We’re excited to announce this year’s 2026 NFX Fellows cohort.

Our 21 fellows were carefully selected from an application pool of 300+ students from Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.

NFX has always been all-in on student founders. We know that college campuses are incubators for incredible ideas. That’s why our fellows are our representatives on campus, and within their respective alumni communities. They have access to all NFX playbooks for investing and company building to be the best possible early backers of their classmates.

So far, we have had over 65 fellows pass through the program. This year’s cohort stands out for their wide range of experience, and depth of knowledge. We have founders with experience in biotech, consumer tech, VC, engineering, and more.

Get to know this year’s cohort below:

Stanford Fellows

Wyeth Coulter 

Wyeth is a second-year MBA student at Stanford GSB. Prior to business school, Wyeth worked in the venture groups of Point72 and K5 in New York and Los Angeles respectively. At Point72, Wyeth was an investor on the fintech team where he specialized in AI’s effect on financial services, identity, climate and payments. While at K5, Wyeth worked both on the firm’s first growth fund, where JP Morgan was the anchor LP, and the firm’s incubations including 818 Tequila. Wyeth grew up in San Francisco and previously attended Stanford undergrad where he received a degree in Management Sciences and Engineering.

Grant Griffith

Grant is first-year MBA candidate at Stanford GSB. Prior to the GSB, he was the founding Product Manager at Collinear AI, an early stage AI evals & post-training startup, where he helped standup the product function and led the 0→1 buildout of the company’s platform. Before that, he was with Monitor Deloitte, where he helped Fortune 500s and leading AI labs develop and scale AI-native products, working across the full range of the product lifecycle. Grant is especially interested in the growing post-training and LLMOps market and how frontier AI capabilities are becoming viable and durable products. Outside of work, he enjoys backpacking, geeking out over over coffee bean origins, and building out side-projects!

Mark Levin

Mark is a second-year MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to GSB, he held operating roles at Whatnot, leading the growth of its collectibles business, and at Uber, where he played a key role in scaling Uber Eats. Earlier in his career, Mark was a founding team member of Seated, a restaurant rewards marketplace. Over the summer, Mark worked at NFX. A Bay Area native, Mark earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science from Harvard College. In his free time, he loves getting outside whether it’s hiking in the mountains, snowboarding in the winter or exploring a new beach.

Lauren Nam 

Lauren is a first-year MBA student at Stanford GSB. Prior to business school, she was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey, where she partnered with leading pharma and biotech companies to tackle strategic challenges across the R&D value chain—from clinical development through market access. In undergrad, Lauren studied chemistry and defended a thesis on catalytic hydride transfers. Today, she’s most energized by regenerative medicine and breakthrough technologies pushing the boundaries of human healthspan and lifespan. Lauren grew up in Berlin, Seoul and New York, and enjoys spending time with her 40-lb cardigan corgi Halley.

Roxanne Ohayon 

Roxanne is a second-year Master of Science student in Clinical Informatics Management at Stanford School of Medicine, where her work spans healthcare systems design, women’s health, and digital health innovation. Prior to Stanford, she worked at Amgen in Oncology Commercial Insights, spearheading market research programs and operations to inform global strategy and patient access initiatives. At Stanford, she partnered with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital on designing maternal health interventions and predictive modeling for postpartum hypertension readmissions and has developed product strategies in oncology workflow orchestration, clinical trial matching, and women’s hormonal health innovation. She has a background in biomedical research, studying the maternal microbiome–fetal brain axis, immune regulation, and learning and memory in models of neurodevelopmental disorders. Outside of work, Roxanne enjoys exploring Bay Area trails, building her women’s health content platforms, and traveling.

Jaagat Prashar 

Jaagat is a sophomore at Stanford studying CS and Math. He grew up in India, Azerbaijan, Dubai, and Texas, a journey that has shaped his passion for building at the intersection of AI/Robotics, education, and healthcare. Previously, Jaagat has conducted deep learning for drug discovery research, researched VLMs/VLAs for autonomous vehicle and robotic applications on the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) team at GM/Cruise, and served as a Texas state ambassador for theater education. He is the co-host of the STARTS (STEM+Arts) podcast, where he aims to democratize knowledge on various topics such as AI, policy, and biology through conversations with researchers, founders, and investors. In his free time, you can find him making a cup of coffee to relish while he reads or codes, playing a game of basketball, and playing with his Labrador-Saluki-Akita dog Buster!

