WBC’s first-ever flagship event for grad students and PhD talent feature serial entrepreneur Brian Coe, CEO and CoFounder of Talis Biomedical

World Business Chicago recently hosted ThinkChicago Advanced Degree Exchange, their first ever flagship event for grad students and PhD talent from June 8th -10th. This three-day, virtual event provided a behind-the-scenes tour of Chicago’s thriving tech and innovation sector for 200+ students, post-docs, and PhD professionals. In partnership with P33, the University of Illinois System, Discovery Partners Institute, and GET Cities, WBC hosted a series of immersion sessions featuring keynote speakers, panels, and networking sessions with local companies and startups.

Brian Coe, CEO and co-founder of Talis Biomedical Corporation, served as one of the first keynote speakers of the event, where he talked about his Chicago roots, what attracted him to a career in life sciences and healthcare, and why the company set its sights on expanding its presence to include Chicago.

“I started Talis to redefine the treatment of infectious diseases by meeting patients and caregivers where they are, whether it’s in the doctor’s office, the hospital, or remote care settings,” says Coe. “Talis is thrilled to be joining the Chicago community, which shares the same vision and passion for the potential that life sciences, healthcare, technology, and innovation can have on society at large. Programs like ThinkChicago Exchange help move this vision and passion forward, allowing us to tap into the vast talent pool that represents the city’s startup and innovation ecosystem.”

Talisians to transform diagnostic testing by developing and commercializing innovative products that are designed to enable accurate, reliable, low cost, and rapid molecular testing for infectious diseases and other conditions at the point-of-care. While timely diagnosis of infectious diseases is critically important to enable effective treatment, testing is primarily performed in centralized laboratories, which require samples to be shipped for processing, delaying the return of results by days. point-of-care testing solves this problem by delivering a diagnostic result while the patient is present.

The company is currently developing the Talis One™ platform, a sample-to-answer, cloud-enabled molecular diagnostic platform that, once authorized, could be rapidly deployed to distributed diagnostic settings in the United States and around the world to diagnose infectious disease at the point-of-care. Talis One tests are being developed for respiratory infections, infections related to women’s health, and sexually transmitted infections. To date, Talis has raised over $500 million through venture capital funding, grants, and their public offering in February 2021.

Prioritizing the hiring of talented and passionate team members who foster an environment of entrepreneurial spirit, collaboration, intellectual freedom, and celebrating success is key to Talis’ exponential growth and continued innovation. Currently headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Talis will join Fulton Labs at 1375 W. Fulton Street with advanced lab, office, and chemical storage space. Talis currently employs 200 people, but is continuing to focus hiring efforts in assay development, clinical research, mechanical engineering, consumables engineering, cloud based software engineering, regulatory affairs, QA/QC, and manufacturing. By the end of 2021, Talis will double in size since 2020 with plans to double again in size by the end of 2022.