Endometrics wins inaugural Atul Butte Company Competition at Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) 2026
Women's health startup recognized for innovation in precision medicine
Endometrics founder, Yana Aznavour, MD, PhD winner of the Atul Butte Company Competition, with judge and sponsor, Travis Zack, MD, PhD (OpenEvidence)
On March 7, 2026, the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) announced the winner of the inaugural Atul Butte Company Competition, created to recognize early-stage precision medicine startup founders and to honor Atul Butte, MD, PhD (1969-2025). The competition, originally called the PMWC Most Promising Company Competition and launched in 2009, was renamed and relaunched in 2026 to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Butte, a leading scientist and entrepreneur whose work in the domain reshaped modern medicine by both discovering the potential of data and artificial intelligence to improve patient care, and bringing these discoveries to market through the companies he founded and advised.
The competition took place on the final day of PMWC 2026 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Sharat Israni, PhD (UCSF) coordinated the judging with a panel of leaders in precision medicine commercialization, including Rowan Chapman, PhD (BEVC), Rohan Ganesh, MBA (Obvious Ventures), Debby Meredith, MS (Icon Ventures), Alex Morgan, MD, PhD (Khosla Ventures), and Travis Zack, MD, PhD (OpenEvidence). All were colleagues of Dr. Butte.
The origins of the new Atul Butte Company Competition
In her welcoming remarks, Butte’s wife, Tarangini (Gini) Deshpande, PhD, reflected upon his career-long commitment to computational health and entrepreneurship.
From the beginning of his career, and years before others realized its value in patient care, Butte had a passion for data. Through his earliest exposure to patient data, he recognized this simple, but profound truth: “Data could tell stories about health.”
But it was not only his brilliance as a scientist, but as a “builder, “ or entrepreneur, that supported Butte’s progress in bringing advances in computational health to benefit patients. Deshpande referred to her late husband as a “translational entrepreneur,” explaining how he translated his discoveries in precision medicine so that they could be taken into the marketplace through the companies he created and advised. She emphasized that he loved building things himself, as well as helping others do so. By building and helping others through his mentoring and advisory work, he was able to further develop the domain he defined - computational health - and ensure that his discoveries made their way to patients whose lives depended on it.
The competition honors this two-part passion: scientific discovery through data science and entrepreneurship. That spirit was evident throughout, as each nominee demonstrated how they used data to better understand patient health and transformed those insights into real-world solutions and companies.
Competition judges (in alphabetical order): Rowan Chapman, PhD (BEVC), Tarangini (Gini) Deshpande, PhD, Rohan Ganesh, MBA (Obvious Ventures), Debby Meredith, MS (Icon Ventures), Alex Morgan, MD, PhD (Khosla Ventures), and Travis Zack, MD, PhD
Announcing the Atul Butte Company Competition Winner: Endometrics
In this inaugural year of the award, Endometrics and its founder and CEO, Yana Aznavour, MD, PhD, won the competition and received a $20,000 cash prize, generously provided by the competition sponsor, OpenEvidence.
Upon winning the award, Aznavour shared her connection to Atul Butte’s legacy, saying:
“This recognition means a lot to our team building a novel clinical intelligence platform for women’s health with menstrual blood. It is especially meaningful that the competition carries the name of Dr. Butte, whose work has long championed the rigorous analysis of large-scale molecular data to unlock clinical insights, the approach we are applying at Endometrics.”
Endometrics, backed by UC Berkeley SkyDeck, is developing non-invasive diagnostics in women’s health, starting with menstrual-blood-based testing for endometriosis and expanding toward broader gynecologic applications. During the presentation, Aznavour captivated the judges and the audience by first explaining the extent of the unmet need for a problem affecting a significant portion of women:
“If you know 10 women, you know one with endometriosis. It affects 10% of all women, and causes pain and infertility, and yet there is no diagnosis available today.”
The solution includes a clinically integrated platform, starting with a validated at-home test for endometriosis and expanding into gynecologic oncology. She and her team are targeting physicians to navigate and resolve what is otherwise known today as “unexplained infertility.” Learn more about Endometrics’ pathway, and Aznavour’s track record, by visiting her PMWC 2026 presenter biography.
How the Competition Profiled Leading “Builders” in their Respective Domains
As Deshpande emphasized, Butte supported “builders,” those scientists making companies to ensure that scientific discoveries make it to the patients who need their products and services. The competition, which unfolded over the course of the entire last day of the PMWC conference, showcased numerous members of this important builder community.
In addition to honoring the top winner of the day, Endometrics, Yana Aznavour, MD, PhD, the competition recognized three finalists, in alphabetical order: (1) NerView Surgical, founded by Mann Parikh, for preventing nerve damage during surgery; (2) Portal Biotech, founded by Armon Sharei, PhD, delivering therapies safely inside cells; as well as (3) Prima Mente, founded by Ravi Solanki, MD, PhD. Along with Aznavour, these founders pitched in the afternoon final round, and left the judges and audience deeply impressed with their expertise and forward momentum.
