Dr. Isaac Rodriguez
Co-founder & chief science officer, SweetBio, Inc.
Dr. Isaac Rodriguez is the Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of SweetBio, Inc., a Memphis, Tennessee based, commercial-ready medical device company with FDA-cleared, honey-incorporated wound care products. Since 2015, SweetBio has raised $4 Million, graduated from ZeroTo510 and LaunchTN accelerator programs, was a finalist in Steve Case’s 2018 Rise of the Rest tour and recognized by Inside Memphis Business as a 2016 Innovation Award winner and by the American Cancer Society North Central Region as their 2019 Innovators of Hope. SweetBio was also highlighted on 60 Minutes and Forbes.
Dr. Isaac Rodriguez is a Gates Millennium Scholar and earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering. After graduating with his doctorate, he moved to Memphis where he spent 2.5 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Memphis. While at the UofM, Dr. Rodriguez co-invented the honey biomaterial technology that has now become the basis for SweetBio’s product lines.
Some of Dr. Rodriguez’s notable achievements include serving as the keynote speaker for NASA Langley’s 2017 Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration, an invited speaker in 2018 for The Empowerment Conference, being cited over 875 times in academic journals, being named as one of Memphis' Top 40 Under 40 in 2015 by The Memphis Business Journal, and being honored in 2017 by his alma mater (VCU) as a Top 10 Alumni (out of 80,000) to graduate in the last 10 years. Dr. Rodriguez currently serves as a board member of Seeding Success, New Memphis Institute, Setting the Standard (STS) Enterprises, the Collegiate School of Memphis, and formerly Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell's Young Professional Council and Mayor Jim Strickland Transitional team.