Irina Erenburg runs a company built on a stubborn technical idea: that a laser should be able to place energy exactly where a clinician wants it, at any depth, on any patient. That idea is now a product. AVAVA, the Waltham, Massachusetts company she founded and leads as president and CEO, makes MIRIA, which the company describes as the first of a new class of aesthetic dermatology lasers. Its distinguishing feature is what AVAVA calls Focal Point Technology, a method of delivering energy with pinpoint accuracy at controlled depths of up to 1.8mm below the surface.
What sets the work apart is less the marketing than the design goal behind it. Most energy-based skin devices were calibrated with a narrow range of patients in mind. AVAVA's pitch is that MIRIA is meant to work across skin tones, not just the ones legacy lasers handled well. For Erenburg, who holds a PhD in biomedical science, that is a scientific specification as much as a commercial one.
A deal-maker who wanted to build
Before AVAVA, Erenburg spent years on the other side of the startup table. As Director of Strategic Transactions at the Partners HealthCare Office of Innovations, she was responsible for high-value deals and early-stage ventures tied to Massachusetts General Hospital, part of what was then Boston's largest hospital network and a teaching affiliate of Harvard University. Among the companies that passed through that work was Zeltiq Aesthetics, later acquired by Allergan for $2.4 billion. She had a front-row seat to how an aesthetics innovation moves from a hospital idea to a market-defining product.
That vantage point is unusual for a founder. Many CEOs learn deal structure after they start a company. Erenburg learned it first, then decided she would rather build than broker. She has co-founded and served on the boards of R2 Dermatology and Soltego, and served as president of Blossom Innovations, the venture that helped incubate the technology direction she now pursues at AVAVA.
The physics, in plain terms
AVAVA's core claim rests on two pieces of engineering. The first is what the company calls Conical Ring Geometry, a laser design that focuses energy at a defined point rather than scattering it across the surface. The second is Focal Point Technology, which uses that geometry to place energy at multiple, controlled depths in the skin. The practical effect the company describes is precision: energy where it is wanted, sparing the tissue around it, with real-time visual feedback for the operator.
Precision matters most for the patients older devices served least well. Delivering energy accurately, rather than broadly, is what allows a single platform to work across a wider range of skin tones. That is the inclusivity argument AVAVA makes, and it is rooted in the hardware, not the brochure.
The money and the mission
In June 2024, AVAVA announced it had closed $35 million in financing to support the commercial expansion of MIRIA. The package included a $25 million Series C, with participation from new and existing investors including strategic partner Jeisys Medical, and a separate $10 million in growth capital from Catalio Capital Management. The raise came shortly after MIRIA's launch at ASLMS 2024, the energy-based medicine and science conference, giving the company both a product moment and a capital moment in the same season.
Erenburg framed the round as a matter of partnership as much as proceeds. She thanked Catalio, Jeisys, and other investors for what she called invaluable guidance, industry expertise, and a shared vision. It is a recurring theme in how she describes leadership: collaboration as a strategy, not a slogan. In 2024 she also brought laser medicine pioneer Dr. Rox Anderson onto AVAVA's board, a signal to the field about how seriously the company takes the underlying science.
Resilience, learned early
Ask about her leadership style and the answer tends to circle back to resilience. Erenburg has said her early deal-making experiences, including the difficult ones, taught her the value of persistence, and that it continues to shape how she runs a company. It is a plain lesson from a career that has moved between the lab, the negotiating table, and the founder's chair, sometimes in quick succession.
Her academic path started with a Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University and continued to a PhD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University. The through-line from student to scientist to serial founder is a habit she describes simply: finding untapped opportunities that other people miss, then assembling the people who can turn them into products. At AVAVA, the current answer to that habit is a laser that aims to leave no patient behind.