Max Narovlyansky is a scientist turned entrepreneur with a mission to utilize his technical skills to benefit humanity. Max has earned his BS degree in Chemistry from Caltech and PhD under Prof. Whitesides at Harvard with a thesis containing both science and technology, biophysics and microfluidics, respectively. Max worked on drug development at HMS and Merck and did his post-doctoral studies at Baylor U. on the use of small molecules to disrupt plaque formation in neurodegenerative diseases. Subsequently Max spent over a decade in industry and developed single use microfluidics devices at Abbott, new metabolic sensors in whole blood analyzers at Instrumentation Laboratory, and biomarkers for blood cancers at Eutropics Pharma. To address a gap technology utilization for precision medicine Max founded FlowCell in 2019 and Sanus Galt in 2023 to resolve the underlying financial issues, to empower and reward the individual under a new paradigm of sharing medical data and derived revenue.
Personal motivation and background
Max’s family immigrated to the US in 1992 by which time he had already embarked on a scientific career after attending a specialty math and science school attached to Moscow State University. The collapse of the USSR resulted in a decrease of employment opportunities for scientists and added awareness and shed light on the need to balance the excitement for scientific discovery and impactful applications. Max completed all available science courses by sophomore year, graduated early from high school and attended Caltech, where he pivoted from ab initio quantum mechanics calculations on Cray90 supercomputers under his undergraduate advisor Prof. Aron Kupperman to work at the JPL on development of highly efficient thermoelectric materials for solar panels. The move from theoretical chemistry to material science still did not provide access to impactful applications that Max was striving for. By the end of his undergraduate work Max decided that he was now interested in the field of bio-computation measuring biochemical processes such as binding and enzymatic reaction rates in highly controlled environments.
Max chose to delve into biology at Harvard Medical School under renown scientists Stuart Schreiber and Tim Mitchison in the Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (ICCB). Max participated in revolutionary drug development efforts involving combinatorial organic synthesis, microarray binding, and functional cellular assays. He then completed his doctoral degree in Harvard in microfluidics and biophysics under Prof. Whitesides, the most published chemist in history, and a prolific innovator. Max completed his post-doctoral work focused on small molecules therapeutics for Louis Gehrig’s disease (ALS).
Industry experience includes work on single use point-of-care immunoassays and digital microfluidics at Abbott, multi-use microfluidics using electrochemistry and analytics of metabolites in whole blood at Instrumentation Laboratory (part of Werfer) and development of biomarkers for blood cancer using flow cytometry and microfluidics for sample preparation.
In 2019 Max founded FlowCell, a company focused on distribution and application of complex novel microfluidic tools for life science applications. Sanus Galt was created in 2023 to address the gating problem of finance in healthcare innovation with added benefits of delivering precision and outcomes-based medicine and most importantly, empowering the patient and democratization of healthcare in general.