Alum’s company creates tech for pain-free tattoos

A startup founded by a Cornell alum is using microneedle technology to create a pain-free tattoo experience - and working, with funding from the UK government, to expand the technology to medical applications.

CipherX, founded by Ferdinand Kohle PhD '18 and Karl-Anton Harms, officially launched its product in late July in London and word has spread rapidly, with most of the company's upcoming appointments booked through September, Kohle said.

"I get messages from all over the world from people who want to buy our tattoos or work with us," said Kohle, adding that the tattoos are currently available at pop-up events in the UK or at their store in London. "We're creating opportunities for people who wouldn't have been able to get a tattoo before - people with skin conditions, people who don't want to spend time choosing a tattoo artist or people who have needle phobias."

That last condition hits home for Kohle, who said he "gets cold sweats around needles," though he does now have a CipherX tattoo.

The tattoos are small, less than an inch, and come in an array of styles, including hearts, stars and skulls. They're applied using a tool that affixes a microneedle-filled sticker to the skin, which stays in place for 15 minutes. During that time, the ink-coated polymer needles -which are rigid but dissolve upon contact with moisture in the skin - deposit ink to the correct layer.

Kohle developed the idea after spending time with a friend who has multiple tattoos, knowing he'd like to also have one, and then connecting that thought to microneedle technology, which is tangentially connected to the work he'd done as a PhD student at Cornell.

He started creating rudimentary prototypes with items from Amazon, then partnered with a professor from Imperial College in London, who rented him space and machinery to create an actual prototype.

At some point, when he and his team were convinced that the technology was safe and effective, it was time to try it on real people. Kohle found no shortage of volunteers.

Kohle said his time at Cornell was formative to his development as an entrepreneur.

His doctoral work at Cornell was with Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering, and focused on polymer-based nanomaterials called Cornell Dots. He was also heavily involved in the lab's 2015 partnership with Korean-American artist Kimsooja in their creation of the "A Needle Woman" sculpture on the Arts Quad, a project that piqued his interest in combining art and technology.

"Our research group invented a lot of things and filed for many patents, so this was the first time I got in touch with the business side of technology," Kohle said. "Something I learned at Cornell is that I'm a builder at heart. I love to create something from nothing."

Once he made the decision to move forward with CipherX, Kohle reached out to Cornell's Nancy Almann and Felix Litvinsky, managing directors of Launchpad Ezra, a resource of Entrepreneurship at Cornell that offers mentoring and venture creation support.

Kohle is now focused on fundraising, licensing opportunities and expanding his product offerings and locations, including to the U.S. "The next phase in the conversation is a licensing model because we can't scale this ourselves," he said. "We're interested in working with tattoo or cosmetic stores, barbers or music and art festivals. We also think there are great opportunities for custom collaborations with brands and artists."

Kohle is also working on medical applications for the technology, including a vaccine product and adjacent manufacturing already funded by Innovate UK, the government's technology innovation agency. Many other applications are possible, Kohle said, including skin markers for chemotherapy, sensing or contraceptive delivery.