A Revolutionary Inventor

Keith Hearon’s success began in elementary school. As an Augusta, Georgia, native, Keith was named a Georgia Tech President’s Scholar after attending Westminster Schools of Augusta K-12. He then secured a prestigious undergraduate internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where his life changed on a dime as he emerged as an inventor.

“As a Georgia Tech student and undergraduate intern at LLNL working under Dr. Tom Wilson, I ended up inventing a new shape-changing plastic material for medical device applications,” Keith said. “This project ended up leading to about 15 patents, and Dr. Wilson gave me the freedom to invent and the mentoring to succeed.”   

Keith continued his education at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University and continued the undergraduate research project he started at LLNL under Dr. Tom Wilson.

While in Aggieland, Keith had the opportunity to continue his work under biomedical engineering professor Dr. Duncan Maitland.

“Dr. Maitland allowed me to be an independent researcher. I developed new materials for his medical device engineers. I was the chemistry person that did materials science in Dr. Maitland’s lab,” Keith recalled. “My colleagues and fellow graduate students built medical devices out of materials I created.”

Keith's acute attention to detail and versatility in bringing inventions to life have allowed him to make strides in his biomedical engineering career. 

Keith’s stint at Texas A&M was incredibly successful, leaving him with over 14 peer-reviewed publications, more than 15 patents and a cover article in the high-impact journal Advanced Materials. He was then named one of the top five U.S. student inventors in 2014 as a finalist in the 2014 Collegiate Inventors’ Competition. He next worked for Moderna Co-Founder Dr. Robert Langer’s group in a postdoctoral position at MIT from 2014-2016.

Keith then left MIT and co-founded aerospace 3D printing company Poly6 Technologies as its founding CEO. Poly6 was successfully acquired in 2019 by Consolidated Precision Products, and Keith launched rapid diagnostics company Virex Health in 2020 during the pandemic. Virex was successfully acquired in 2022 by public pharma company Sorrento Therapeutics, and Keith decided to continue his entrepreneurial journey as a serial co-founder, investor, CEO and board

As of March 2025, Keith is co-founder and CEO of Nuceptive Labs, a novel skin contact medical adhesives company that has developed a medical adhesive stickier than duct tape but does not hurt to remove from human skin. Keith also chairs the board of AI lung cancer company Imidex and is a co-founder, investor and board member of Keylicon Biosciences, which is bringing a Forbes-featured and Nature Biotechnologies published self-amplifying RNA platform to society for immunotherapy, vaccine and oncology applications.

Keith’s hard work has gained him many honors, including being thrice awarded Distinguished Alumni awards by Westminster Schools of Augusta, Georgia Tech and Texas A&M Engineering. Keith’s Texas A&M Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award is the highest honor given by the College of Engineering at Texas A&M and recognizes both personal and professional accomplishments. 

“The Outstanding Young Alumni Honor Award from Texas A&M is meaningful to me because it was built around a very valuable skill set that I learned in College Station. This award commemorates a true skill set that I developed in the field of Polymer Science at Texas A&M,” Keith said. “I seriously learned something, and that is a big deal to me.”

Additionally, Keith was recently elected to the 2024 National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Class of Fellows. Keith’s Ph.D. advisor Dr. Duncan Maitland (Texas A&M), Ph.D. thesis committee member Dr. Karen Wooley (Texas A&M), postdoctoral advisor Dr. Robert Langer (MIT), and business partner Dr. Mark Grinstaff from Boston University are also NAI members and also collectively National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine electees.

In addition to his scientific and entrepreneurial calling, Keith is father to three boys and a husband to Texas A&M chemical engineering graduate Caitlin Hearon ’11 (Yale SOM ’18). Caitlin and Keith were married in Boston in 2018 after Caitlin graduated from Yale and are working to raise a family of hard-working boys committed to impacting society and debating whether to cheer for Georgia Tech or Texas A&M in football.

“Texas A&M is engrained in my family, and my Texas A&M experience resulted in a happy marriage and the birth of three boys,” Keith said. “My family is by far the most joyous and important thing that came out of my time in College Station,” Keith affirmed.

Keith looks forward to driving impact on society through scientific invention, entrepreneurship, family and faith.