Nucleate Arizona Patent Bootcamp

About the Event:

The Genesis Speaker Series, powered by the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI), connects academic trainees and early-stage founders with leaders shaping the future of biotech and medtech innovation.

Transform your data into a strategic business asset by learning the fundamentals of effective data management. This webinar explores how accurate, organized, and secure data drives better decision-making, improves operational efficiency, and protects critical business information.

Participants will discover best practices for organizing data, reducing errors, improving accessibility, and safeguarding sensitive information from unauthorized access, loss, and cyber threats—creating a strong foundation for growth, compliance, and informed decision-making.

Event Location:
Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, 275 Gateway Dr, Phoenix, AZ 85034, USA

Free Parking is available.

Virtual attendance is also welcome.

About the Speakers:

Robert Howard
Senior Software Architect, CEI

Robert Howard is a technology executive and hands-on architect with more than 25 years of experience building data-driven systems for healthcare, finance, government, and funded startups. In genomics, he cofounded Paraslice, where he invented a DNA search engine that matched 200 million FASTQ sequencing records against the 1TB NCBI nucleotide database on a single laptop, without sequence alignment. As an enterprise architect, he has built Azure and AWS organizations from zero, including the Banner Health patient forms platform that runs across 50 clinic systems in five states. His current work centers on applied AI: retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, knowledge graphs, LLM-powered chatbots, machine learning risk models, and AI-native operations platforms built with autonomous coding agents under human review. He holds two U.S. patents, has a mathematics degree from Arizona State University, studied artificial intelligence at Université Joseph Fourier in France, and is an invited participant in DARPA.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-scott-howard/

Michelle Howard
Head of Innovation Lab, CEI

Michelle Howard is a strategic engineering leader and Deeptech consultant at the Gateway Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI), where she guides startups in AI/ML, IoT, and biotech from MVP to market scale. A patent-holding entrepreneur, her corporate background includes leading global engineering teams and driving major initiatives at Benchmark and Universal Electronics. In her current role as Lead of the CEI Innovation lab Michelle leverages this expertise to de-risk complex technical roadmaps and accelerate startup growth.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleclairehoward/

About the Host:

Nucleate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the next generation of biotech leaders. With chapters spanning 41 geographic regions and participation from over 280 academic institutions, Nucleate sparks new intellectual communities and embeds emerging talent within a global biotech community. Through open-access educational programming, Nucleate helps democratize biotech innovation — removing barriers and helping founders concentrate on building transformational technologies. Visit www.nucleate.org for more information, and visit https://nucleate.org/privacy-policy/ to read our privacy policy.

We want to thank our HQ supporters for championing our open-access mission and empowering the next generation of biotech entrepreneurs!

Platinum: Eli Lilly and Company, Genentech, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, MilliporeSigma

Silver: Sanofi, CDD Vault

Philanthropic Support: Lyda Hill Philanthropies

Preferred Partners: Pillar VC, Amino Collective, Fenwick, Excedr, Mercury, Brex, Fedsprout, Browne Consulting

In-Kind Support: AcademicLabs, Lens.org