Nucleate Announces the Launch of the 2025 Nucleate Venture Fellowship, in Partnership with Pillar VC and Amino Collective
Nucleate, the global non-profit organization dedicated to empowering the next generation of biotech leaders, announced the renewal of its partnership with venture capital firms Pillar VC and Amino Collective. This partnership will support the Nucleate Venture Fellowship program in training exceptional graduate students in biotech venture, while providing unmatched access to early-stage innovation within Nucleate’s ecosystem.
Nucleate’s Activator program serves as the organization’s flagship initiative, equipping academic innovators and researchers with the tools, mentorship, and network to build successful biotech companies. The Activator program now operates across 23 regions in 9 countries, supporting early-stage teams from 440+ research institutions worldwide. Representing the leading edge of biotech innovation worldwide, the Activator is a unique training ground for Venture Fellows to engage with cutting-edge technology and shape it into pioneering companies.
“The Fellowship enables us to further Nucleate’s mission by equipping the next generation of biotech leaders with hands-on training in venture investing while also democratizing access to early-stage funding,” said Heer Joisher, Co-President of Nucleate. “We’re grateful for the continued support of our long-standing partners and excited to welcome new ones to amplify our impact even further.”
The selected Venture Fellows will serve as a strategic bridge between groundbreaking startups in Nucleate’s network and venture partners, Pillar VC and Amino Collective. Pillar VC has already collaborated extensively with Nucleate leadership in formal partnership for four years, including running venture fellowship programs for the past two years, and has provided both mentorship and funding to select Activator teams since 2023. “Nucleate’s vision for empowering early-stage biotech founders aligns perfectly with our mission at Pillar VC. We are proud to continue our partnership and support the next generation of innovators driving breakthroughs in the life sciences”, said Tony Kulesa, Venture Partner at Pillar VC.
Nucleate is also thrilled to welcome Amino Collective as a new venture partner, strengthening its commitment to supporting emerging biotech communities in Europe and around the world. “At Amino Collective, we
aim to back radically ambitious entrepreneurs that take a fresh perspective on known and new problems in health and bio. One of our beliefs is that same same, never leads to different. And over the past years, we met numerous individuals in the Nucleate community embodying this belief” said Manuel Grossmann, Founding Partner at Amino Collective. He adds “We are excited to welcome Nucleate to the Amino Collective family by partnering for the coming years.”
“The Nucleate Venture Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for emerging leaders to gain hands-on experience in biotech investment,” said Ursule Demaël, Director of the Venture Fellowship for 2025. “By engaging directly with the most innovative companies currently coming out of academia, our Fellows will develop the expertise and relationships that will shape the next wave of biotech companies.”
The Nucleate Venture Fellows program is a 16-week fellowship for exceptional trainees in the life sciences. The Fellows will perform due diligence on current and alumni teams from Nucleate’s Activator program, while also collaborating with the venture partners to actively scope and build unique investment opportunities directly with founders in the most promising areas of biotech. All throughout, Fellows will receive one-on-one mentorship from our venture partners while building the skillset and network to propel their own career in venture capital.
The Fellowship builds on a strong track record of success. In 2024, fellows conducted diligence on 85+ Activator teams as well as recent alumni of the program, contributing to five successful investments by the partner firms as well as raising follow-on funding.
Join Us
Applications for the 2025 Venture Fellowship are now open. We are looking for highly motivated graduate trainees across life sciences and medicine who have a real passion for biotech innovation. Fellows will receive a stipend for the duration of the programme. The fellowship is virtual, and we are accepting applications regardless of location. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until March 7th, 2025.
About Pillar VC
Pillar VC is a seed-stage venture firm in Boston co-founded by 22 CEOs, including the leaders of Ginkgo Bioworks, Iora Health, Cytyc, DraftKings, and Wayfair. The firm’s investments include PillPack, Desktop Metal, Kuebix, Algorand, Asimov, and PathAI, among others. Pillar believes that the strongest relationships start from a position of trust and that VC doesn’t have to be the dark side. The firm aligns with founders by providing resources and support and by offering to buy common stock — the very same type of stock founders own. To find out more about Pillar VC, please visit http://www.pillar.vc.
About Amino Collective
Amino Collective is an early-stage venture firm investing in health and bio to help life-changing ideas come to life. The firm has backed several Activate-alums including Kano Therapeutics and Sensible Biotechnologies. Other investments include Cradle, Enveda and Lindus Health. Amino Collective combines science-savviness with a founder-first approach to accelerate groundbreaking innovation in health and bio. The team is based in London and Berlin with active investments across Europe and the US. To find out more about Amino Collective, please visit http://www.aminocollective.com.
About Nucleate
Nucleate is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the next generation of biotech leaders. With chapters spanning 23 geographic regions and participation from over 120 academic institutions, Nucleate sparks new intellectual communities and embeds emerging talent within a global biotech community. Through open-access educational programming, Nucleate helps democratize biotech innovation — removing barriers and helping founders concentrate on building transformational technologies.
Visit www.nucleate.org for more information, and email contact@nucleate.org if you want to get involved with our programming.
