Polsky 10: New Polsky Founders’ Fund Fellows | NVC winner Rayni’s impact | Catching up with SNVC winner Lighthouse Solutions
| The Polsky 10 is a bi-weekly newsletter featuring 10 things to know from the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center. To get the Polsky 10 sent directly to your inbox every other Friday, sign up here >> 1 // Eight recent alums receive Polsky Center funding and support to work on their ventures full time. |
| Making the leap from student entrepreneur to full-time founder is no small feat. However, one long-standing Polsky Center program aims to make that transition as smooth as possible for a select group of graduating students. The Polsky Founders’ Fund Fellowship (PF3) is designed to help pave the runway for UChicago’s most committed student entrepreneurs. And now, eight recent alums have been selected for the 2026-27 PF3 cohort, where they’ll dedicate the year to building out their ventures full time, bolstered by up to $24K in financial support, coaching, mentorship, and continued access to Polsky Center resources. Together, the fellows represent eight emerging startups spanning a range of industries and ideas, all with one thing in common: ambitious founders taking their first steps toward building companies beyond the classroom. Read more on these new fellows and their startups now. |
2 // One NVC winner’s journey out of the lab… and back in. |
| Even the most impactful and high-tech scientific equipment is only as useful as its lab’s standard operating procedure — a product that can take up to a week to properly produce. But luckily, NVC ’25 winner Rayni has developed a new way to dramatically cut down the time and effort it takes to make lab equipment usable, turning dense equipment manuals into searchable, step-by-step guidance for scientists. In a full-circle moment, Rayni helped a one-person lab operations team at the UChicago Science Incubator transform more than 17,800 pages of documentation into an AI-powered resource, cutting the time required to create standard operating procedures from roughly a week down to two days. A recent case study on the partnership offers a real-world look at how Rayni is helping scientists spend less time troubleshooting equipment and more time doing science. Read more now. |
3 // A light in the AI dark. |
| Every year, more than 300 million children around the world are affected by online sexual predation. Now, that number has begun to increase even more as predators learn to weaponize AI in their pursuit to harm and exploit vulnerable children. In response, recent SNVC ‘26 winner Lighthouse Solutions hopes to fight fire with fire — offering a powerful AI-based solution. Founded by Katherine Alexander, MBA/MSW ’26, Lighthouse Solutions is creating a proactive AI infrastructure for digital crime prevention and prosecution. Motivated by her own experience as a victim of sexual abuse, Alexander launched the team’s first product to help law enforcement build evidence against online predators and human traffickers. Lighthouse deploys decoy AI bots, mimicking vulnerable individuals in digital spaces where predators roam, and then delivers court-ready evidence so law enforcement can pursue the strongest possible case. Read more now. |
4 // Small Business Growth Program alum turned Small Business Hero. |
| Booth alum and Polsky Center Small Business Growth Program alum Siri Omene, MBA ‘25, always had a knack for teaching others. What started as casual peer-to-peer tutoring as a young student has since blossomed into a full business — one that he started as a college student and grew while finishing his undergraduate degree and a subsequent MBA at Chicago Booth. Chitown Tutoring is now a top STEM, academic coaching, and test prep company specifically targeting underserved children in the Chicago area. And most recently, Omene was recognized by the Intuit QuickBooks and Mailchimp Small Business Hero Program for his impact on the community, including a $20K award. Learn more now. |
5 // AI has been fighting cancer for 40 years. Now what? |
| AI is hardly new in the world of cancer research. As UChicago Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor Maryellen Giger points out in a recent episode of the Cancer Luminaries podcast, AI has played a formative role in cancer research for the last four decades. But now, importantly, its potential for impact is expanding rapidly. A pioneer in computer-aided diagnostics, Giger’s work has helped advance the fields of breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, lupus, and bone disease research. Additionally, as the cofounder of NVC ’10 alum Quantitative Insights, Giger led the creation of diagnostic tool QuantX, which became the first FDA-cleared machine learning-powered system to aid in cancer diagnosis. Now, in this latest episode of Cancer Luminaries, Giger and fellow UChicago faculty member Dr. Alex Pearson explore how decades of advances in medical imaging are converging with today’s newest AI tools. They discuss the possibilities for more precise diagnosis and personalized treatment, as well as the need to build these technologies with equity, transparency, and patient care in mind. Listen now. |
6 // Because finding the best cancer treatment plan shouldn’t be all trial and error. |
| For patients with stage IV colorectal cancer, knowing exactly who has a chance at a cure from aggressive local treatment — and who doesn’t — can make all the difference. George Schultz Innovation Fund recipient PersonaDx is working to answer that question with PersonaCRC, a biomarker test developed by UChicago researchers that combines tumor biology, AI, and clinical factors to classify colorectal liver metastases by risk. In a recently validated cohort, patients in the lowest-risk group had approximately 80% five-year overall survival, compared with about 40% for the highest-risk group, offering a powerful new way to match patients with curative versus palliative treatment strategies. Read more now. |
7 // UChicago researchers receive a $400K grant to help unite the worlds of quantum and life sciences. |
| When UChicago researchers turned a protein found in living cells into a functioning quantum bit, or qubit, it was a first-of-its-kind breakthrough, offering unprecedented insight into biological processes. Now, a new $400K grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) will help advance that work. Awarded to UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Associate Professor Peter Maurer, this new CAREER grant will help his team overcome photobleaching and improve single-molecule readout, potentially enabling scientists to study the fundamental mechanisms of diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative disorders at atomic resolution. The research sits at the intersection of quantum technology and life sciences, a rapidly growing area at UChicago PME. Read more now. |
8 // Why UChicago research is the cream of the crop. |
| What if there was a way to help some of the world’s most important crops produce more food and stand up better against drought and heat — without inserting any foreign genetic material? UChicago researchers have developed a new approach that trims a small section from plants’ own genes, boosting rice yields by 20–25% while increasing stress resistance. Unlike earlier approaches that relied on introducing genes from animals, the new method works by modifying genes already found in plants — potentially offering a simpler path to engineering more resilient and higher-yield crops. Excitingly, the team is now looking ahead to test this new strategy in other plants, where the same genes are found. Read more now. |
9 // Drug-lugging bugs. |
| Cancer immunotherapy has transformed treatment for many cancers, but pancreatic tumors remain especially adept at shutting down the body’s immune response. To overcome this hurdle, UChicago researchers have devised a promising new strategy. Using an engineered version of Bifidobacterium longum, a probiotic bacterium naturally found in the gut, these scientists have found a way to deliver an immune-stimulating therapy directly inside tumors. In mouse models, the treatment activated cancer-fighting T cells while suppressing tumor growth — producing even stronger results when combined with chemotherapy, radiation, or immunotherapy. The team is working with the Polsky Center to commercialize this research, potentially turning beneficial gut bacteria into targeted drug factories that deliver treatment in hard-to-reach tumors, exactly where it’s needed most. Read more now. |
10 // Out of a struggle, into the oven. |
| For Small Business Growth Program alum Quinton McNair, baking anything from scratch was never on his radar. “I had never baked a thing before the pandemic,” he told WGN in a recent interview. But, when the pandemic struck, he took up the hobby as a way to pass the time and help him deal with depression and PTSD after he retired from more than two decades of military service in 2019. An interest turned into a passion and that passion has since developed into a new brick-and-mortar bakery in Chicago’s Hyde Park. Named Strugglebeard Bakery in honor of McNair’s own mental health struggles, the bakery is proud to host mental health-awareness events alongside its delicious baked goods. Learn more now. |
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