Helical Brew

Everyone sees the robot. But some of the hardest problems in laboratory automation live in the software underneath it.

Armon Naddaf joins Sura Hadi and Mike Ouren to explore what it actually takes to build software around physical science — from hardware drivers, instrument APIs and version control to orchestration, user interfaces and legacy systems.

They dig into why testing changes when software controls a physical process, what scientists need from automation interfaces, how standards like OPC UA help bring order to heterogeneous instruments, where AI adds value, and what foundations are still missing before labs can become genuinely more autonomous.

The through-line: reliable automation is not just about the robot. It is about the software architecture that makes the entire laboratory work together.

AI can predict what experiment should happen next. But can the laboratory actually execute it?

Aniket Deshpande joins Sura Hadi and Mike Ouren to explore the convergence of biological research, scientific computing and laboratory automation - from genomics, GPUs and protein language models to AI agents, digital twins and the lab-in-the-loop.

They dig into what AI is genuinely changing in drug discovery, why experimental validation still matters, what happens when agents need to interact with instruments and scientific systems, and why Aniket prefers thinking about AI as “AI-assisted” rather than simply “AI-ready.”

Ultimately, the question isn’t how impressive the model is. It’s whether it moves the science forward.

The views expressed by Aniket are his own and do not necessarily represent those of his employer.

Great technology is only the beginning. Some of the best technology in laboratory automation still fails commercially - while other companies build products customers adopt, trust, and buy again.

Brian O'Sullivan has spent more than 20 years seeing what separates the two. Across Velocity11, Agilent, HighRes Biosolutions, Ginkgo Bioworks and now Opentrons, he's watched automation companies scale, disrupt markets, build exceptional teams - and sometimes get in their own way.

In this episode, Brian joins Sura Hadi and Mike Ouren to unpack what actually separates automation companies that win from those that don't.

In this episode:

→ Why great technology can still fail commercially

→ What Velocity11 got right about culture, leadership and execution

→ Why the best salesperson sometimes says no

→ Why support may be the most undervalued function in laboratory automation

→ Why life sciences is still operating on a 20–30-year-old support model

→ AI hype, autonomous labs and the CFO reality check

→ Why hardware, software and people have to move together

→ How open architectures are changing laboratory automation

→ Why robots are becoming data factories

→ Why willingness to learn may matter more than the perfect résumé

Guest: Brian O'Sullivan - Opentrons

Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

Series: Science Means Business

Helical Brew: Unfiltered is back. ☕️

After a summer break, Sura Hadi and Mike Ouren catch up on what's happening across the laboratory automation community — from LRIG chapters and the growing Southeast life sciences scene to what's ahead for SLAS 2027 in San Diego.

Plus, Mike discovers one upside to turning 50 in the same year America turns 250.

In this episode:

→ What's happening across the LRIG community

→ The growing Southeast life sciences ecosystem

→ Looking ahead to SLAS 2027

→ What's next for Helical Brew

No guest. No slides. Just Sura + Mike, Unfiltered.

Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

Series: Helical Brew: Unfiltered

First to market with NFC payments two years before Apple Pay. First smartwatch for tarmac environments. Now helping the largest life sciences companies in the world build autonomous labs. Rui Campos has been ahead of the market his entire career, and he's here to talk about where lab automation is actually going.

Rui Campos is VP of Product at Automata, leading product, engineering, design, data, and AI. Before life sciences, he drove digital transformation across payments, supply chain, airport operations, and IoT. He brings a cross-industry perspective to lab automation that this industry rarely sees.

In this episode:

• Why the problems in lab automation aren't unique—the environment is

• What product-market fit actually looks like in life sciences

• What AI-native teams actually do differently

• What autonomous labs really mean versus the hype

• Why only 1% of professionals are actually using AI

Guest: Rui Campos, Automata

Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

Series: Science Means Business

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ruicampos

Automata: https://automata.tech

Email: [email protected]

YouTube: https://youtu.be/oaLvdLOQuQw

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold Open

00:20 Welcome & Guest Intro — Rui Campos, Automata

07:53 Icebreaker — How Do You Know When You're Early vs Simply Wrong?

