AXIS: Mentor and Mentee Q&A

Launched by BioCrossroads in 2025, AXIS mentoring program is helping Indiana life sciences startups kickstart their ideas and bring them closer to reality. Through strategic team-based mentoring with the best and brightest from across the state, startups are getting essential guidance and advice. AXIS has already supported two cohorts that have pitched their ideas and have been paired with mentors.  

Below is a Q&A with Gary Schwebach and Julia van Kessel, a mentor and mentee pair respectively.

Gary Schwebach, D.B.A., J.D. 

Professor of Practice
Associate Director, BioHealth Informatics Programs
Director, The BioHealth Informatics Research Center
Department of BioMedical Engineering and Informatics
Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
IU Indianapolis  

What’s your professional experience, and where are you at today?

I have a set of eclectic experiences that feed into my mentoring. I am a recovering attorney who practiced law in California. I then completed a doctoral degree in marketing with a focus on data analytics. After completing my degree, I started and ran a business and marketing research company that focused on the pharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostic and device industries in healthcare. After building the company up to around 50 employees and offices in six states, I sold the company in 2014. My next venture was consulting in data analytics which led to me being offered a position as a Professor of Practice at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, IU Indianapolis, which I currently hold.

 
Why did you join AXIS and how did you hear about it?

When AXIS started, I was recommended to the program by one of the founders. They contacted me and told me about its mission to build biotech companies in Indiana. I thought it would be a great opportunity to help startup founders build great businesses while helping them avoid some of the many mistakes I made as a startup. It also allowed me give back and to contribute to building a stronger health ecosystem in Indiana. 

What makes Indiana a great choice for a startup, particularly in life sciences?  

The resources that are available in Indiana for biotech combined with the cost and quality of living here makes this a great place to get started and stay. We have phenomenal research and educational facilities with IU, Purdue and Notre Dame conducting leading edge life science research and training students to carry on with this work. There is a great healthcare environment in this area that assists entrepreneurs to discover new health needs to address. Indiana has a strong commercial presence in the life sciences in both human and animal health. The State of Indiana is willing to support the development of the biotech infrastructure. Finally, this area is still affordable compared to other areas while offering many activities to meet just about everyone’s interests. This combination is only available in very few locations. 

Why did you choose to pair with Quornix?

I saw their pitch at a mentor’s meeting and was impressed by two things. Firstly, their technology was novel and has the potential for moving beyond their initial application into much larger markets. This was the first time in my time as a mentor that I saw founders who were thinking that far ahead and realistically looking for new or additional markets at such an early stage. Secondly, the two founders were very sharp about what they had but were open to new ideas and suggestions, even at the early stage. New businesses depend entirely on whether the founders have the knowledge, skills and flexibility to create a product and to “go with the flow” as they move through development into commercialization. I sensed from the first time I met them that they had this and would be willing to seek and listen to advice on how to proceed. 

What are you doing to support them? Any pieces of advice or lessons that you think are applicable to other startups? 

Our mentor group are listening to the issues that are arising and providing them with suggestions about how to address those issues. The three members of the group have very different skillsets, and we encourage the founders to take advantage of what we bring to the table, both in our mentoring sessions and one off as needed. It is a collaborative effort that is focused on making them successful. 

As for lessons, I think the biggest lesson I learned was to never give up on your vision. The ride is never smooth, and you will make many mistakes along the way. Don’t get discouraged. Just keep moving toward the goal of creating your company. Keep thinking of new ways to bring your invention to market and do the research to make sure the market wants it. The next biggest lesson is to determine at a very early stage who will buy your product, do they have the means to buy it and are there enough of them to make it profitable to pursue. That will save you a lot of time and money while keeping you from hitting dead ends. 

Julia Van Kessel 

Co-founder, Quornix

Julia (right) and Quornix co-founder Laura Brown

Tell us about your startup?  

Quornix is a small business started by co-founders Laura Brown and Julia van Kessel out of Indiana University. Our focus is on developing anti-virulence compounds to treat bacterial diseases. Our path has focused on aquaculture thus far, though we have long-term goals of impacting human health as well.  

What has your path to this looked like—personally and professionally?  

We had a unique beginning to our startup. Laura and Julia have collaborated academically since 2014, where they started screening for anti-virulence compounds using a classroom setting to perform experiments. We both agree that we had so many successful hits in our experiments that we didn’t want the science to just sit on a shelf and not move forward to help in some way. We set out to start the company primarily to accept a pitch prize, but we soon discovered the many ways our science and ideas could move forward through entrepreneurship. 

What impact do you hope your startup will have?  

We aim to help mitigate the growing worldwide antibiotic crisis by developing treatments that aren’t antibiotics. We instead are developing compounds that block bacterial signaling rather than killing the bacteria. The bacteria we target are primary pathogens of major aquaculture farms (fish, shrimp, oysters), and these same bacteria cause rare but devastating disease in humans as well. We hope our products will someday help the world’s burden to feed a growing human population through improving aquaculture practices, as well as provide a treatment for human disease. 

Why did you choose to participate in the AXIS program?  

We have had a great experience at a previous mentorship program called Equalize, and we were ready for another opportunity to network with local Indiana mentors. The primary draw of AXIS is that it partners our small business with local mentors in various aspects of entrepreneurship, everything from R&D to commercialization, navigating marketing, financing, trials, etc. The three mentors we are paired with at AXIS bring scientific, legal, commercial, and strategic experience in broad but distinct ways that have already helped us focus on important short-term and long-term plans. 

What has been the most important thing you’ve learned from your mentors?  

As we plan for the short-term, we’ve learned quickly that we need a robust commercialization plan, and this is an active discussion with our mentor team. We also have ideas for research that we discuss with the team to focus experiments on long-term needs, and we have taken the team’s advice to navigate new territory in negotiations over IP and licensing. Their help has been invaluable thus far and we’re looking forward to our future work with them.