Senior Alex Mathews, hailing from southern California, has pursued a variety of entrepreneurship and research endeavors during his time at Hopkins, his most recent startup being a social enterprise transforming orthotic device production.
Mathews, along with sophomore Param Shah, co-founded the enterprise Fusiform approximately one year ago. Mathews and Shah met each other through the Hodson Trust Scholarship, a merit scholarship awarded to select Hopkins students.
Shah is the CEO of a nonprofit called the Lotus Life Foundation, which aims to “empower the lives of children with disabilities in rural India,” according to its website. The organization realized it needed orthotic devices, and Shah and Mathews found that there were many production inefficiencies.
“During that time I was just starting to get into automated manufacturing and scanning, and we realized that there was a lot of potential for improvement in the orthotic space,” Mathews said.
Mathews, a biomedical engineering major, explained that during his junior year he took a computer-integrated surgery course and a design course during which he helped build cranial implants for people that need reconstructive surgery for their skulls.
“I did a lot of the imaging work, and that was my first experience with imaging and automated manufacturing,” Mathews said.
Mathews and Shah received $25,000 in early stage investment from the Abell foundation. About five weeks ago, Fusiform was accepted into Accelerate Baltimore and the Social Innovation Lab, an incubator program run by Hopkins. Accelerate Baltimore provided $25,000 and the Social Innovation Lab provided money as well as some office space among other resources.
Working largely out of Mathews’s living room, the pair is trying to change the way in which orthotic devices are manufactured. They recently started beta testing their software platform, which lets clinicians manage their orders for orthotic devices much more efficiently, among other things.
“Introducing the first modular orthotic device,” their website says. “Capable of being manufactured in a fraction of the time in-house, this manufacturing process is revolutionary.”
Mathews discussed the reason they are labeling Fusiform a social enterprise.
“We call ourselves a social enterprise, and the reason we do that is because we want to create a sustainable business here in America that funds taking... devices to developing countries and to other nonprofits,” he said, “so that they can produce orthotic devices much more efficiently.”
They are currently looking at attaining office space in Baltimore where Mathews will continue working on Fusiform as he applies for medical school.
Mathews also discussed his past business ventures. His freshman year, he and three other Hopkins students founded a chocolate company, Jama Cocoa.
“We manufactured single origin chocolate truffles,” Mathews said. “I learned a lot about entrepreneurship. We raised $100,000 in initial investment.”
At Jama Cocoa, Mathews learned about entrepreneurship and management and worked on web design. Jama Cocoa closed when the founders decided to pursue other projects.
“It was a great learning experience of how to run a business,” Mathews said.
While working on Jama Cocoa, he worked in the lab of Dr. Jeffrey Gray, a professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Mathews worked on protein modeling and built a Python wrapper for a protein modeling suite based in C++.
“It allowed researchers to work with a really high-end protein modeling suite... with very limited computing experience,” he said.
While at the lab, he also assisted in the compilation of a textbook that universities could use to learn how to use a Rosetta protein modeling suite.
