professionally and geographically.
Deepti: An International Journey from Trainee to Founder.
Deepti on being a woman in STEM: "Despite science already being a challenging and often underpaid field, women face even steeper barriers, grappling with wage disparities and deep-rooted sexism—exemplified by a renowned scientist's claim that women were merely "distractions" in research. Yet, throughout history, pioneering women like Katherine Johnson, Marie Curie, and Rosalind Franklin have continually defied these obstacles, reshaped the very boundaries of scientific discovery and continue to do so."
Inspired by her father's interest in science, while in India Deepti studied microbiology and genetics for a bachelor’s and master’s and went on to a PhD in translational biology with a focus on biomaterials and tissue engineering. After completing her PhD, she did not follow the conventional postdoc path to Europe or the US, but instead went to South Korea. During her tenure, she grew the team to 10 women, including undergraduates, master's and PhD students. They worked on a variety of projects including tissue regeneration in the lung for emphysema and a patch for regeneration of cardiac tissue. Her decision to travel to South Korea was a resounding success, something she described as “the best experience in research” as it “opened a lot of doors for me to explore the different ways I can use my PhD.”
From South Korea, she went to Yale School of Medicine to work on a DoD funded project focused on retinal repair for blast injuries; in studying the retina, she found her scientific home. The retina offers unique scientific and therapeutic challenges: it is not capable of self regeneration, and has distinct blood flow patterns, preventing the use of synthetic materials. Deepti rose to the challenge and generated the first all natural biomaterial that mimics the retinal ECM and allows newly implanted cells to restore vision. Deepti continued to work in the retinal field as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School where she worked with her close collaborator, Pierre Dromel, to develop cellular therapies which can be used for various ocular degenerative diseases.
With a long career in regenerative medicine for the retina and with successful therapies to her name, spinning out was a natural next step for Deepti and Pierre. Initially, however, they were met with pushback. The lead member of another team in the process of incorporating offered the sentiment that “we were like lab rats, and we should not even think about going into the startup business. So that sparked a drive in me and my partner, Pierre, and made us want to do it, because why couldn’t we?”
They were in an inspired entrepreneurial mindset when Patrick Jiang came to visit their lab. Patrick, an MBA student and member of Nucleate leadership was in search of new technologies ready to take a step into biotech. His visit was the perfect catalyst to take their project beyond the lab. Not only did he have the right training to complement the scientific expertise of Deepti and Pierre, but they gelled right away: “we immediately felt a difference when we were talking with Patrick. The communication was effortless for us.” So Deepti and Pierre agreed to join the Activator program with Patrick rounding out their team.
The Activator program was “life changing” for Deepti because it taught her very clearly, “the difference between a presentation and pitch.” As scientists, we know how to present our findings and their relevance to others in our field, but founders must learn how to communicate to a completely new audience: investors. One of her Activator mentors told her: “I see the passion in you, and I can feel that you believe in this technology, but at some point it felt like I was sitting in a classroom lecture. In all of the details you lose your message.” Through the Activator, she learned that successful storytelling in biotech is focusing on the impact rather than relaying the technical minutiae that make the technology possible.
After winning the Bio Award during their Final Pitch in 2022, InGel is continuing to take big strides. They secured pre-seed funding from angel investors, one of them being a mentor from the program, and last July they closed their seed round with $7.3M in private funding and received $5M in public funding via an ARPAH grant.
Looking forward, Deepti and the team at InGel are working on becoming a clinical stage company. This past year they have started manufacturing operations and opened communications with the FDA and clinical advisors.
Deepti credits the Activator program for giving her and the founding team at InGel the tools to manage and continue to build their company even after the program concluded. They gained skills in managing investor relationships, internal and external communication and building a strong team which have allowed them to take their innovations closer and closer to patients.
“This company started from an idea and became a real startup and now, moving from a preclinical stage to a clinical stage company. I think it's a dream.”
Hannah: Bridging the Gaps.
Hannah on being a woman in STEM: "When I was first deciding what to study at university, I worried I wasn’t “technical” enough—maybe I wasn’t good enough at math, and maybe I should avoid the molecular side of biology and neuroscience. That changed when I was 19, during a summer internship in Spain, working in a plant molecular genetics lab alongside three women PhD students. It was my first real exposure to lab work—and to seeing women doing deeply technical science. Simply being able to picture myself in their shoes transformed my perspective. That fear evaporated.
In hindsight, the idea that my mind wasn’t suited for technical work was absurd. Since then, I’ve worked in several molecular biology labs, learned to code, and written a biophysics-focused master’s thesis. I love technical reasoning. But early on, not seeing women in those roles made it harder to imagine myself in them. Now, working in Germany, I sometimes notice things feel more “old school” than in Spain or the US. In spaces with powerful PIs, institute heads, investors, founders, or politicians—especially from the older generation—it’s still not uncommon to be the only woman in the room. But at this point, I’m used to it, and it doesn’t faze me anymore."
