Last month, at the 2026 MIRA Awards, Alicia Mckoy took home the Resilience Award for her Indianapolis-based tech company, Peak Mind. Mckoy’s company uses AI, biometrics, and immersive tools like virtual reality to help individuals and organizations better understand and manage stress in real time. Judges at MIRA noted Mckoy’s ability to advocate for others navigating trauma while remaining an active contributor to Indiana’s entrepreneurial and tech communities. Her story reflects strength, determination, and an unwavering commitment to turning hardship into hope. Mckoy is also an alumna of BioCrossroads’ AXIS Mentoring Program and says the program was crucial in getting the company established.

Tell me about Peak Mind and the problem you are trying to solve.

Peak Mind is focused on one of the most expensive and least measured risks in the workforce. Chronic stress. Most organizations measure productivity and safety in real time, but stress is often detected only after performance declines or health conditions develop. Our work centers on identifying biological and behavioral signals early, so individuals and employers can take action before stress becomes an illness. The objective is prevention, stability, and sustained performance.

What motivated you to start this company?

The motivation came from repeated observation of high-performing professionals who were succeeding externally while their health and well-being was quietly deteriorating. Traditional wellness programs were not designed to detect that strain early. Over time, it became clear that stress needed to be treated as a measurable health condition rather than a temporary feeling. That realization led to years of research focused on building practical tools that help people recognize and manage stress before it becomes a long-term and more expensive problem.

When did you join AXIS, and why did you sign up? How has the program helped your company?

We joined the AXIS mentoring program through BioCrossroads when the company was transitioning from research into commercialization. The program provides us with structured guidance from experienced leaders who understand regulatory pathways, reimbursement models, and scaling health technology. That support is strengthening our strategic planning, market entry decisions, and expanding our network across the life sciences community.

How does it feel to win the Resilience Award at MIRA?

Receiving the Resilience Award from TechPoint is both humbling and energizing. The recognition reflects the significance of the challenges that I have faced and the persistence to continue to build solutions that improve human health for those that use our innovation. It also signals to the broader technology community that resilience is not just about endurance but about continuing to show up during difficult periods. It felt great being able to say to the 1,200+ attendees to take care of their own well-being. That is the core of my mission, and I am honored I was given the stage to do so.

What’s next for Peak Mind?

The next phase of Peak Mind focuses on the products we are spinning out into commercialization. Products that we have seen great success in early pilots and clinical testing such as our biometric indicators integration to support daily preventive care. The long-term goal is to make stress measurement as routine as monitoring blood pressure for those who are worried about its impact on their quality of life. When users can see risk earlier, they can protect health, stabilize performance, and reduce long-term costs.

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 Michael Myers and Milos Marinkovich, a mentor and mentee pair respectively.

Michael R. Myers, PhD

Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, Indiana University

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

I have a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and first started working at a mid-size pharma called Rorer as a Medicinal Chemist in ’87. In ’98, I was asked to take three-to five-year year assignment at our R&D facility in Paris. So, we moved the family over. During my 14 years there, we went through four mergers and multiple re-orgs. After three years there, it was time to consider re-patriating. At that point, the company was called Aventis, and the core of the US R&D had been consolidated in Bridgewater, NJ. For a host of reasons, I elected to leave Aventis in ’01 and that is when I joined Eli Lilly as a Research Fellow in Discovery Chemistry. I then moved to a senior management role in Project & Portfolio Management with responsibilities for the portfolio from entry to end of Phase 2. After three years in PM, I moved to lead the team that conducted all scientific and technical due diligence for business development. This role covered all inbound opportunities including acquisitions as well as any out-bound/out-partnering activities. I held this DD role for the last 16-and-a-half years of my career. I can tell you that it was full time entertainment and the best match for my eclectic interests!
  
Why did you join AXIS and how did you hear about it?  

Three of my former Lilly colleagues including a former boss were part of the team that went to MIT for the initial training after BioCrossroads elected to sign on with the MIT Venture Mentoring program. Given that my role at Lilly was focused on external innovation, I was asked to join the initial cohort of mentors in 2019.   

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

Clearly there is a lot of great science going on in Indiana’s universities along with an exceptionally rich ecosystem of long-established life science powerhouses across Pharma, Diagnostics and Medical Devices as well as a diverse array of world-class CROs and CMOs. I don’t believe that any other state in the union benefits from this unique type of footprint! On top of this there is an incredible array of highly experienced talent available (and lots of failed retirees) to support coaching and advising new startups and entrepreneurs. 

