Meet Our Advisors
Guidance shaped by deep expertise
Strategic guidance shaped by decades at the leading edge of industry and innovation. Trusted influence across the life sciences ecosystem. They bring the clarity, foresight, and rigor that elevate the work happening within the Sphere. Meet the advisors who help advance our mission.
-
ADVISORDr. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie is President and Senior Fellow of the American International Institute of Medical Sciences, Engineering, and Innovation (AIIMSEI.org). He currently also serves as a Senior Dresden Fellow and Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Technical University of Dresden, and as a TEES Collaborator at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Guiseppi-Elie brings over three decades of experience bridging academia, industry, and innovation. He has spent 15 years in industrial research and product development, and 18 years as a tenured, titled, and endowed professor at leading institutions including Virginia Commonwealth University, Clemson University, Texas A&M University (TAMU), and Anderson University. At TAMU, he was Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and co-founded the Engineering Medicine (ENMED) program, where he also served as the Founding Associate Dean of Engineering Innovation.
At Anderson University, Dr. Guiseppi-Elie held dual leadership roles as Vice President of Industry Relations and Founding Dean of the College of Engineering. His academic appointments span departments of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Emergency Medicine.
He is the Founder, President, and Scientific Director of ABTECH Scientific, Inc., and has co-founded three startup companies. A U.S. citizen born in Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Guiseppi-Elie earned his Sc.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester (UMIST), and a B.Sc. (First Class Honors) in Applied, Analytical, and Biochemistry from the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Dr. Guiseppi-Elie is an accomplished scholar with over 225 peer-reviewed publications, 8 U.S. patents, an h-index of 52, and more than 10,300 citations (as of May 2025). He has been recognized as a 2012–2013 IEEE-EMBS Distinguished Lecturer, the 2013 Avis Visiting Professor in Pharmaceutics at the University of Tennessee, a Fulbright Specialist (2015–2019), with academic engagements in France, Argentina, and Poland and has been named by Stanford University to the top 2% of scientists worldwide.
He is a Fellow of several prestigious societies, including the IEEE, AIMBE, BMES, RSC, and RSM. His research focuses on physiological monitoring during hemorrhagic trauma and allotransplantation, polymeric nanobiomaterials for drug delivery and tissue regeneration, and the development of microanalytical systems for advancing human health and medicine.
-
ADVISORAnthony (Tony) Nolte serves as the primary legal contact for cohort companies. With over 30 years of experience, he focuses his practice on helping companies start, scale, and navigate acquisitions or divestitures. As former General Counsel for fintech and SaaS AI companies, plus nearly three decades at Shell, Tony brings invaluable in-house perspectives to emerging ventures. Tony is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Furman University. Learn more about Tony here.
-
ADVISORBarry Burgdorf, a corporate and finance partner in Hogan Lovells’ Houston office who maintains a global practice, will serve as Hogan Lovells’ relationship partner with InnovaSphere. Barry focuses his practice on public and private companies, emerging companies, venture capital, private equity, and higher education clients, with a variety of complex mergers, acquisitions, financings, IP intensive, corporate transactions in the life sciences and other technology industries (software, AI / semiconductor, energy transition), and higher education (commercialization, development, compliance).
Recently, he has been involved in the design and implementation of several innovation funds and venture studio structures associated with emerging technology areas. His full bio is available here.