retinal-imaging
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Cheng Zhang
Cheng Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Character Biosciences, a precision-medicine biotech that flips traditional drug discovery on its head by starting with patients instead of targets. Trained in mathematics and philosophy at Duke and shaped by years at UBS, Oliver Wyman, and Pfizer, Zhang built Character around a proprietary database of thousands of patients with age-related macular degeneration, combining genomics, longitudinal clinical data, retinal imaging, and machine learning to reclassify common diseases of aging into genetic subtypes. In 2025 the company raised an oversubscribed $93 million Series B to move its lead eye-disease candidates into the clinic.
Samantha Scott
Samantha Scott, PhD is the founder and CEO of JuneBrain, a Baltimore medtech startup building the first wearable, technician-free retinal scanning system. Trained as a biomedical engineer at Stanford and USC, she is turning high-resolution eye imaging plus AI into a way to detect and monitor brain and eye conditions far outside the walls of a clinic. JuneBrain has raised more than $3 million in private capital, won $3 million in NSF grants, holds four issued patents, and is on track for an FDA submission.
Bing Li
Bing Li is the CEO and co-founder of Intalight, an ophthalmic imaging company behind the DREAM OCT swept-source platform. Founded in 2014 by a group of scientists and Silicon Valley industry veterans, Intalight built one of the first swept-source OCT devices in 2019 and has since powered more than 170 peer-reviewed retinal-imaging studies. Trained as an engineer and applied mathematician, Li moved from the auto and semiconductor industries into eye care, betting that faster, deeper, wider retinal scans would change how clinicians see inside the eye. In May 2025 the company won CE Mark clearance to sell DREAM OCT across the European Union, with FDA review pending in the United States.
Vasiliki Demas
Vasiliki 'Vicky' Demas, PhD, is the CEO and founder of identifeye HEALTH, an AI-enabled retinal imaging company that brings specialized eye screening to primary care settings. A chemical engineer by training with a PhD from UC Berkeley and a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, she cut her teeth as a founding member of Google Life Sciences (which became Verily) and helped build foundational technology for GRAIL's Galleri multi-cancer early detection test. At identifeye HEALTH — which she joined in 2021 and rebranded from Tesseract Health — she leads a 38-person team developing a portable, FDA-registered AI retinal camera that lets minimally trained staff detect diabetic retinopathy and systemic disease markers in the same visit patients already make to their primary care doctor.