Harvard Fellows

Katherine Cianciotti

Katherine is a second-year MS/MBA Biotechnology candidate at Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Prior to Harvard, she spent four years at Moderna, where she helped develop and scale processes for personalized cancer therapies and COVID-19 vaccine variants, contributing to FDA-enabling studies and commercialization strategy. Since leaving the bench, she has supported early-stage biotech investing at 2048 Ventures, physician engagement and R&D strategy for a stealth neurotech startup, and launch plans for a global immunology therapy through her work at BCG. She is particularly interested in therapeutic delivery platforms, neurodegeneration, and longevity. Katherine holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she graduated in three years with honors while conducting research on synthetic protein design and drug delivery in the Zha Lab.

Andy Dieu

Andy is an undergraduate at Harvard University studying Computer Science and Mind, Brain, Behavior with a special interest in Human-Computer Interaction. Born and raised in the Bay Area, he has worked at an early-stage startup in the Google Cloud AI Accelerator cohort, where he contributed to go-to-market strategy, driving viral product launches, and to engineering by building automated workflows and fine-tuning agent models for general performance across domains on the product side. He has also conducted human behavior research at a Stanford lab, designed technologies for social impact, and advised Fortune 500 organizations on data-driven strategy. In his free time, he enjoys reading, surfing the web, and drafting essays for his Substack.

Lauren Ge 

Lauren is a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School. Prior to HBS, Lauren worked as Chief of Staff at Kindred, a home-swapping startup. There she helped scale the team from 6 to 90 employees, 200 to 200,000 homes, and Seed to Series C. Before Kindred she worked across growth equity, construction tech, and consulting at Spectrum Equity, Homebound, and Bain respectively. Lauren grew up outside of Philadelphia and previously attended Harvard College where she received a degree in Economics. In her free time she enjoys playing tennis and squash, rearranging her apartment, and hiking.

Ismail El Hailouch

Ismail is a second-year MBA student at Harvard. At Harvard, he is a member of the AI Club and holds leadership roles in the VCPE and Entrepreneurship Clubs (as part of their VC Relations vertical). Prior to Harvard, Ismail was a Chief of Staff to the CEO of Turing – a $1.1B AI company accelerating AGI advancement through LLM training – working with AI leaders like OpenAI, and Google. While at Turing, Ismail worked on critical workstreams that shaped the company’s strategy and growth. Before Turing, Ismail spent 2 years at BCG supporting 7 Fortune 500 companies in different functions (strategy, operations, due diligence) and across multiple industries (healthcare, finance, technology). Ismail holds a BA from Yale in Economics & NELC.

Shefali Sastry

Shefali is a second-year MBA student at Harvard Business School. She is from a suburb in northern California and lived in San Francisco for a few years before moving to Boston. She previously worked as a Data Scientist and later as a Customer Analytics Manager at Nextdoor, followed by an internship at SpaceX in data science on the Build and Flight Reliability team. Shefali graduated from UC Berkeley in 2020, where she created her own major, focusing on data science and information systems. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors, dancing, and working on side projects.

Berkeley Fellows

Brennan Lim 

Brennan is a 3rd year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying Global Management in the Haas School of Business. This past summer, he worked in Growth Equity at DTCP, leading Cerby’s $40m Series B and developing a thesis around Agents infrastructure. He is currently the President of Berkeley Venture Capital, the largest undergraduate VC organization at Berkeley where he has helped raise millions in startup funding and leads a scouting partnership with Notable Capital. He is also the Head of West Coast startup/talent scouting at Harmonic.ai and the Head of Undergraduate Investing at Berkeley Ventures. Outside of work, he is an avid watch collector and admirer of cars.

Kedaar Rentachintala

Kedaar is 1 of 50 students in Berkeley’s M.E.T. program, pursuing a dual degree in EECS and Business. He has led research on vision language models at Berkeley AI Research, generative music at Stanford AI, and VR stroke rehabilitation at UCSF, with publications in Nature and IJCAI. Alongside his research, he founded an occupational therapy company now used by more than 2,000 clinics worldwide and co-founded a fashion tech marketplace with 500,000 social media followers and partnerships with over 200 brands. He has worked at a variety of companies, including Cisco and the AI media startup MagicHour, scaling them to 2 million monthly active users by securing NFL/NBA/MLB franchise partnerships. At Berkeley, Kedaar organizes Cal Hacks, the world’s largest collegiate hackathon, and AI Entrepreneurs at Berkeley. Outside of his work, he holds a degree in the Telugu language, performs as a classical Indian musician, holds a black belt in Taekwondo, competes as a professional typist, and lifts weights.

