Built at Boston University.
IRIS Kinetics was founded in 2020
around an optical biosensor invented in
Prof. M. Selim Ünlü’s lab at Boston University.
He is the company’s founder, CTO and Executive Chairman, and a Distinguished Professor at Boston University. See his research
What we’re building
Medicine understands thousands of biomarkers. It can model almost any combination of them. What it cannot do is measure them quickly enough, cheaply enough, or in enough places.
We build the instruments that close that gap. One measurement technology, moving steadily closer to the person it is measuring.
On the bench
The MX instruments, MX for multiplex, ship now and sit in laboratories, where researchers use them to characterise molecules and develop assays.
At the bedside
The same chip in a single-use cartridge, read by the TX-100, TX for tabletop, in about ten minutes, in the hospital rather than in a send-out laboratory.
Wherever the patient is
This technology gets smaller and more mobile every year. That is where we are headed: handheld diagnostics.
“I wanted to see it
work for myself.”
Farhad Khosravi had spent more than a decade watching technologies like this fail. Nanowires. Graphene. Carbon nanotubes. Ring resonators. Enough of them, closely enough, to build a reliable instinct for what does not work.
“I’d heard claims like Selim’s ten times before, from ten different people, so I didn’t buy it. Then we talked for three hours, standing up at a conference, and every question I threw at him checked out. I still wanted to see it work with my own eyes.”
“It held up. That’s when I came over.”
Farhad Khosravi, PhD. Chief Executive Officer.
Team
Led by the inventors, operators, and the clinicians who define the field
Farhad Khosravi, PhD
CEO
- 10+ year veteran in scaling biosensor and diagnostic platforms from breakthrough to market
- Built NanoDx’s product R&D, roadmap collaboration with IBM and MIT
- PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute
M. Selim Ünlü, PhD
Founder & CTO
- Inventor of the IRIS platform, with 30+ years advancing optical biosensing and nanophotonics
- Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University; Fellow of IEEE, AIMBE, and Optica
- PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Claude Dufresne, PhD
CCO
- 23+ years at Merck Research Laboratories leading automation, screening, and informatics for drug discovery
- Founder and CEO of axiVEND and former President of Scienion US, scaling microarray and multiplex diagnostic platforms
- PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Alberta
Tunc Tanin
CFO
- 25+ years across finance, investment advisory, securities and trust accounting
- Runs his own investment advisory firm, providing long-term value creation for clients
Joshua Rainbow, PhD
Senior scientist
- Leads multiplex assay development for the critical-care panel
- Postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute at Harvard and Mass General
- PhD in biosensors and microfluidics from University of Bath
Berk Tuzcu
Lead software & systems engineer
- Owns the instrument software stack and systems integration
- 5+ years in machine learning and computer vision: CareX.AI, CY Vision
- Boston University; research at Koç University Optical Microsystems Lab
Board
Governed by scientists, physicians and founders who have taken science to market
M. Selim Ünlü, PhD
Founder & Chairman
Inventor of the technology and the company’s CTO. Distinguished Professor at Boston University. Fellow of the IEEE, AIMBE and Optica.
Farhad Khosravi, PhD
CEO & Board member
Before IRIS, he led biosensor development at NanoDx, building a point-of-care diagnostic for traumatic brain injury, on top of a decade across biosensors, diagnostics and nanotechnology.
Yusuf Elgörmüş, MD
Board member
Twenty years of executive management in medicine. Chairman of the Medicine Hospital Group and Atlas University.
Charles Cantor, PhD
Board member
Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Sequenom, which brought non-invasive prenatal genomic testing to market. Member of the National Academy of Sciences. Four decades in molecular genetics, as an academic and as a founder.
Lex van der Ploeg, PhD
Board member
Former VP of Basic Research and Site Head, Merck Research Laboratories, Boston. Scientist, author and entrepreneur, with a record in novel therapeutics and in M&A.
Nese Lortlar Ünlü, MD
Director of medical applications
Research Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Medical doctor, affiliated with Atlas University, Istanbul, Türkiye.
Advisors
The field’s authorities in clinical, scientific and commercialization on our advisory board
Clinical and scientific
Carolyn Calfee,MD, MAS
Clinical lead · Critical care
World authority on critical-care phenotyping. 75+ defining papers.
Mehmet Toner,PhD
BioMEMS · Point-of-care diagnostics
Founder of multiple successful diagnostics ventures.
Charles DeLisi,PhD
Initiator, Human Genome Project
Conceived and launched the Human Genome Project at the Department of Energy. Presidential Citizens Medal.
Charles Cantor,PhD
Genomics pioneer
Sequenom founder. 600+ publications. U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Commercial, regulatory, and strategic
Lex van der Ploeg,PhD
M&A · Ex-Merck VP
Rhythm (IPO), Motus (Allergan), DeuteRx (Poxel). 17 years at Merck Research Labs. 500+ publications.
Mona Chadha
Health-system strategy
Tools, diagnostics and healthcare strategy. Formerly Applied Biosystems (Thermo Fisher) and Dignity Health (CommonSpirit).
Christiane Honisch,PhD
IVD strategy · Ex-Roche
Led IVD research at Roche Molecular Diagnostics. Illumina, Eppendorf, Sequenom.
Kevin Reagan,PhD
Immunoassays · Ex-R&D Systems
Cytokine and immunoassay development at R&D Systems (Bio-Techne), Calbiotech and Life Technologies.
Jane Chamberland
Quality systems · FDA readiness
Built the QMS and led FDA inspection readiness at T2 Biosystems, in critical-care diagnostics. CinCor, TARIS, Alkermes.
The company
The short version, in the form a diligence lead would want it.
Our partner: axiVEND
IRIS partners with axiVEND LLC, a specialist in microarray products and services and a distributor of M2-Automation spotters. The iFOUR spotter has been customised with a deck built for IRIS chips and preloaded spotting programs, so preparing your own arrays is straightforward.
IRIS systems and chips are sold through axiVEND.
Contact axiVEND| Founded | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Technology from | Boston University. Invented in the lab of Prof. M. Selim Ünlü, who is the company’s founder and CTO and is still at the university. |
| Locations | Boston, Massachusetts, at 650 Albany St., a Boston University address: the company sits inside the university the technology came out of. Winter Garden, Florida, with axiVEND. |
| The published record | 75 publications, 2008 to 2025, cited 3,472 times. the list |
| Patents | 13 issued patents and 3 pending applications, from the light source to single-particle detection. |
| Institutions running IRIS systems | More than ten, among them UCSF and Boston University. |
| Regulatory status | Research use only. The TX-100 is in development and is not for sale. Nothing IRIS makes has been cleared or approved by the FDA. The full statement is at the foot of every page on this site. |