In total, the day-long competition included 21 companies across four categories: (1) diagnostics, (2) therapeutics, (3) health tech, and (4) AI & computational medicine pitched on the final day of the three-day PMWC 2026 conference. Judges evaluated the 5-minute presentations, which included a 2.5-minute Q&A, and based their final decision on the following six criteria: (1) clinical impact/unmet need; (2) science/evidence; (3) team/ability to execute; (4) traction & regulatory path; (5) IP/defensibility; and (6) business model/market potential. All 21 teams presented in the morning session, and the finalists presented in the afternoon. The day-long competition provided an overview of the excellent work of entrepreneurs building new companies across precision medicine sectors.
Reflections on the Competition in its First Year
Atul Butte would be proud to see his legacy live on in the work of the winning team, Endometrics, the runners up, NerView Surgical, Portal Biotech, and Prima Mente, and all of the 21 participating companies in the 2026 competition.
Upon distributing the awards, Deshpande mentioned her delight that the winner of the competition was a woman. She said:
“As an unapologetic feminist, Atul Butte would have especially loved that a woman-led company focused on women’s health took the top prize - fitting recognition for innovation addressing long-overlooked needs in women’s health.
The community looks forward to seeing Endometrics, and the other companies profiled during the inaugural Atul Butte Competition continue to grow and make a meaningful difference for patients.
Gini Desphande
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ABOUT ENDOMETRICS, WINNER OF THE 2026 AWARD
Endometrics – detecting endometriosis without surgery
Yana Aznavour, MD, PhD — CEO
Endometrics is developing non-invasive diagnostics in women’s health, starting with menstrual-blood-based testing to detect endometriosis and expanding toward broader gynecologic applications
About Yana Aznavour: OB-GYN physician–scientist focused on women’s health innovation
ABOUT THE THREE FINALISTS
NerView Surgical – preventing nerve damage during surgery
Mann Parikh — Founder and CEO
NerView Surgical develops a contact-free imaging platform that makes peripheral nerves visible in real time during surgery, helping reduce the risk of accidental nerve injury
About Mann Parikh: Biomedical commercialization and surgical innovation focus
Portal Biotechnologies – delivering therapies safely inside cells
Armon Sharei, PhD — Founder and CEO
Portal Biotechnologies is building scalable intracellular delivery technology designed to enable safe, efficient transport of therapeutic payloads into hard-to-transfect cells
About Armon Sharei: Pioneer in mechanoporation-based cell engineering technologies
Prima Mente – understanding the biology of complex diseases
Ravi Solanki, MD, PhD — Co-Founder and CEO
Prima Mente is building foundation models for biology to better understand complex diseases, initially focusing on neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s
About Ravi Solanki: Clinician and neuroscientist trained at Cambridge
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ABOUT THE PMWC ATUL BUTTE COMPANY COMPETITION PROGRAM
The PMWC Atul Butte Company Competition provides early-stage precision medicine startup founders a platform to present before leading investors, potential clients and partners, helping them accelerate their path forward. Previously known as the PMWC Most Promising Company Competition, originally founded in 2009, the competition celebrates entrepreneurs from around the world using new technologies and building leading precision medicine startups, eligible for Seed to Series A companies which have clinical or preclinical evidence and/or a working proof of concept. Eligible startups focus on Atul’s legacy of promoting computational health, using data to solve the world’s most complex health care challenges. Applications/nominations are accepted across one or more of the following four categories: diagnostics, therapeutics, health tech, and AI & computational medicine. The 2026 winner was eligible for a $20,000 cash award, and all nominations/applications are promoted online. To learn more, please visit the Precision Medicine World Conference Atul Butte Company Competition landing page.
ABOUT ATUL BUTTE
Atul Butte, MD, PhD (1969–2025) was a physician scientist and biomedical informatics pioneer who helped define modern, evidence-first precision medicine, showing how large scale clinical and molecular data can be translated into decisions that improve patient care. He held leadership roles at Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, including chief of the Division of Systems Medicine, and faculty appointments spanning Pediatrics and Medicine, with courtesy in Computer Science. In 2015, joined UCSF as the inaugural director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and served as UC Health’s inaugural chief data scientist, helping unify data driven approaches across the UC academic medical centers. Beyond academia, Butte was a builder and mentor to founders focused on real world clinical impact. He co-founded multiple data driven companies, including Personalis, NuMedii, and Carmenta, and he was widely recognized for advancing rigorous, reproducible translation of data into care. To learn more about Atul Butte, please visit the Atul Butte Wikipedia page.
ABOUT THE PRECISION MEDICINE WORLD CONFERENCE (PMWC)
Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) is the largest annual conference dedicated to precision medicine. PMWC’s mission is to bring together recognized leaders, top global researchers and medical professionals, and innovators across health care and biotechnology sectors to showcase practical content that helps close the knowledge gap between different sectors, thereby catalyzing cross-functional fertilization & collaboration in an effort to accelerate the development and spread of precision medicine. Since 2009, recognized as a cornerstone for all constituents of the health care and biotechnology community, PMWC provides an exceptional forum for the exchange of information about the latest advances in technology (e.g. DNA sequencing technology), in clinical implementation (e.g. cancer and beyond), research, and in all aspects related to the regulatory and reimbursement sectors.
Held annually at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in the heart of Silicon Valley each year for the last 17 years, it draws 2,500 attendees. The conference features over 400 speakers and 90+ sponsors who showcase at an exhibition hall. Each year the conference partners with major universities, specializing in health, including UCSF, Stanford Health Care, Yale, University of Michigan, Duke, and University of Pittsburgh. To learn, visit the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) landing page.
