St John's College
60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD, 21401, United States
Overview
St. John’s distinctive liberal arts curriculum and educational practices have long given it a highly respected place among American colleges and universities. Its strong commitment to collaborative inquiry and to the study of original texts makes St. John’s College a particularly vibrant community of learning. Through close engagement with the works of some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers—from Homer, Plato, and Euclid to Nietzsche, Einstein, and Woolf—students at St. John’s College grapple with fundamental questions that confront us as human beings. As they participate in lively discussions and throw themselves into the activity of translating, writing, demonstrating, conducting experiments, and analyzing musical compositions, St. John’s students learn to speak articulately, read attentively, reason effectively, and think creatively. All classes at St. John’s College are small and students take active responsibility for their education, formulating questions and developing their thoughts in dialogue with one another. Faculty at St. John’s College share the college’s dedication to an education that privileges intellectual engagement over rigid expertise; they regard themselves as guides and mentors whose task is not to transmit information, but to pose questions that further students’ ability to develop as thinkers in their own right. Every student’s contribution receives serious consideration as classes delve into discussions of foundational works of philosophy, literature, history, theology, politics, economics, psychology, music, mathematics, and the laboratory sciences. By immersing themselves in these investigations, by examining their own ideas in conversation with faculty and fellow students, and by exploring their insights in their own written work, students acquire formidable skills and cultivate enduring habits of critical analysis and thinking. They learn to take themselves and others seriously as reasoning and feeling beings, to work together as collaborators and colleagues, and to lead fruitful lives of independent reflection and shared activity. In addition to the undergraduate program, St. John's students may earn master of arts degrees through the Graduate Institute.
- Total investments
- 1
- Lead investments
- 0
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 1
Sector focus
- Education
Investment portfolio
- Optellum
Participated · Series A · Sep 2022
Optellum develops Virtual Nodule Clinic, an AI-enabled software platform that helps physicians identify and track at-risk lung nodules and diagnose lung cancer early. The platform has attained FDA clearance, CE-MDR in the EU, and UKCA in the UK. The company intends to use its Series A funds to scale its base, operations, and commercial launches in the UK and USA, accelerate research and development, and expand the platform into personalized therapy decisions by integrating imaging data with molecular data, robotics, and liquid biopsies. Optellum has strategic collaborations with GE Healthcare and the Lung Cancer Initiative at Johnson & Johnson to accelerate clinical deployments. Its solution is being used to predict at-risk lung nodules in a multi-center study with NHS Trusts in the UK. The company is led by CEO Jason Pesterfield and founder Tara Bishop, MD, and maintains a U.S. office at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. Optellum develops the world's first AI clinical decision‑support software applied to CT scans to help clinicians detect, diagnose and manage suspicious lung lesions at earlier stages. The platform aims to enable earlier treatment and reduce over‑diagnosis and unnecessary invasive procedures; the article cites that 85% of lung cancer patients could survive more than five years if treated at stage 1A. Optellum's predictive machine‑learning algorithms were validated against the largest real‑world dataset, including CT scans, clinical data and tissue analyses from dozens of hospitals in the US and Europe. The solution is described as the first predictive machine‑learning approach applied to lung cancer and is being validated in an ongoing prospective multi‑centre trial led by co‑authors of the UK lung cancer management guidelines. The company says its vision is to follow the patient journey and enable faster, more optimal management decisions across the lung cancer care continuum and in other lung diseases including COPD, interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. Optellum is Oxford‑based and recently completed a seed follow‑on financing of £3.25m.
Team
Spencer Windes
Director of Annual Giving and Strategic Engagement
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