Why did you choose to pair with Goldilox Bio?  

For every mentee I have had the privilege to work with, their passion to deliver their ideas & innovation to patients is infectious. As a result, I really haven’t over-indexed on matching personalities or science background. For me, I often prioritize topics to work on that I believe I can learn the most from. The extra bonus to playing is getting to work with the other mentors on the team which is frankly humbling and equally entertaining. 

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

I think the first and most important thing is that our mentor teams provide a totally “safe” and penalty free forum for the mentees to test their ideas, pitches and business strategies. Having worked at large companies, I think one takes their natural network totally for granted. It is amazing how many times we walk away from a meeting having agreed to make intros to trusted world-class experts or companies (CROs/CMOs) that the Mentee can leverage. Moving innovation forward in the life sciences is an incredibly complicated affair and thus each mentor’s personal networks of trusted colleagues can often be the right weapon to deploy on problems in this highly cross-functional team sport! 

Milos Marinkovich

Founder, Goldilox Bio

Tell us about your startup.

Goldilox Bio is commercializing animal-free cardiotoxicity testing using human cells to improve preclinical safety screening

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

Building a startup is fast-paced and demanding, but my co-founder and I have done our best to move quickly in a space which we believe holds strong upside. AXIS has been an incredibly valuable sounding board with practical mentorship along the way.

What impact do you hope your startup will have?

We aim to replace animal models in preclinical cardiotoxicity screening, reducing drug attrition and post-market risk. Our human cell assays can better reflect patients and enable patient-specific arrhythmia modeling.

Why did you choose to participate in the AXIS program?

I joined AXIS to tap into Indiana’s biopharma expertise and strengthen both our go-to-market strategy and my development as a translational scientist.

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

Michael pushes me to start with what the customer or partner needs and where they’re headed, then build backward from that. His operational perspective has been especially helpful for early-stage decisions in how we can position ourselves as a service provider to biopharma. 

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. 

BioCrossroads is proud to launch BioSignals, a new podcast dedicated to decoding the pulse of Indiana’s rapidly growing life sciences sector. 

Hosted by Vince Wong, President and CEO of BioCrossroads, BioSignals is designed to amplify the compelling stories, breakthrough innovations, and bold leadership shaping Indiana’s position as a global life sciences hub.

“As we’ve watched the Indiana life sciences ecosystem transform into a global powerhouse, the challenge is that not enough people know that about us,” said Wong in the inaugural episode. “So, we created this podcast to transcend borders and share these stories with the world.”

That mission is backed by real momentum. In 2024, Indiana became the nation’s leader in life sciences exports, surpassing California. This is a milestone that reflects the scale and strength of the state’s life sciences industry. 

For the first episode, Wong is joined by a guest whose career reflects the history and trajectory of Indiana’s ecosystem: Dan Peterson, Vice President of Industry and Government Affairs at Cook Group and Chair of the BioCrossroads Board of Directors.  Peterson has been closely connected to BioCrossroads since its earliest days and has spent nearly four decades at Cook, one of the companies that helped shape Indiana’s life sciences foundation. 

“This is one of the benefits of being around a long time,” Peterson joked. “You can provide the historical context.” 

Peterson reflected on the formation of BioCrossroads in 2002, describing a moment when Indiana already had world-class life sciences assets, but lacked a mechanism to connect them. 

At the time, Indiana’s strengths were already clear; the orthopedics sector in Warsaw, major pharmaceutical leadership in Central Indiana, and minimally invasive medical device innovation anchored by Cook in Bloomington. Yet, despite the scale of these players, collaboration across regions and subsectors was limited. 

“We had amazing life sciences assets in this state… and yet none of us really did anything together,” said Peterson. “There was not a mechanism for all of us to come together and look at common, non-competitive issues.” 

BioCrossroads was created to serve as that mechanism by bringing leaders together to align strategy, tell a collective story, and pursue opportunities that would strengthen the ecosystem as a whole. Peterson noted that early BioCrossroads work involved deep research, funded studies, and strategic planning to identify where Indiana could lead. But one milestone stands out as a defining turning point: the creation of the Indiana Bioscience Research Institute (IBRI). 

“It was the first time where we… didn’t just talk about the strategy,” said Peterson. “We brought it to life.” 

