FY24 New Ventures Spotlight

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Arena Therapeutics is a start-up dedicated to developing Targeted Brain Modulation as a treatment for patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, founded by Drs. David Charles and Mallory Hacker in VUMC’s department of neurology. The company’s novel approach, based on research performed at Vanderbilt by Drs. Charles and Hacker, is focused on slowing the progression of Parkinson’s disease in early-stage patients while also improving the efficacy, side effect profile, and durability of brain modulation in mid- and later-stage Parkinson’s disease. Arena has the only Class II evidence in the industry of a therapy that may decrease the risk of Parkinson’s disease progression.

Arena Therapeutics is preparing to launch a pivotal trial in early-stage Parkinson’s disease to gather the evidence for gaining FDA approval for the first Parkinson’s disease modifying therapy.

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Metionic was founded by Daniel Rau, an Engineering graduate from Vanderbilt University, where he honed his technical expertise and innovative mindset. Metionic is reducing the costs of critical mineral extraction using advanced textiles manufacturing to fabricate metal-selective separation membranes. The high-performance membranes are packaged into a patent-pending system design that increases extraction throughput while reducing operating expenses. Metionic’s modular, scalable architecture unlocks the economic viability of domestic lithium, uranium, and rare earth elements production. Metionic is manufacturing its first lithium selective membranes with partners in the Czech Republic and plans to open its pre-seed round in Q2 2025.

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Mobius Al, Inc. utilizes a cutting-edge Al platform that uses a ‘predict and optimize’ framework to forecast energy and fuel consumption for mixed-vehicle fleets and optimizing routes, balancing future demand and potential disruptions. The company, formed by Abhishek Dubey, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Senior Research Assistant at Vanderbilt University, with collaborators from Penn State and Cornell, is focused on transforming fleet management and routing for non-emergency medical transportation, mass transit, freight, and last mile delivery.

Mobius equips fleets for the next step in optimization of net energy consumption with artificial intelligence, enabling planning of fleet operations using an innumerable set of factors that include forecasted weather, anticipated traffic patterns, elevation, elevation changes, temperature effects on batteries, energy profiles of vehicles based on telematics data, and other inputs being incorporated with each product update. Mobius AI moves fleet management systems beyond managing business based on miles and minutes. Mobius AI rounded out its core technology team by bringing in Vanderbilt University alumni Michael Wilbur, Chief Technology Officer, and Kareem Elgohry, Software Engineer. The team is actively working towards a major product release in June 2025 as part of their go-to-market strategy.

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CHALK Coaching is the product of research developed at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University and funded by $2.8M in multiple research grants from the National Science Foundation. CHALK is an easy-to-use classroom observation and professional development platform for early learning and kindergarten classrooms. CHALK empowers instructional coaches and administrators to collect meaningful classroom observation data, immediately visualize the results, develop collaborative action plans, and track changes over time. With CHALK, an embedded training process provides professional development for coaches, teachers, and administrators on key classroom practices and coaching strategies that have been shown to predict gains across both academic and self-regulation skills for students.

The platform is fully developed and currently in 100 classrooms, across four states. CHALK Coaching has officially opened a preSeed investment round of $500k on a SAFE note, and has already signed its first investor.

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Innerworld is an immersive 3-D mental health platform delivering scalable, evidence-based mental health groups. With over $9 million in total funding—more than half of which is nondilutive—Innerworld increases access to mental health care by enabling users to connect anonymously through avatars in virtual environments. Innerworld's proprietary approach is called Cognitive Behavioral Immersion™ and was developed through Founder & CEO Noah Robinson's doctoral research at Vanderbilt University under Dr. Steven Hollon. The platform’s group-based care model trains lay therapists to be as effective as traditional therapists in leading live group sessions to provide affordable, effective support that improves outcomes and delivers measurable ROI. Innerworld provides mental health support directly to consumers, as well as through Fortune 100 companies and government agencies to address the needs of diverse populations at scale.

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