Meet the Visionaries Behind Lacristat.AI

We are committed to making a meaningful impact in the fields of dry eye and ophthalmology, ensuring that our breakthroughs translate into tangible benefits for patients worldwide. By integrating advanced technologies and fostering a culture of innovation, we aim to deliver groundbreaking therapies that address unmet clinical needs. Our commitment to lifelong learning and collaboration ensures that we remain at the cutting edge of the field, continuously striving to bring new hope and solutions to patients around the globe.

Dr. Dimitri Azar is a renowned leader in ophthalmology, known for his groundbreaking work in corneal diseases and refractive surgery. As CEO of Lacristat.AI, he combines his extensive academic and business expertise to drive the company’s mission forward. With a distinguished career that includes tenured professorship at Harvard Medical School and executive dean/distinguished professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Dr. Azar has been instrumental in advancing the understanding and treatment of vision disorders. His visionary leadership and commitment to innovation make him a pivotal figure in the field.

Azar joined UIC as a professor of ophthalmology, bioengineering and pharmacology, where he also served as head of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and B.A. Field Endowed Chair of Ophthalmologic Research. He has published more than 500 scientific articles, chapters and patents with over 20,000 citations. He is a member of the American Ophthalmological Society, former president of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, president-elect of the Chicago Medical Society, and former Trustee of the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO).

He was a non-executive member of Novartis’ Board of Directors from 2012 until 2019. He was also a member of the Audit and Compliance Committee and the Research & Development Committee.  Azar was a senior director of ophthalmological innovation at Verily, where ophthalmological projects include the development of smart contact lenses, including lenses designed to assist those with presbyopia and an intraocular lens. He was on the board of Verb Surgical Inc. and sits on the board of the Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society in the US. He also sits on the board of Jellisee and the Cure Blindness Project (aka, Himalayan Cataract Project).

Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg is Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology and Director of the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. His clinical effort is focused on patients in need of medical or surgical intervention for glaucoma and other retinal and optic nerve diseases, as well as cataract. His research is directed at neuroprotection and regeneration of retinal ganglion cells and the optic nerve, a major unmet need in glaucoma and other optic neuropathies, and his laboratory is developing novel molecular, stem cell and nanotherapeutics approaches for eye repair.

Dr. Goldberg received his B.S. magna cum laude from Yale University, and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University where he made significant discoveries about the failure of optic nerve regeneration. He did his clinical training in ophthalmology and then in glaucoma at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and was awarded a fellowship from the Heed Foundation. He was named the 2010 Scientist of the Year by the Hope For Vision foundation, and received the Cogan award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in 2012. He was elected in 2010 to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, an honorary society of physician scientists, and in 2021 to the American Ophthalmological Society. He directs an NIH-funded research laboratory and is one of the scientists funded by the National Eye Institute’s Audacious Goals Initiative. In addition, he has developed significant expertise with implementing FDA clinical trials for optic nerve neuroprotection and regeneration. His goal is to translate scientific discoveries to patient therapies.

Dr. Sullivan is a Ph.D. graduate of Dartmouth Medical School (Hanover, NH), and until recently, an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Scientist at the Schepens Eye Research Institute (SERI; Boston, MA). During his 38 years at SERI and HMS, his research focused on the interrelationships between sex, sex steroids and dry eye disease, as well as on the role of lubricin on the ocular surface. His studies involved basic, clinical, epidemiological and translational aspects, and required the establishment of new and unique experimental approaches (e.g., lipid analytical, proteomic and molecular biological methods). His research has led to authorship on over 260 scientific articles and 15 patents, as well as to the development of potential therapies for aqueous-deficient and evaporative dry eye disease. He was awarded numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health, and served as a preceptor for 34 postdoctoral fellows.  He was awarded The Carel C. Koch Memorial Medal Award from the American Academy of Optometry and the Donald R. Korb Award for Excellence, the highest award for excellence by the American Optometric Association.

He is a founder, recent President, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Tear Film & Ocular Surface Society (TFOS), a non-profit organization, which was created to advance the research, literacy, and educational aspects of the scientific field of the tear film and ocular surface throughout the world. He organized 10 International Conferences, oversaw the awarding of more than 225 Young Investigator Awards, and organized the TFOS International Workshops on Dry Eye (“DEWS”), Meibomian Gland Dysfunction, Contact Lens Discomfort, DEWS II, and the TFOS Workshop, entitled “A Lifestyle Epidemic: Ocular Surface Disease.”

Through TFOS he has helped to promote increased international awareness of external eye diseases, enhance governmental funding for tear film and ocular surface research, stimulate the development of therapeutic drugs and diagnostic devices, and influence the design and conduct of clinical trials of novel treatments for ocular surface disorders. TFOS has a distribution to many hundreds of thousands of basic scientists, clinical researchers and industry representatives in more than 80 countries.  

