Enter the World of Hidden Layers

I’m Lauren. I’ve been with Nucleate since 2021 and am a UCSD PhD student studying the neuroscience behind movement. As the VP of the Ecosystems Research team at Nucleate, I am beyond excited to introduce our Hidden Layers article series. Hidden layers are critical in AI, as they determine the depth of a neural network and its ability to capture complex relationships. In our Hidden Layers series, we aim to uncover the complexity within and between biotech ecosystems worldwide.

Nucleate is dedicated to empowering tomorrow's biotech leaders by educating today's academic trainees. As part of this commitment, we produce resources to support the biotech community both within and beyond our organization. Our Research Initiative, founded by Sammi Sison and led by Gabriel Manzanarez, is a global effort focused on collecting data and providing resources for the biotech community. Through this initiative, we systematically examine innovation, ecosystems, and Nucleate's impact to help us comprehend the complex biotech landscape in which we operate.

In defining the goals of the Ecosystems Research team, we aimed to spotlight the global biotech ecosystem, focusing on the intersection of universities and startups. Our mission is to map biotech ecosystems worldwide, providing valuable insights from local biotech spheres to the broader biotech community. Access to reliable information on academic, funding, and startup landscapes can accelerate innovation for founders, revealing potential success factors and specific drivers of growth. Nucleate has a unique advantage in accessing often siloed and hard-to-obtain data, thanks to our global leadership team. The rapid expansion of Nucleate chapters worldwide has been remarkable, with each chapter working diligently to bring biotech education and opportunities to their ecosystems. We seek to examine and highlight the information they uncover in this process.

This series features authors who are simultaneously academic trainees, outstanding scientists, and innovators. The last Tuesday of each month, we look forward to sharing articles diving into aspects of ecosystems our global leadership team members are passionate about. We're excited to bring this series to academic trainees and early-stage academic founders interested in delving deeper into their university-born biotech ecosystems.