Dr. Kunal Parikh Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology

Dr. Kunal Parikh is an inventor, entrepreneur, and investor focused on creating, enabling, and scaling technologies to address global healthcare challenges.

Dr. Parikh is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHU) where he leads a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and clinicians in the Wilmer Eye Institute and Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design to innovate and translate novel biomedical solutions for significant and unmet medical needs globally. He also serves as Co-Founder and Director of Samata Therapeutics, an early-stage biopharmaceutical company developing safe, effective, and durable treatments for mental health and chronic pain disorders.

Previously, Dr. Parikh built and served as the Executive Director of the Social Innovation Lab at JHU where he developed global partnerships and advised dozens of mission-driven entrepreneurs. He also cofounded Access HEARS, a social enterprise providing affordable, accessible hearing care. Prior to arriving in Baltimore, he was the founding CEO of Core Quantum Technologies, a venture-backed biotechnology company developing superior imaging, detection, and targeting reagents.

Dr. Parikh earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at JHU where he was a Roche/ARCS Scholar and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Dr. Parikh is working to create a world where no person is limited by the circumstances of their birth by building, advising, and funding companies creating solutions to humanity’s most significant healthcare burdens.