Dr. Carlos Belmonte served as professor and chairman in Medical Schools of the universities of Madrid, Valladolid (Spain) and visiting professor in Harvard, Utah,  Max Plank Institute of Florida in (USA) and New South Wales (Australia). He pioneered the study of the cellular and molecular mechanisms for peripheral sensory transduction in the non-visual structures of the eye, showing that trigeminal neuron nerves innervating the cornea subserve the modalities of polymodal nociception, mechanoreception and thermal reception, and also have additional trophic roles related to epithelial healing and ocular inflammation. Belmonte’s group also reported the types of corneal nerve terminal ion channels that determine the selective specificity of the different nerve classes; they developed a novel aesthesiometer which allowed  to confirm the existence of qualitatively different sensory modalities in the human eye surface and to determine the relative contribution to sensations of the different functional nerve fiber types.  Belmonte’s team  dentified the role of TRPV1 and piezo2 channels on ocular nociception, and the activation of TRPA1 channels by bacterial endotoxins. They  also discovered that channel receptor TRPM8 of corneal cold thermoreceptors are the transducer of low temperatures and osmolarity, demonstrating  that cold fiber activation is concerned in the regulation of basal lacrimal secretion, spontaneous blinking and in the symptoms of Dry Eye Disease (DED) in aging and in LASIK dry eye.  Belmonte’s research has strong therapeutic implications of clinical value, and produced several patented inventions to diagnose and treat ocular pain.

 Professor Belmonte has dedicated a significant effort to the advancement of medical education in Spain, ecognized with the National Research Award “Rey Jaime I”, the National Prize for Biology and Biomedicine “Severo Ochoa” and the National Award in Medicine “Gregorio Marañón”, all presented by the Kings of Spain, and to the promotion of neurosciences and eye research worldwide and internationally with the Nature 2017 Lifetime Award for Outstanding Mentorship of the journal Nature, the Luis Federico Leloir Award of the Government of Argentina, the EA Balazs Prize of the International Society of Eye Research,ALCON Award, EA Balazs Medal of the German Ophthalmological Society, the Eucornea Medal and the European Vision Award.ARVO Golden Fellow and Honoree of the ARVO Foundation (USA). Dr. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the National Academy of Sciences of Spain and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz,Germany, and Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universities of Castilla la Mancha, Spain and University of Cordoba, Argentina.Professor Carlos Belmonte, MD, PhD

Dr. Sinha is a seasoned scientific leader and manager, combining his expertise in multiple engineering domains to drive the progress of innovative systems from concept to product. 

Prior to Lacristat.AI, Supriyo was VP Hardware at Twenty/Twenty, guiding the technical direction of the company in developing ophthalmic medical devices.  Before Twenty Twenty, he was a founding employee of Verily Life Sciences, formerly known as Google Life Sciences. At Verily, he spearheaded the creation of novel hardware platforms used in endoscopy, cell sorting and pathology. For over 15 years, Supriyo has consulted for startups and large corporations that leveraged his technical design experience in the instrumentation and medical device space. Supriyo was also the lead optical engineer at Synaptics where he prototyped biometrics solutions for consumer devices. Prior to Synaptics, Supriyo held research appointments at Stanford University designing optical interrogation tools and specialized imaging systems in neuroscience.

Supriyo started his industrial career at Raydiance Technologies, where he simulated and developed high-energy short-pulse laser systems for medicine and industry. In graduate school, he invented novel lasers and nonlinear optical systems for medical and scientific applications. Supriyo holds nearly 40 US patents, has co-authored over 100 peer reviewed articles and is a Senior Member of the IEEE and OSA. He holds a PhD and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and earned his BASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Gutierrez is a medical technology executive, engineer, and entrepreneur, focused on innovation at the intersection of digital, medical, and engineering.  He is the inventor of multiple smart ophthalmic devices including a Digital Drug Delivery Platform for Smart Contact Lenses and a Neurostimulation Platform for personalized Dry Eye Management. He holds 31 patents and 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the fields of smart ophthalmic wearables, physiologic microsensors and polymer-based MEMS/microsystems.

At Alphabet he held multiple engineering and executive leadership positions focused on development of next-generation medical technologies. His prior roles include Vice President of Business Development and Head of Digital Therapeutics at Twenty Twenty Therapeutics, an ophthalmology-focused Joint Venture between Alphabet’s Verily Life Sciences and Santen Pharmaceuticals. Prior to Twenty Twenty, Christian was at Verily where he led the R&D of ophthalmic bioelectronics platforms as part of Verily and Alcon’s co-development partnership in smart accommodating contact lenses. While at Verily he provided technical leadership across multiple emerging digital health and device initiatives instrumental to the launch of Twenty Twenty Therapeutics’ next-generation digital ophthalmology portfolio. Christian joined Alphabet’s Google[x]’s Smart Contact Lens team in July 2014 where he led bioelectronic development on the accommodating contact lens program from inception.

Prior to joining Alphabet, Christian was a co-founder of Fluid Synchrony LLC, which develops high performance, low power microfluidic-based implantable pump technology for drug delivery applications. During this time he led technical development as CTO and was also principal investigator on multiple Phase 1/2 SBIR funded initiatives from the NIH, NSF and DoD. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Business Economics and Management from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California where he also earned certification in Technology Commercialization from the USC Marshall School of Business.

Dr. Kavusi is the Head of Retina Imaging and Services at Verily. He co-founded the Retina-AI Program at Alphabet. He received his B.S.  from Sharif University, Tehran, Iran, in 1999, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 2001 and 2006, respectively. He has held various industry positions leading and developing smartphone cameras, semiconductor/MEMS sensors, and proteomic chips at Google and Bosch. He also served on technical committees at ISSCC, CLEO conferences. Sam has co-invented more than 70 patents, and his publications have been cited over 800 times.