Each year this Institute-wide event celebrates open collaboration and accelerates innovation within the Wyss community
(BOSTON) – The Wyss Institute hosted its 8th Annual Retreat on November 17th, 2016, at the Boston Seaport World Trade Center. With nearly 700 people in attendance, this was the largest retreat to date. Members of the Wyss community and its collaborators came together to report scientific advances achieved over the past year and share new translational endeavors on the horizon. These snapshots capture some members of the Wyss community throughout the day.
1/23 Don Ingber, Wyss Institute Founding Director, kicks off the event with a high energy overview of milestones the Institute has reached this past year. Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 
2/23 Jonathan Scheiman, a Research Fellow in Genetics at the Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School, presents his work on applying Next Gen sequencing to understand what makes elite athletes unique and how his company is harnessing that information to disrupt sports nutrition. 
3/23 Mary Tolikas, Director of Operations at the Wyss Institute, recaps technology translation in 2016. 
4/23 George Whitesides and Chuck Hoberman gave presentations during the Adaptive Material Technologies session at the retreat. Whitesides is a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at Harvard University and Hoberman is an Associate Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, Lecturer in Design Engineering at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Founder of Hoberman Associates. 
5/23 Raphael Cherney, Electromechanical Research Assistant, demonstrates Root, a robot developed at the Wyss, which is designed to teach kids how to code. 
6/23 Mustafa Karabas (Staff Mechanical Engineer), Jim Niemi (Lead Senior Staff Engineer) and Adam Zapotok (Industrial Design Intern) are working as part of Project ABBIE at the Wyss Institute to develop technology that could lead to early detection and treatment of the anaphylaxis. 
7/23 Wesley Wong presents his team’s technology, DNA Puppeteered Calipers, during the Molecular Robotics session at the retreat. Wong is an Associate Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, Assistant Professor in Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Investigator at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. 
8/23 Ignacio Galiana and Conor Walsh are key contributors to the development of the Wyss Institute’s soft exosuit. Galiana is a Staff Engineer and Program Lead for wearable robotic projects at the Wyss Institute and Walsh is a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 
9/23 Rob Wood, a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, gives an overview of Bioinspired Robotics at the Wyss Institute. 
10/23 Richard Novak (Senior Staff Scientist), Amir Bein (Postdoctoral Fellow) and Angeliki Chalkiadaki (Senior Research Scientist) are advancing biomimetic microsystems at the Wyss Institute. 
11/23 Frank Bobe, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, works in the translation of the Institute’s nanotherapeutic technologies. 
12/23 Administration and Operations team members Gustavo Luna, Margaret Ivins, Jodi Saia, Jake Hansen and Evan Stowell were event volunteers at the Wyss retreat. 
13/23 Charles Reilly, Staff Scientist, presents concepts of advancing science through art. At the Wyss, Reilly develops biologically inspired animations depicting cellular and molecular phenomena. 
14/23 Jim Collins, a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Jessica Duda, Director of Business Development at Harvard’s Office of Technology Development. 
15/23 At the retreat, Wyss Institute synthetic biologists presented ongoing research that could lead to new gene therapies and the ability to engineer synthetic genomes. Pictured from left to right is George Church, a Wyss Core Faculty member, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT; Alex Chavez, a Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow at The Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School; Alina Chan, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School; and Noah Davidsohn, a Biological Engineer at the Wyss Institute. 
16/23 Aileen Li, a graduate researcher at the Wyss Institute and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applies Sciences, presents a method for using injectable ‘self-assembling’ vaccines to treat cancer. 
17/23 Onye Ahanotu, Research Assistant at the Wyss Institute and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Stefan Kolle, Research Fellow at Wyss and SEAS, and Joanna Aizenberg a Wyss Core Faculty member and Professor of Material Sciences at SEAS, work together to develop various anti-fouling surfaces and adaptive materials. 
18/23 Pichet Praveschotinunt, Graduate Student, tries out a pair of soft robotic grippers developed by Wyss Core Faculty member Rob Wood and his team, that can be used to harmlessly collect fragile marine specimens such as various species of coral or sea slugs. 
19/23 Pictured from left to right: Don Ingber, Wyss Institute Founding Director; Mike Super, Wyss Senior Staff Scientist; and Andy Levine, Wyss Business Development Lead. 
20/23 Mirko Palla, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Wyss and Harvard Medical School, tries on the soft robotic glove developed by Core Faculty member Conor Walsh’s team. The wearable device is designed to help restore independent grasping ability in people suffering from loss of hand motor control. 
21/23 The retreat’s keynote speaker was David R. Walt, who is a University Professor, Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Genetics, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. His laboratory pioneered the development of microwell arrays, which revolutionized the field of genetic analysis. 
22/23 The Wyss Institute’s founding donor, Hansjörg Wyss, gave remarks to the entire Wyss community at the close of the day. 
23/23 A big thanks the Wyss Institute’s events team, Jackie Murphy and Jacob Watts, who organized the retreat and created a truly inspiring day for all of its attendees.