Photo of Dr Mike Teodorescu

Artificial intelligence & robotics

Dr Mike Teodorescu

Assistant Professor at University of Washington and co-founder of SurgiBox

Dr Mike Horia Mihail Teodorescu is an Assistant Professor at University of Washington and co-founder of SurgiBox, a startup which developed a backpack-portable operating room system. SurgiBox’s mission is to reduce loss of life from lack of access to clean operating environments by bringing the OR to the patient. 

Mike’s journey started in Romania where, as a high school student in Iasi, he applied for patents in Romania and the US and was a two time winner of NASA contests. 

Accepted by Harvard and Stanford universities, he obtained his BA cum laude in Computer Science from Harvard. After working at Microsoft, he returned to Harvard for his doctorate.

Mike’s research explores the process of innovation by independent entrepreneurs and machine learning fairness. He began machine learning fairness work while working as a scholar at MIT D-Lab on an international development project. 

SurgiBox received awards from MassChallenge, Harvard President’s Challenge, and HBS New Venture Competition. Long-term, Mike wishes to reduce the cost of surgical procedures and bring equality in access to surgical care. 

Beyond his entrepreneurship work, Mike teaches Data Science and Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington Information School.