Srihari Sritharan, PhD

Venture Fellow

Dr. Srihari (Sri) Sritharan is a Venture Fellow at Kaleida Capital, where he evaluates investments across neurotechnology and neuro-biopharma. As a Brown and UPenn-trained neuroengineer currently serving as Director of Business Development at Beacon Biosignals, he brings experience spanning neurotechnology research and strategic transactions, with a focus on advancing breakthrough technologies from scientific discovery to commercialization. Recently, Dr. Sritharan supported high-impact industry partnerships, including a $100M+ collaboration with Takeda at Beacon Biosignals and a nearly $1B RNA therapeutics licensing transaction for Acadia Pharmaceuticals' neurodegenerative disease pipeline. Earlier in his career, his doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania focused on wireless neuromodulation for sensory restoration, contributing to advances in next-generation neurotechnology and brain–computer interfaces. Dr. Sritharan holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Neuroscience from Brown University.

    • Early Hire at Beacon Biosignals | Hired as the first Business Development Manager at Series A, helping biopharma partners implement quantitative EEG endpoints in CNS clinical trials, leveraging Beacon's machine learning platform to accelerate development of new treatments for neurological, psychiatric, and sleep disorders 

    • Drove ~$100M Partnership for Beacon Biosignals × Takeda | Executed a landmark partnership worth up to $109M between Beacon Biosignals, a leading AI-driven neurodiagnostics company, and Takeda, to advance at-home EEG sleep monitoring and neurobiomarker discovery for narcolepsy and CNS drug development 

    • Drove ~$1Bn Partnership for Acadia Pharmaceuticals × Stoke Therapeutics | Played a role in structuring a ~$1B RNA therapeutics collaboration ($60M upfront + up to $907M in milestones) to develop novel RNA-based medicines for rare genetic neurodevelopmental CNS diseases including Rett syndrome and SYNGAP1 

    • Neurotech Research Leadership at U Penn - Wireless somatosensory prosthetics for patients with spinal cord injury | His work included the first successful chronic neural interface with sensory nuclei in the brainstem and the first primate study to demonstrate detection of artificial touch delivered directly to the brainstem. He developed expertise across brain–computer interfaces, real-time neural signal processing, wireless peripheral sensing, primate behavioral task design, and neurosurgical research, with additional work spanning seizure-responsive drug delivery and fMRI-based models of economic decision-making.

    • Cross-Disciplinary Expertise | Brings expertise across computational neuroscience, stem cell biology, epigenetics, and biopharma business development, enabling rigorous evaluation of neurotechnology and neuro-biopharma opportunities.

    • Neural Interface & Neuroprosthetics 

      • Richardson, A. G., Weigand, P., Sritharan, S. Y., & Lucas, T. H. (2016). A Chronic Neural Interface to the Macaque Dorsal Column Nuclei. Journal of Neurophysiology, 115. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.01083.2015 

      • Liu, X., Zhu, H., Zhang, M., Wu, X., Richardson, A. G., Sritharan, S. Y., et al. (2017). A Fully Integrated Wireless Sensor–Brain Interface System to Restore Finger Sensation. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8050619

      • Liu, X., Zhu, H., Qiu, T., Sritharan, S. Y., Ge, D., et al. (2021). A Fully Integrated Sensor–Brain–Machine Interface System for Restoring Somatosensation. IEEE Sensors Journal, 21, 4764–4775. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2020.3030899

    • Somatosensory Encoding & Brainstem Mapping 

      • Richardson, A. G., Weigand, P., Sritharan, S. Y., & Lucas, T. H. (2015). Somatosensory Encoding with Cuneate Nucleus Microstimulation: Effects on Downstream Cortical Activity. IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering (NER), 695–698. https://doi.org/10.1109/NER.2015.7146718

      • Sritharan, S. Y., Richardson, A. G., Weigand, P., et al. (2016). Somatosensory Encoding with Cuneate Nucleus Microstimulation: Detection of Artificial Stimuli. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 4719–4722. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2016.7591781

      • Sritharan, S. Y., Contreras-Hernández, E., Richardson, A. G., & Lucas, T. H. (2020). Primate Somatosensory Cortical Neurons Are Entrained to Both Spontaneous and Peripherally Evoked Spindle Oscillations. Journal of Neurophysiology, 123. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00471.2019

      • Sritharan, S. Y. (2018). Characterization of Somatosensation in the Brainstem and the Development of a Sensory Neuroprosthesis. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/30183

    • Computational Physics & Theoretical Modeling 

    • Domains: Neurotechnology, Implanted BCI, Wearables, EEG, Neuropsychiatry, CNS Drug Development

    • Strengths: Industry partnerships and deal structuring, business development in regulated neurotech and biopharma, translational neuroscience, clinical-stage pipeline strategy

    • Networks & Memberships: University of Pennsylvania (PhD, Neuroscience), Brown University (BS, Neuroscience),

    • Synchron - Leader in minimally invasive, endovascular brain-computer interfaces

    • Science Corp - Neural engineering and retinal prosthetics platform founded by Max Hodak

    • Paradromics - High-data-rate neural interface technology for speech decoding and clinical BCI applications

    • Resonant Link Medical - Wireless power delivery for implantable medical devices