Since my first equation, I have been fascinated by the air we breathe. This obsession eventually led to the discovery that our air is drying out with global warming and threatening the future of breathing. While this challenge is now the complete focus  of my scientific research and latest company, my ideas, in the past have wandered more broadly. Often mathematical, occasionally artistic, my ideas have explored, among other things, how air carries flavors into our noses making us care to eat, and how little droplets we give back to the air possibly threaten lives.

David A. Edwards is a biophysicist, founder, and CEO of Sensory Cloud Inc., a Boston-based startup company aimed at deactivation of mechano-sensitive channels for the treatment of respiratory disease. Prior to joining the company, David was on the faculty of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Harvard University (2002-2019), after having co-founded and sold his first startup company, Advanced Inhalation Research (AIR) to Alkermes. The AIR technology, based on David’s 1997 Science publication describing the design of large porous particles for the non-invasive delivery of injectable drugs, led to the FDA approved Inbrija, inhaled L-Dopa for the treatment of Parkinson’s. While at Harvard, David also pursued large porous particle technology for the development of the first inhaled dry powder BCG for mucosal vaccination against tuberculosis (PNAS 2007, 2008).  Since David’s 2004 PNAS publication describing the impact on respiratory droplet generation of the hydrating of human lungs by endogenous monovalent cations, David’s research has increasingly focused on the respiratory health benefits of the inhalation of monovalent and divalent salt cations, leading to the startup of Sensory Cloud Inc.  In recent years, with a series of publications (PNAS 2021, Nature SciReports 2022, Quarterly Reviews Biophysics Discovery 2023, JAMP 2023, LUNG 2024, ERJOR 2024, Nature Communications Earth & Environment 2025), David’s research with a growing number of international collaborators has led to the discovery that, together with other planetary ecosystems, human airways are dehydrating with global warming.  David has founded other companies, including Foodberry, pioneering new food forms based on the natural model of the grape. David is currently Adjunct professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and remains as an Associate in the John A Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the French National Academy of Engineering (Académie des technologies), and the US National Academy of Inventors. For his work in the creative arts and nonfiction/fiction writing in French & English, David was made a Chevalier of arts and letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2008.