Hannah was interested in science from a young age. Growing up, she was inspired by her environment in Cambridge, Massachusetts and by Oliver Sack's “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” which was gifted by her grandfather. After graduating from Amherst with a degree in Biology with a heavy focus on Neuroscience Hannah followed a life long desire to explore, leading her to a neuroscience lab in Alicante, Spain for 2 years and then to Berlin, Germany for the past 5.
“I ended up choosing Berlin because it had a lot to offer. A lot of science and universities here and a pretty big tech startup scene. The biotech startup scene is not massive, but we’re working on changing that with Nucleate.”
During the tail-end of lockdown Hannah transformed her flat into a co-work space for friends to combat the loneliness of quarantine. It became so popular that she opened applications for new people to join. One of her soon to be close friends, Inés, a researcher also involved in the tech and VC scene in Berlin, submitted an application and they began working together in Hannah’s flat. When Inés stared working on bringing Nucleate to Germany she invited Hannah onto the team.
Hannah and the Nucleate Germany team worked to bring Activator programming to Berlin, Heidelberg and Munich and support the organic growth of the local biotech startup scene. She described the origins of Nucleate Germany as “very DIY” which “allowed us the freedom to operate in the way that we thought made sense for the local environment.”
Now that Nucleate Germany has been around for 2 years they have not only gained more experience in planning and networking but also have developed greater reach and gravity in the German biotech ecosystem. Much of this growth actually happened due to a misunderstanding. When planning their first Final Pitch to close the Activator cycle, all three German chapters worked together to put on the event, with Hannah leading the effort. A miscommunication led to a 200-300 person attendance target, which Hannah took in stride and managed to satisfy. Hosting such a large event has helped boost attendance for smaller, local events that have followed.
Nucleate could not have come to Germany at a better time, as it synced with a growing interest in supporting startups in the biotech space. This surge in interest is coming from a few different sources: “There's more interest from entrepreneurs, from scientists themselves, and from companies and incubators here. But there's also societal and political will to get rid of some of the barriers in the way.”
The incubators and accelerators that are coming to Germany, and Berlin in particular, not only offer lab space and technical support to budding startups, but a much needed connection to a global community of incubators. The growing interest from STEM students allows the Nucleate to spread the word throughout University ecosystems, which has enabled them to reach people that would not normally be exposed to the startup scene. Finally, growing pressure from founders, investors and institutions to move to a digital-first system in the EU will ease the bureaucratic hurdles that limit startup formation, starting with tech transfer.
“It's historically been challenging for founders to negotiate with tech transfer offices to get IP deals that investors want to invest in, because, historically, European universities are not as used to having spinouts. There's been a push to modernize these practices and to make them more founder friendly.”
The growth of biotech in Europe is something Hannah sees as having “massive potential” and is largely inspiring the next chapter in her career. Leaning on her long history of melding interests and bringing people together, Hannah is hoping to bring together her two homes: Boston and Berlin. A bridge between European science and American investors would be mutually beneficial, especially for a commercially dense ecosystem such as Boston. By connecting capital and experience rich investors from the competitive market in Boston with cutting edge scientists in Berlin, Hannah hopes to bring much needed investment and expertise from the US to the high potential scientific ecosystems in Europe and Berlin.
In her career, Hannah hopes to bridge the gap between the infrastructure, capital and knowhow in the US with the potential in Europe. In her personal life, she is living a childhood vision, melding her interests and passions for science and art, showing and selling her science-inspired pieces.
“From the perspective of what interests me, they're all very connected. So I would say, to sum up, science is always a major interest of mine, and the artistic side is my way of understanding my interest in science.”
As I reflect after hearing Deepti and Hannah’s stories, I am encouraged by the sensew that if you come to a place with genuine curiosity and desire to grow, you can build community anywhere. The communities that you weave yourself within or build from scratch can expand to capture more and more people looking to connect and contribute. As we celebrate Women’s History Month in March, and every heritage month moving forward, I hope to carry the lesson that strong communities can be eclectic and niche or wide and far reaching, but always genuine in their pursuit of building meaningful relationships based on common interests. The most inspiring stories begin by finding commonalities while building from the strength that our differences afford.
Learn more about InGel here: https://www.ingeltx.com/
Learn more about Hannah (her work in science and art) here: https://www.hpp.xyz/
About the author. Lauren is a 5th year PhD student of Biomedical Sciences at University of California San Diego (UCSD) in the Gutkind and Mesirov labs studying the role of G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) in anti-tumor immunity. Lauren joined Nucleate leadership in 2024 as the co-director of Communications for the San Diego chapter and content lead at HQ. A special thank you to the Signal and Nucleate team members: Lauren Stanwicks, Isabella Altillo, Angela Li.