co-founder & ceo
Bingda Li, PhD
PhD in Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University. Founded Whelix after years of nights and weekends in the cell culture room.
Who we are.
Whelix was founded by scientists and engineers who experienced the limits of manual cell culture firsthand. During his PhD research in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, CEO Bingda Li experienced how repetitive pipetting, frequent night and weekend lab visits, inconsistent results, and contamination slowed progress across life-science research.
Too much scientific talent was being spent on cell expansion and maintenance instead of discovery. Believing this problem demanded a new paradigm, Bingda partnered with CTO Xinyu Wang, a robotics researcher at CMU, to reimagine how cell culture should be done.
Together, they founded Whelix to build intelligent, compact, modular, and affordable robotic platforms that automate cell culture end to end. By uniting cell biology, robotics, and AI, Whelix is transforming cell culture from a bottleneck into a scalable, reliable foundation for modern biology.
Scientists. Roboticists. Builders.
co-founder & cto
Xinyu Wang, MS
MS in Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University. Prior work includes NASA’s MoonRanger rover, robotic tactile sensing, and robotic manipulation for agricultural applications.
Advisors.
Operators, scientists, and entrepreneurs helping us build for real labs.
advisor
Andrea Mazzocchi, PhD
Former CEO & Co-Founder of Known Medicine (acquired, 2023).
CEO & Co-Founder of Play Health.
Experienced biotech entrepreneur with a track record of building and scaling AI-driven life-science companies from inception to exit.
advisor
Rumi Naik, PhD
CEO of Avronna. Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Former AVP at Sanofi; prior leadership roles at Intel, Bloomberg, and Flagship Pioneering.
Brings deep expertise across biotech, AI, and enterprise technology, spanning academic research, pharma innovation, and venture-backed company building.
advisor
Art Trapotsis
Former CEO of Consolidated Sterilizer Systems.
Board Chair at Forge Impact.
Over 25 years of experience designing, manufacturing, and commercializing complex laboratory instrumentation and industrial systems in highly regulated markets.
Backed and built with the best in the field.