Jonah Sklar

Jonah is a second-year MBA candidate at Berkeley Haas. He holds a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon, where he researched Human-AI applications in mental health and the economic impact of AI on the U.S. labor market. He began his career interning at the U.S. Department of State, representing the U.S. at the United Nations on a counter-terrorism committee, before graduating from the University of Michigan and spending four years in enterprise software spanning product, implementation, and technical account management. At Haas, Jonah has worked in private equity, developed market entry strategies for a SoftBank portfolio company, served as a Product Manager at Okta, and was a Venture Fellow at Berkeley SkyDeck and Deep Acre.

In his personal life, Jonah is a native Michigander, proud dog dad, and die-hard Detroit sports fan who errs on the nerdy side with history, Settlers of Catan, and design.

Vardaan Tekriwal

Vardaan is a returning Berkeley NFX Fellow, majoring in EECS, Math & Statistics, IEOR, Business, and Astrophysics. He’s an ML researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, a DoE federal lab, and has worked in Web3, fintech, and AI, achieving recognition from the likes of Ethereum and Ripple. He is the co-founder of AI Entrepreneurs Berkeley, an incubator with over $34M invested in cohort companies. Besides, he is an avid adrenaline junkie and sports enthusiast; scuba diving, long-distance running, badminton, and soccer are all up his alley.

Felix To

Felix is an MBA student at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business with a background spanning pharmaceutical development, manufacturing, and venture capital. Prior to Berkeley Haas, Felix was an Engineering Manager and Principal Engineer at Genentech, where he led global cross-functional teams and played a key role in the development of pivotal therapies such as Lunsumio and Ebglyss. He was also part of the team at Raisewell Ventures supporting deeptech investments in biotech, AI, and healthtech. He is a proud California native – having grown up in the Bay Area and having done his undergrad at UC San Diego where he received a B.S in Bioengineering and a minor in Theatre. In his free time, you’ll find him in the mountains or near bodies of water, likely kayaking, hiking, or snowboarding.

MIT Fellows

Lucía Castelló Pedrero

Lucía is a PhD candidate in Harvard-MIT’s Health Sciences and Technology program. Originally from Spain, she earned a BSc in Biomedical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where she worked on biosensing platform development at the Nanophotonics Technology Center and one of its spin-offs. She later completed an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise at the University of Cambridge, where she also consulted for medtech and biotech start-ups in London, Cambridge, and Paris. At MIT, she conducts research in the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies, engineering novel cancer immunotherapies designed for greater efficacy and reduced toxicity. Her broader interest lies in leveraging nanoscale physical and biological interactions to develop clinically translatable diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.

Grace Choi

Grace is a second-year student at MIT studying computer science and biology. She serves as Director of Events for MIT Capital Partners, MIT’s undergraduate venture capital and startup club. Before MIT, she conducted research on protein expression in plants, and this past summer she interned on the deep learning engineering team at an AI infrastructure startup. Grace is excited to bring her interdisciplinary background and passion for innovation to the team.

Kanika Rajput

Kanika is a second-year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Prior to Sloan, she was based in New Delhi, where she worked in private equity, leading investments across climate tech, health tech, and space tech. She also worked with the Government of India to design the country’s largest blended finance fund for climate tech investments. In addition, she co-founded NavTarang, a nonprofit that empowers girls through education and storytelling. Kanika holds a degree in Electronics and Computer Science. Over the summer, she worked at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on the disruptive technology investment team.

Anubhav (Anu) Sinha

Anubhav is a scientist and engineer who aspires to invent new technologies to study biological systems, and to apply them to human disease biology to unlock actionable insights. He is currently a postdoctoral associate at MIT, working at the interface of neurotechnology and systems biology. Anu previously earned a PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, where he invented and deployed new technologies for spatially precise in situ transcriptomics within intact tissues. Before that, he studied chemistry and EECS as an undergraduate at MIT.

Teddy Sun 

Teddy is a second year MBA candidate at MIT Sloan, where he serves as a Co-President of the Venture Capital & Private Equity Club, and the VP of Finance for the Impact Investing Club. He is excited to be transitioning his technical and operational expertise from 7+ years as a System Engineering Program Manager at Apple to the world of venture capital – especially in the AI, deeptech, and healthtech sectors. Over the summer, he’s expanded both his investing and operating acumen in the start-up ecosystem – interning as a MBA Associate at GFT Ventures and also joining Flipzen, a pre-seed, AI venture, as the 5th employee and the VP of Product and Growth. Prior, at Apple, Teddy managed product development for the Vision Pro and architecture studies for an internal health-tech R&D collective. Before that, he was fortunate to have led new product introduction and shipped a range of products – from iPhones to iMacs to the Apple Watch and even iPad accessories. However, he’s most proud to have been the Director of Fundraising for Project by Project, the nation’s largest 100% volunteer-run, AAPI focused non-profit.