Through Al-kimi, Khalid K. Alam is available as an advisor, consultant, and collaborator on select engagements that align with his interests, expertise, and values — drawing on a decade building synthetic biology technology from bench to product and six years running a venture-backed biotech startup end to end.
Background
Khalid invented and led development of ROSALIND, a cell-free biosensor platform, as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern and later as founder and CEO of Stemloop, a Northwestern spinout. Over six years he took that platform from a licensed university IP to a manufactured, piloted diagnostic product — raising and deploying over $4M across federal non-dilutive funding, early-stage venture capital, and commercial revenue. The company ran the full lifecycle a founder rarely gets to talk about publicly: license, build, launch, and — in December 2025 — an orderly wind-down.
In 2017, Khalid cofounded ChiTownBio, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that opened Chicago’s first public biotechnology laboratory in 2025. He has served on its board as Secretary since the organization’s founding.
To find out more about Khalid, visit khalidkalam.com.
Consulting
Select engagements with early-stage biotech ventures on technical strategy, platform work, and translating bench science into products. This spans federal funding strategy — Khalid has won over $2M as sole PI on NIH SBIR/STTR awards (Phase I through Phase II), plus an NSF SBIR award and a DARPA award, and has served as an NSF review panelist — as well as IP strategy, patent filing, and licensing, drawn from managing six patent families through university tech transfer.
Advisory
Open to select new advisory relationships where Khalid’s background is a fit — including academic PIs, postdocs, and graduate students weighing a university spinout, given his direct experience with the full arc: exclusive license from a university tech-transfer office, building a company around that IP, and eventually returning it at wind-down. Khalid has participated in the I-Corps program five times across three companies, including once as an industry mentor, and welcomes inquiries from NSF or NIH I-Corps programs seeking a mentor.
Areas of expertise
Cell-free synthetic biology · Biosensor platform R&D · Federal non-dilutive funding (NIH SBIR/STTR, NSF SBIR, DARPA) · Grant strategy and review-panel experience · University tech transfer · IP strategy, patent filing, and licensing · University spinout formation and lifecycle · Platform-to-product commercialization · Environmental/water-testing regulatory pathways (EPA/ANSI/AWWA)
Who this is a good fit for
- Early-stage life sciences or diagnostics founders, particularly university spinouts, seeking someone who has personally run the SBIR/STTR process rather than just written about it
- Academic PIs, postdocs, or graduate students weighing a spinout decision
- Platform-technology teams trying to get from mechanism to product in a regulated-adjacent space
- NSF/NIH I-Corps programs seeking an industry mentor
Not the right fit: Later-stage or growth-stage companies scaling past product-market fit.
Have a project in mind?
Reach out to talk through fit, scope, and timeline.
Contact Khalid