10:56 Segment 1 — What Life Sciences Can Learn From Other Industries

12:16 Segment 2 — Product Market Fit in Lab Automation

22:48 Segment 3 — AI Native Teams vs AI Theater

37:59 Segment 4 — The Road to Autonomous Labs

49:50 Pick of the Week

55:54 Where to Find Rui

@helicalbrew

Donkey work. That's what a British scientist called it — the tedious, repetitive, unglamorous work that keeps labs running. Petia and Safwan Hak heard that phrase and built a company around it.

Lab Donkey is focused on one of the hardest problems in lab automation: execution, scheduling and robotics for the problems that are too big, too complex and too challenging for anyone else to tackle. And they built it from the outside - Petia from project management and operations, Safwan from enterprise software architecture including time at Automata - watching scientists work, living in the lab, and solving the problems nobody else would touch.

In this episode:

→ Why automation works in demos but breaks in real labs

→ Why the human is the biggest challenge in automation

→ What enterprise software can teach life sciences

→ Why standards are the real bottleneck in lab automation

→ How Lab Donkey is building what the industry was missing

🎙️ Guests: Petia Hak & Safwan Hak — Lab Donkey

👥 Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

📁 Series: Automation in the Wild

🔗 Follow Petia on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/petiahak-4bb26a3

🔗 Follow Safwan on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/safwanhak

🔗 Lab Donkey: labdonkey.com

📩 [email protected]

CHAPTERS

00:00 The Story Behind "Lab Donkey"

00:24 Meet the Founders

01:40 The Real Problem with Lab Automation

08:49 Why Automation Demos Don't Match Reality

10:50 What Actually Breaks in a Lab

17:59 Software Lessons Life Sciences Needs

22:11 Is AI Ready for Lab Automation?

26:04 Why So Many Automation Projects Fail

29:03 The Hidden Complexity of Lab Workflows

34:29 Designing for Scientists, Not Programmers

41:52 What Shocked Them About the Industry

45:20 The Mindset Behind Lab Donkey

50:42 The Future of Lab Donkey

51:59 Final Thoughts

👉 YouTube:    / @helicalbrew  

🎧 Spotify, iTunes & Amazon Podcasts

📩 [email protected]

📍 @helicalbrew everywhere

#HelicalBrew #AutomationInTheWild #LabAutomation #Biotech #LabDonkey #Robotics #Scheduling #LabTech #SciencePodcast #Podcast #WomenFounders #StartupLife #Biology #Automation

Compilers for the wet lab. High-level languages for biology. A co-founder who started pipetting and ended up writing code that talks to robots. Alexandra Rolfness is building something this industry has never seen — and she's here to explain why lab automation needs a new language.

Alexandra Rolfness co-founded Tetsuwan Scientific straight out of Caltech, where she studied computer science after years in the wet lab — stem cell production, cancer biology, plant epigenetics. She's one of the few people in this industry who genuinely owns the full stack of biology and software, and she's using it to rewrite how scientists talk to machines.

In this episode:

→ Why automation breaks down in real labs

→ What it actually means to compile biology

→ Where LLMs fit in and where they fall short→ What autonomous labs actually mean vs the hype

→ What it's like being a young woman founder in lab automation🎙️ Guest: Alexandra Rolfness — Tetsuwan Scientific

👥 Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

📁 Series: AI Thought Leaders

🔗 Follow Alex on LinkedIn:   / arolfness  

🔗 Tetsuwan Scientific: tetsuwan.com

📩 [email protected]

CHAPTERS

00:00 Automation Isn’t a Hardware Problem (Cold Open)

00:27 Welcome & Guest Intro — Alexandra Rolfnes, Tetsuwan Scientific

01:08 What People Underestimate About Young Technical Founders

03:01 Why Lab Automation Breaks in Real Labs

18:56 Compiling Biology — A New Language for Automation

32:41 From Wet Lab Scientist to Full-Stack Founder

42:13 Autonomous Labs vs. Reality

50:25 Pick of the Week — Claude Code, Visualization & Retro Ray-Bans

53:59 Final Thoughts & Where to Find Tetsuwan Scientific

👉 YouTube:    / @helicalbrew  

🎧 Spotify, iTunes & Amazon Podcasts

📩 [email protected]

