When Zack Weaver and Victoria Goldenshtein joined Michael Tadross's neuroscience lab as its first PhD students, they saw a gap between bench science and biotech startups.

Five years later, the chapter they built to bridge it is still running.

Weaver and Goldenshtein, then fifth-year biomedical engineering doctoral students in the Tadross Lab, launched the Research Triangle Park chapter of Nucleate in fall 2021. Nucleate is a student-run nonprofit that helps aspiring life-science founders form teams, find mentors, and access legal and clinical strategy support without giving up equity.

Their motivation was specific. Duke's Office of Translation & Commercialization handles technologies ready for licensing, but Weaver saw a gap for earlier-stage ideas. "For some technologies that are still in the lab and haven't made it that far yet, Nucleate hopes to help these ideas come into a creative, collaborative, constructive environment to help shape those nascent scientific ideas in ways that can be commercialized," he told Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship in 2021.

Both students worked out of the Tadross Lab, a Duke neuroscience group focused on precision drug delivery to genetically defined cell types. Weaver's research centered on genetically encoded electrophysiology, a method that allows an electrode to permanently bind to preselected neurons. Goldenshtein developed a platform for simultaneously generating and screening billions of proteins for a specific function.

The two built Nucleate RTP in partnership with peers at UNC-Chapel Hill. Weaver completed his PhD in October 2022 and is now a senior associate at Jefferies. Goldenshtein finished in March 2023 and remains affiliated with the Tadross Lab as a postdoctoral associate and entrepreneur. She continues to serve in regional leadership for the chapter, according to Nucleate's current roster.

Nucleate RTP remains active, running a PATH Lecture Series and partnering with Eli Lilly on a Grand Challenge offering a $100,000 grant that requires no equity stake. Globally, Nucleate reports 183 biotech ventures launched since its founding. Alumni have raised more than $570 million in funding and created over 800 full-time jobs across 36 chapters in 22 countries, according to the organization's 2024–2025 Impact Report.