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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Nina Tandon

How to revolutionize an industry, one cell at a time.

CEO and Co-Founder of EpiBone | TED Senior Fellow

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The Cellular Revolution

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Reinventing Biotechnology (6:20)

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Engineering the Future (4:14)

Lavin Exclusive Speaker

NINA TANDON is changing medical science as we know it. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Epibone, she is successfully leading her business through exciting new entrepreneurial territory by growing artificial tissues, like hearts and bones, that can be safely put into the body. Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Tandon speaks to the innovative, symbiotic future of health care, business and technology—while creating it herself.

Nina Tandon is leading the charge of biology’s industrial revolution by overseeing the world’s first company growing living human bone for skeletal reconstruction. The benefits of this revolutionary stem cell technology, which has already been approved by the FDA for clinical trial on humans, include simplified surgery, improved bone formation, and shorter recovery times for patients. “Being able to use your own cells means you’re empowered to heal yourself as well,” says Tandon, who also co-authored Super Cells: Building with Biology, a book cataloguing the latest biotech inventions “using nature’s building block: the cell.” Tandon is working towards a possible world where we can create our own futures, using our own genes for our own health and healing purposes.

A TED Senior Fellow (she’s spoken at three different TED conferences) and Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union, Tandon has a Master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Columbia University. Her innovative PhD research focused on studying electrical signaling in the context of tissue engineering, and she has worked with cardiac, skin, bone, and neural tissue.

After completing her PhD, she consulted at McKinsey and Company. She is a senior fellow at the Lab for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia, and currently serves as an adjunct professor of Electrical Engineering at Cooper Union. She has been published in Nature Protocols and Lab on a Chip, and featured on CNN, in WIRED (who also named her one of their innovation fellows), the Guardian, and more. Tandon was named a Global Thinker by Foreign Policy, one of Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40, and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer.

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Speech Topics

Science

The Future is TinyThe Cellular Revolution

A trailblazer at the forefront of transforming the healthcare industry as we know it, Nina Tandon explains the thrilling and eye-opening process of growing tissue and transplants from our own cells. Navigating the current drug screen process can take a lot of time and money. Tandon’s company Epibone is strategically positioned to revolutionize that process by pioneering technology that allows patients to grow their own bones—giving patients greater agency and combating modern inequities. Walking us through this incredibly exciting era of new biological frontiers, Tandon shows us how we’re transforming biotechnology and the profound ways these discoveries will impact everyone’s quality of life.

Entrepreneurship

The Science of Growing a BusinessCellular Leadership

Going from PhD student to the CEO of one of the most exciting tech-medical start-up companies in the world, Nina Tandon is a leader at a cellular level. While simultaneously breaking new ground in medical science, navigating the complex drug screening process, and raising $25 million dollars in funding, Tandon knows how to grow a business organically and in this talk, she shares her thrilling entrepreneurial journey. Addresses everything from community engagement and team building, to sparking a culture of innovation and systematic creativity, Tandon gives you the tools necessary to succeed in any competitive industry.

Featured Books

Nina Tandon

Super Cells: Building with Biology

In this eye-popping tour of the new biological frontier, Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim describe the tantalizing array of inventions already being created with nature’s elemental building block: the cell. Imagine personalized bone replacements, living condominium complexes, bacteria-made haute couture, and top sirloin grown without a farm. Tandon and Joachim contend that we’re entering a new technological era, one in which we can create smarter technologies by making cells our partners in design.