David Kolesky

David Kolesky is an associate at Flagship Pioneering, where he is part of the Flagship Labs creation team that conceives, creates, resources, and builds the next generation of Flagship’s first-in-category companies. As part of this team of entrepreneurial scientists, he develops the science, intellectual property, and business strategy that form the foundation of the firm’s breakthrough startups. David joined the firm after completing the Flagship Pioneering Fellows program in 2018.

An engineer by training, David has a multidisciplinary background in materials science, stretchable electronics, microfluidics, and bioengineering. Prior to joining Flagship, David earned his Ph.D at Harvard University under Professor Jennifer Lewis where he focused on 3D bioprinting of vascularized tissues. He performed his postdoctoral work at the Wyss Institute as a Technology Development Fellow. David’s pioneering work in 3D bioprinting established novel methods for building vascularized, cell-laden tissues with tissue-level function at physiologically relevant size-scales. His work has been adopted broadly as a method for creating in vitro models for studying developmental biology, disease pathology, and drug toxicity.

David’s work has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, cited over 2000 times, and he has been named an inventor on 10 issued and pending patents. His work has been broadly featured in the popular press including The New Yorker, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. David’s research and entrepreneurial activities have led to several honors and awards including Winner of the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame Collegiate Inventor Competition Graduate Student Prize, Finalist for the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, and Winner of $100K Harvard Office of Technology and Development Physical Science Accelerator Grant.

In addition to his Ph.D. from Harvard University, David also holds a B.S in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he graduated magna cum laude.