Our team
LAURA K. ORTHWEIN
Founder | CEO
Laura Orthwein has spent 25 years operating at the intersection of complex missions and implausible-sounding pivots — and she has a track record that makes the pivots make sense.
She started with an internet startup in business development and digital strategy, where she aligned online and offline marketing for the pharmaceutical industry at a time when "online drug marketing" was still an emerging discipline. From there, she moved into documentary production, spending seven years at Feodor Pitcairn Productions developing programming for Discovery, National Geographic, Animal Planet, and WGBH — including Ocean Voyagers, an award-winning underwater feature narrated by Meryl Streep, and a permanent installation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. She co-founded the BLUE Ocean Film Festival & Conservation Summit and joined the Google Ocean Advisory Council at the invitation of oceanographer Sylvia Earle.
Then, naturally, she turned her attention to manufacturing. As Vice President at Milton Manufacturing, she led the strategic transformation of a third-generation Detroit metal fab company into a qualified DoD contractor, with 450% revenue growth over five years and a negotiated CRADA with U.S. Army TACOM.
Across each of these domains, the pattern is the same: identify the inflection point, build the path that doesn't exist yet, and see it through.
Once introduced to the noninvasive biophotonics research being developed in the Chaiken Lab at Syracuse University, she couldn't shake the feeling that this was a mission she was meant to lead. She got to know the science. She got to know the scientists. And Avalyra was born.
PAUL DENT, PHD
CO-FOUNDER | CORE IP & PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE
Paul Dent, PhD has been part of this technology’s development from its earliest stages — and made a deliberate decision to stay with it through its transition to market.
He joined the Chaiken Lab at Syracuse University as a graduate student in 2012, when the noninvasive biophotonic sensing system was still in early prototype form. His work during that period, including preclinical and early human studies, forms part of the foundational scientific literature underlying Avalyra’s platform. He earned his MS and PhD in Chemistry from Syracuse (BS, Marietta College), and upon graduating, joined the faculty at St. Thomas Aquinas College as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry, where he continued to collaborate with the Chaiken Lab.
When the prospect of bringing the technology to market became real, Paul made the choice to return. He rejoined the Chaiken Lab full-time, helped revisit and publish earlier dialysis data, and shifted his focus to the work that moves a validated sensing platform from research instrument to clinical device. He is now a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Syracuse University and serves as Avalyra's Co-Founder and Senior R&D Scientist for Product Development — leading engineering efforts around device miniaturization, signal calibration, and the transition from lab-grade hardware to something manufacturable and deployable at scale.
He is also, reportedly, an excellent cook.
Joseph Chaiken, PhD
CO-FOUNDER | INVENTOR | LEAD SCIENTIST
Joseph Chaiken, PhD is a chemical physicist, spectroscopist, and inventor whose career has been defined by a single organizing question: what can light reveal about the living body that no other method can?
He earned his BS with Special Honors in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1982. He joined the faculty at Syracuse University that same year and has remained there ever since — rising through the ranks to Professor of Chemistry, and since 2007, also serving as Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He continues to lead the Chaiken Lab at Syracuse, where both foundational and applied research on the platform remains active.
His research has been supported continuously by the Department of Defense, including work at Rome Air Development Center, AFOSR, and through multiple SBIR awards from the U.S. Army. Over the course of his career, he has authored or co-authored more than 75 peer-reviewed publications and holds an extensive personal patent portfolio spanning optical systems, spectroscopic methods, and noninvasive biological measurement — the culmination of which is the foundational IP that Avalyra has acquired to commercialize.
His pivot to biomedical optics in the late 1990s — initially focused on noninvasive approaches to blood analysis — led to the body of research that became Avalyra's platform. In 2005, he received the Frank Annunzio Award in Science and Technology from the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, a foundation of the United States Congress.
At Avalyra, Dr. Chaiken serves as Co-Founder, Scientific Advisory Board Chair, and the scientific conscience of the platform — guiding signal algorithm development and ensuring the integrity of the underlying physics as the technology moves toward regulatory clearance and commercial deployment.
Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Sriram Narsipur
Clinical Nephrology & Dialysis Medicine
Dr. Sriram Narsipur brings more than three decades of clinical leadership in nephrology, dialysis medicine, and kidney transplantation to Avalyra’s Scientific Advisory Board.
He is Professor and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education at the Norton College of Medicine at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. Over the course of his career, he has served as Medical Director of Dialysis and Director of Transplant Nephrology at a major academic medical center, with extensive experience managing chronic kidney disease, dialysis care, and transplant patients.
Dr. Narsipur completed medical school at the University of Michigan, dual residencies in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at UMass Chan–Baystate, and a nephrology fellowship at the University of California, San Diego.
His research and publications have focused extensively on the intersection of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease — an area closely aligned with Avalyra’s mission to improve real-time hemodynamic visibility and physiologic stability during dialysis treatment.
In addition to his clinical and academic expertise, Dr. Narsipur brings deep perspective on dialysis workflow, fluid management, and the practical realities of clinical adoption within dialysis care environments. His current interests also include the integration of artificial intelligence into medical education and clinical training.
Dr. Narsipur is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology, and a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (London).