Peterson described the IBRI’s formation as a powerful example of what can happen when corporate leaders, state government, local partners, and community stakeholders align behind a shared vision. He credited the initiative’s momentum to collaborative leadership, including then-Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter, who helped challenge the ecosystem to think bigger. 

Today, the IBRI continues to grow into its role as a key statewide asset driving research, innovation, and long-term competitiveness. 

Wong and Peterson also discussed Indiana’s unique position in the national life sciences landscape. One of the state’s defining advantages is its ability not only to innovate, but to manufacture. 

“We not only innovate it here and develop it here,” said Peterson. “We make it here.” 

That combination has become a major differentiator as Indiana continues to attract new investments and expand its global reach. It is also a central focus of BioCrossroads’ 10-year life sciences sector strategy, launched in January 2024. 

The strategy is built around four pillars: 

• Advancing innovation and entrepreneurship 

• Expanding life sciences manufacturing 

• Strengthening workforce development 

• Elevating Indiana’s global life sciences brand 

Peterson emphasized that all four pillars are critical, and that their combined impact will help Indiana grow more aggressively and at greater scale. Every time visitors from outside the state see the ecosystem firsthand, he noted, the reaction is the same: Indiana has far more life sciences capability than most people realize. 

The conversation also offered listeners a deeper look at Cook Group, a privately held global medical device company that has remained deeply rooted in Indiana since its founding. Peterson shared Cook’s entrepreneurial beginnings: Bill and Gayle Cook started the company in a spare bedroom in Bloomington with their one-year-old son. Today, Cook employs 12,000 to 13,000 people worldwide, with operations across Indiana including Bloomington, Indianapolis, and West Lafayette. 

Cook specializes in minimally invasive medical devices, which Peterson described as technologies that allow clinicians to diagnose and treat conditions through small punctures rather than open surgery, all guided by advanced imaging. One example of how far medicine has come, he said, is the disappearance of “exploratory surgery” as a common practice. 

“That phrase is gone,” said Peterson. “That doesn’t happen anymore because of the advancements in imaging paired with the devices that we make.” 

Wong noted that one of the most underappreciated aspects of Cook’s impact is how its innovation culture has generated new companies and new industry branches throughout Indiana. Peterson highlighted examples including Cook-founded ventures that later became major employers and anchors in the region, such as Cook Pharmica (now Novo Nordisk) and Cook Pharmaceutical Solutions (later acquired by Baxter and spun into a new company). 

The result is what Wong described as a “Cook coaching tree,” a growing network of alumni, spinouts, and downstream innovation that continues to strengthen the ecosystem. 

Peterson also discussed how Cook’s culture extends beyond product innovation into community impact. When Cook identifies a challenge that affects workforce stability or quality of life, the company is willing to “lean in” and help build solutions. One major example: workforce housing. In response to housing shortages in Southern Indiana, Cook has taken direct action to help develop affordable housing in communities such as Owen County and Orange County, with plans to expand those efforts further. Cook has also partnered with organizations like Goodwill to create workforce opportunities through an FDA-approved medical device manufacturing facility on Indianapolis’ Near East Side, supporting individuals who historically have had limited access to stable employment. 

One of the most exciting innovations discussed in the episode was Cook’s work in interventional MRI, a next-generation platform that could redefine how minimally invasive procedures are performed. Traditionally, these procedures rely on X-ray guidance, which exposes both patients and clinicians to radiation and often requires contrast dye. Interventional MRI could dramatically reduce those burdens while offering far greater imaging precision. 

Cook has partnered with Siemens to co-develop a platform that enables clinicians to perform minimally invasive procedures using MRI guidance—opening the door to earlier-stage treatments, including potential breakthroughs in cancer care The platform launched in Europe in fall 2025, with a broader U.S. rollout expected this spring. 

“It’s really an early-stage platform that could revolutionize a big part of procedural medicine,” said Peterson. 

BioSignals’ inaugural episode sets the tone for what the podcast aims to deliver: thoughtful conversations with leaders who are shaping the future of health, science, and innovation, right here in Indiana. 

With guests like Dan Peterson, the series begins with a strong reminder that Indiana’s life sciences success is not accidental. It is the result of decades of collaboration, long-term strategy, and an ecosystem willing to invest in bold ideas. 

And now, BioSignals will help ensure those stories are heard well beyond Indiana’s borders. 

Listen to the first episode of BioSignals now and subscribe for upcoming conversations featuring innovators, executives, and change-makers from across Indiana’s life sciences community.