Interdisciplinary Frontier Entrepreneurship: How Chips Are Reshaping Every Industry | May 15 Livestream Registration

On April 24, the first episode of the "FreeS Fund VC Dialogue · Chip and Semiconductor Series" livestream — Tackling World-Class Challenges: The Present and Future of Photonic Chips — went live. Yichen Shen, founder and CEO of Lightelligence, joined FreeS Fund founding partner Li Feng online for an in-depth discussion on the evolution and transformation of photonic chips.

On May 8, the second episode — Hammer vs. Nail: How Hardcore Tech Finds Its Ideal Use Case — featured Li Cheng, founder and CEO of VisionICs, and Ningning Feng, founder and CEO of LuminWave, in a deep conversation with FreeS Fund partner Yang Yongcheng on how hard-tech entrepreneurs can turn vision into reality.

To date, these two livestreams have drawn over 200,000 viewers across Zoom, Baidu, Sina, FreeS's WeChat video channel, TechGravitation's video channel, Lieyunwang's video channel, and TechFrontline's video channel. Thank you all for your attention and time.

On May 15, the third episode of the "FreeS Fund VC Dialogue · Chip and Semiconductor Series" — Frontier Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship — will host Xin Zhao, founder of Innospring, and Yibin Li, founder and CEO of HeartVista, for an online discussion with FreeS Fund partner Rui Ma about how interdisciplinary collisions are reshaping industries through chips.

▍Why Tune In?

Dr. Xin Zhao and Dr. Yibin Li followed remarkably parallel paths: both spent years in academia before moving into industry, both chose cross-disciplinary entrepreneurial directions, and both happened to found their current companies in 2020. Today they compete in the deep-tech arena, approaching from medical electronics and semiconductors respectively, each trying to translate leading-edge technology into industrial application.

Zhao earned his bachelor's degree from Peking University and his PhD from MIT, and was selected for China's national youth talent program in 2018. He has led and participated in projects with over 16 million RMB in funding (including two NIH SBIR grants), and produced multiple innovative academic results in novel semiconductor device design, process technology, characterization, and physical mechanisms. He has published over 40 papers in top-tier microelectronics conferences and journals including IEEE IEDM, VLSI, EDL, TED, Nature Communications, and Advanced Functional Materials. His semiconductor device research has been adopted by leading global chipmakers including TSMC, IBM, IMEC, Sematech, Lam Research, and Oxford Instruments.

Innospring's vision is to build the infrastructure for the molecular biology era using semiconductor technology, focusing on high-throughput synthesis and detection of DNA, RNA, and proteins to enable synthetic biology, biopharmaceuticals, DNA data storage, and other critical applications. The company brings together an interdisciplinary team of professors and PhDs from MIT, UC Berkeley, Washington University in St. Louis, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Nanjing University, combined with veteran engineers from Intel, Thermo Fisher, Berkeley Lights, GenScript, and Azenta who bring over a decade of research and industry experience in semiconductors, microfluidics, and biotechnology. Since its founding in 2021, the company has completed two funding rounds.

With a bachelor's degree from Beijing Institute of Technology's School of Information and Electronics and a PhD from Tsinghua University's School of Integrated Circuits, Yibin Li has spent ten years in medical electronics, primarily developing portable intelligent medical hardware. His work spans self-developed sensors and biomechanical models, signal acquisition systems, and signal analysis algorithms, with extensive experience in ECG, EEG, blood pressure, blood glucose, respiration, and sleep monitoring.

He co-founded HeartVista in May 2020 and serves as CEO. The company is tackling portable, non-invasive continuous blood pressure monitoring — considered the holy grail of medical measurement — developing wearable blood pressure monitoring products that are imperceptible, real-time, accurate, and portable, from the sensor level through system integration, algorithms, and finished products. The goal is to use intelligent technology to give everyone convenient, anytime access to medically reliable blood pressure information, helping prevent or reduce the risks of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

Rui Ma focuses on materials and biotechnology, with particular interest in computation-driven innovation, synthetic biology, frontier technologies, and novel therapeutics. His representative investments include Bluepha, NeuBrilliant, XtalPi, METiS Pharmaceuticals, ComMedX, Innospring, and HeartVista. Before joining FreeS Fund, Ma worked at China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment, where he was deeply involved in national policy and planning development.

Ma holds a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and master's and bachelor's degrees from Tsinghua University. He previously served as president of CMU's Chinese Students and Scholars Association and founded the CMU China-U.S. Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summit (CMU SUMMIT). In 2021, Ma was named to PEDaily's "F40 Young Chinese Investors," Huoxi × Baize Capital's "Top 10 Best Digital Healthcare Investors," and FOFWEEKLY's "30 Young Leaders of GP Firms." In 2022, he was recognized by China FOF Research Center as one of the "40 Under 40 Most Promising Direct Investment Fund Young Investors."

▍How to Register?

Frontier Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship is the third episode of the "FreeS Fund VC Dialogue · Chip Series," going live on May 15. We also plan to hold one offline seminar in the future. If you're interested in joining the Zoom webinar to interact with our guests live and joining the WeChat group for the stream, scan the QR code on the poster or click the "Read More" link at the end of this article to register.

▍Further Reading

Browse FreeS Fund's collection of articles on the chip and semiconductor industry (click the blue link to access the collection) This collection captures FreeS Fund's thinking on the chip and semiconductor industry. We explore the story behind China's chip ambitions and why we're bullish on the photonic chip sector; whether domestic semiconductor materials can compete; and our predictions on the endgame for autonomous driving sensors.

"From Scientific Innovation to Tech Entrepreneurship in Chips | FreeS Chip Series"

"FreeS Yang Yongcheng: The Red Ocean Is the Ultimate Battle Entrepreneurs Must Face"

"Why We're Bullish on the Photonic Chip Industry | FreeS Chip Series"

"Can Domestic Semiconductor Materials Compete Globally? | FreeS Chip Series"

"FreeS 2021 Outlook ④ | Predicting the Endgame for Autonomous Driving Sensors"

"Li Feng Column | A 2 Trillion Market and 10 Trillion Output: Why We're Bullish on Chinese Chips"