Venture Founder is Innovation UBC's flagship entrepreneurship program, a 16-week deep dive that turns bold ideas and research discoveries into real startup companies. Open to UBC faculty, staff, and students, the program offers experiential workshops on everything from customer discovery to go-to-market strategy with hands-on mentorship from a network of 250+ founders, investors, and industry leaders. Since its launch over a decade ago, Venture Founder has helped dozens of cohorts, spanning AI, biotech, climate tech, and beyond, move from early-stage ideas to validated, investable ventures.
ImmunoWell is one of the many promising companies that graduated from our Venture Founder program this past summer. In this blog post, read about Dr. Shirin Kalyan's journey from academia to entrepreneurship, what ImmunoWell is solving, and how conducting customer discovery changed ImmunoWell's trajectory.
Left to right: Shirin Kalyan and Neeraja Punde
Tell us about yourself. Your background, your UBC connection, and what drew you to entrepreneurship.
I’m an immunologist with a PhD in Experimental Medicine from UBC. I took a unique postdoctoral position in women’s health in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism near Vancouver General Hospital after my mom was diagnosed with cancer. This marked the first change in the way I thought about research - moving my focus from cells in culture to people in culture.
After my mom passed away, I applied for and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany where I worked under the mentorship of Dr. Dieter Kabelitz. Germany, being a knowledge-based economy, catalyzed the second change in how I thought about research - moved it from being a subsidized charity to the engine of an innovation-based economy. I returned to Canada to take up the position of Assistant Professor in Medicine (UBC) but was excited about the work being done at a local clinical-stage biotechnology developing a first-in-class immunomodulator platform. I transitioned to an Adjunct Professor in Medicine at UBC and eventually became the Vice President of Scientific Innovation of a biotech company. This collectively shaped my trajectory from an academic scientist to one that lives in the realm of uncertain potential.
What is your venture, and why does it matter?
ImmunoWell is changing the way we assess immune health - moving from a static biomarker model to a benchmarked functional assessment. Currently, people living with immune-related conditions, such as chronic inflammatory diseases, can be left for years without a diagnosis because standard laboratory tests fail to detect the presence of dysfunction - leading to disease progression and huge costs for our healthcare system. ImmunoWell aims to improve health outcomes by providing a way to understand the nature of any immune dysfunction present, the ability to avoid ineffective treatments and the ability to monitor immune health over time.
What's one piece of advice you'd give to an aspiring founder?
There are no certainties in life - and you won’t know what is possible until you try.
What's next for your venture? What are you working toward in the next 12 months?
My co-founders and I have a roadmap we are executing on to achieve our goal to be ready for our commercial launch in 2028. We have a packed and exciting 12 months ahead of us.
Our Venture Founder program is for UBC student ventures, UBC student companies, and UBC spin-offs with an idea worth building. Applications for our Spring 2027 cohort are open, so don’t miss your chance to develop your strategies, gain mentorship, and commercialize your startup idea! Learn more here.
