Ilene Busch-Vishniac Lecture 2025

“The Heart of Innovation: Engineering a Career in Life Sciences” 

This endowed lecture was established in 2003 to celebrate the contributions of former Dean, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, the first, and still only female Whiting School Dean. The goal of the lecture is to feature outstanding women in engineering sciences and highlight the intellectual contributions of the lecturers while inspiring young women to pursue degrees and careers in engineering.

This year's featured speaker is Misti Ushio ’94, a managing partner at Digitalis Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in solutions to complex problems in human and animal health. She is also a board director of Digitalis Commons, which builds solutions that have an outsized impact on healthcare.

Ushio was the founder and CEO of the TARA Biosystems developed physiologically relevant 3D cardiac tissue models for accelerated discovery and development of novel medicines via disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities. TARA Biosystems was acquired by ValoHealth in 2022.

Earlier in her career, Ushio served as chief strategy officer and managing director of Harris & Harris Group where she advised and invested in life science companies to help translate their transformational science into commercially successful companies. She also held management roles at Merck & Company, where she developed vaccines and biologics products, and at Columbia University where she managed the intellectual property of several scientific and engineering portfolios.

In 2018, Fast Company named Ushio as one of the Top 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Ushio currently serves as a director on the boards of private and public life science companies. She holds a BS in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins University, an MS in chemical engineering from Lehigh University, and a PhD in biochemical engineering from University College London. 

The event will be available via livestream for those unable to attend in person.