📍 @helicalbrew everywhere

#HelicalBrew #AIThoughtLeaders #LabAutomation #Biotech #AI #Biology #Automation #CompilerDesign #DSL #AutonomousLab #SciencePodcast #Podcast #TetsuwanScientific #WomenInSTEM

Spider silk in yeast. Antibody AI models. Pharma companies pooling data across competitors. Rich Cohen has been at the intersection of biology and systems for over a decade — and he's here to talk about what actually scales and what doesn't.

Rich Cohen is Senior Director of Ginkgo Datapoints at Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of antibody drug discovery, data and product strategy. He started at the bench, moved through technical program management at Bolt Threads, and now helps build the platforms and data products that pharma actually needs.

In this episode:

→ Why biology doesn't scale on its own

→ What most biotech gets wrong about products

→ Where AI is actually delivering value

→ Why de novo drug design is still overhyped

🎙️ Guest: Rich Cohen — Ginkgo Bioworks / Ginkgo Datapoints

👥 Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

📁 Series: Systems of Science

🔗 Resources mentioned in this episode:

🧬 Ginkgo Data Points — Services and sample datasets

https://datapoints.ginkgo.bio/services

🤝 Antibody Developability Consortium — Ginkgo Data Points x Apheris

https://www.apheris.com/join-a-networ...

🧪 Amazon Bio Discovery — Design antibodies and order testing directly from Ginkgo

https://aws.amazon.com/biodiscovery/

🧪 Tamarind Bio — Another platform for designing antibodies and ordering Ginkgo testinghttps://tamarind.bio

📦 Order Ginkgo Data Points services on https://www.scienceexchange.com/ and https://scientist.com/

📊 Download Ginkgo datasets on https://huggingface.co/

📄 Journal Articles:

→ A high-throughput platform for biophysical antibody developability assessment to enable AI/ML model training: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.10...

→ 2025 Ginkgo Datapoints Antibody Developability Competition — results and observations: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...

→ Using a GPT-5-driven autonomous lab to optimize cell-free protein synthesis — OpenAI x Ginkgo collaboration: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64...

🔗 Follow Rich on LinkedIn:   / cohenrich  

🔗 Ginkgo Datapoints: https://datapoints.ginkgo.bio

📩 [email protected]

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold Open

00:16 Welcome & Guest Intro - Rich Cohen, Ginkgo Datapoints

02:06 Icebreaker - When Did Biology Stop Being Science?

03:20 Segment 1: When Biology Becomes a System

14:44 Segment 2: Why Most Biotech Never Becomes a Product

26:50 Segment 3: AI and Data in Antibody Discovery

40:48 Segment 4: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Scaling Biotech

46:51 Shout Out to Ops & Dreamers

47:34 Pick of the Week - Company Retreat

51:58 Where to Find Rich

👉 YouTube:    / @helicalbrew  

🎧 Spotify, iTunes & Amazon Podcasts

📩 [email protected]

📍 @helicalbrew everywhere

#HelicalBrew #SystemsOfScience #Biotech #LabAutomation #AI #DrugDiscovery #AntibodyDiscovery #GinkgoDatapoints #GinkgoBioworks #SciencePodcast #Podcast #BiotechOps #laboratory #science #projectmanagement #viralvideo

She walked into one of the most technical industries on the planet and started closing deals.

No lab background. No engineering degree. Just relationships, research, and the confidence to own any room.

De'Nye Hopkins is a Business eDvelopment Account Manager at E Tech Group managing a $2.5M territory — and the founder of Financially Abundant, a platform dedicated to helping women build financial freedom on their own terms.This episode goes deep on the sales philosophy nobody teaches you, what financial freedom actually means, why the world isn't set up for women to be good with money, and the phone call at 23 that started everything.

🎙️ Guest: De'Nye Hopkins — E Tech Group / Financially Abundant

👥 Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

📁 Series: Science Means Business

🔗 Follow De'Nye on LinkedIn: De'Nye Hopkins

🔗 Instagram & TikTok: @DenyeCourtney

🔗 Podcast: Financially Abundant

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold Open — “Shots at 8am?!” 🍻

00:06 Welcome to Science Meets Business

01:03 From Teaching Abroad → Closing Deals

03:44 Guest Intro — De'Nye Hopkins ($2.5M Territory)

04:23 When Did You Stop Apologizing for Your Background?

07:00 Why Being “Non-Technical” Is an Advantage

08:51 Be a Human, Not a Robot

11:49 Learning Automation Without an Engineering Degree

13:51 Selling Technical Work Without Being Technical

15:17 “Be Seedy” — The Sales Mindset That Works

17:41 You’re Being Sold to Every Day

19:15 Death by PowerPoint

20:19 The #1 Sales Mistake

21:04 Think Like a Business Owner

23:40 You’re the CEO of Your Career

25:26 Why Failure Is Required

29:04 Growth vs Plateau — What Actually Matters

32:04 What Engineers Get Wrong About Their Value

33:26 Fear of Change Is Costing Companies

35:03 Sticker Shock — $250K → $1M

40:25 Negotiation Is a Game

42:57 What Financial Freedom Actually Feels Like

46:01 $170K Debt at 23

48:21 Why Money Is Still Taboo

52:06 Why the System Isn’t Built for Women

55:44 No Money = No Options

58:35 Building While Working Full-Time

1:01:44 Avoiding Burnout

1:03:06 Win the Morning, Win the Day

1:04:09 Stop Waiting — Just Start

1:06:38 Pick of the Week — Shelby Sapp

1:08:13 Outro

👉 YouTube:    / @helicalbrew  

🎧 Spotify, iTunes & Amazon Podcasts

📩 [email protected]

📍 @helicalbrew everywhere

#helicalbrew #sciencemeansbusiness #LabAutomation #Biotech #WomenInBusiness #FinancialFreedom #BDLife #SalesTips #Podcast #SciencePodcast #CareerAdvice #Entrepreneurship #ETechGroup

Unfiltered Brew – Podcast Playlist | #HelicalBrew #ViralVideo #Podcast

No guest. No agenda. Just two people in lab automation who haven't talked in a while — and apparently one of them landed in the wrong state.

In this Unfiltered Brew episode your favorites hosts catch up on life, travel chaos, new gear, upcoming guests, and whatever else comes up. Which is a lot.

🎙️ Hosts: Sura Hadi & Mike Ouren

🎧 Subscribe →    / @helicalbrew  

📩 Want to be a guest? [email protected]

🎬 Chapters

00:00 Cold Open — Zombie Apocalypse at O'Hare

00:18 Mixer Boy & New Gear

01:38 Welcome Back

02:00 Vietnamese Iced Coffee & Turkish Coffee Debate

04:00 She Flew Into Ohio & Landed in Kentucky

06:00 No Sun in Cincinnati

07:00 O'Hare: The Pre-Apocalypse Hub

08:00 Chicago Airports Ranked

11:00 SLAS Boston Recap

12:00 Lost Gloves & Cold Weather

14:00 Naming Names — A Seinfeld Moment

16:00 Upcoming Guests & AI Series

18:00 Siri Got Too Casual

21:00 Germany & SLAS Europe Vienna

22:00 Hotel Setups & Bunny Ears

23:00 MacBook Neo & New Laptop Setup

24:00 Merch Update & Where to Find Us

👉 YouTube:    / @helicalbrew  

🎧 Spotify, iTunes & Amazon Podcasts

📩 [email protected]

📍 @helicalbrew everywhere

#HelicalBrew #LabAutomation #Biotech #UnfilteredBrew #Podcast #SciencePodcast #BiotechPodcast #LabLife #PodcastLife #slas2026

🔔 Like, comment, and share if this sparked an idea (or a laugh).

📩 Want to be a guest on the podcast? Send us a message at [email protected].