Neurotech Pub

Welcome back to the Season 2 premiere of Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO Matt Angle sits down with fellow Founder/CEOs Carolina Aguilar, Brian Pepin, and Kunal Ghosh to talk shop about building cutting edge neurotech companies from the ground up. We dive deep into business strategies, the neurotech fundraising landscape, emerging therapeutics, and more. We also provide an insider’s view of the intersections of data, pharma, and med devices that are shaping the future of healthcare. Pour yourself a cold one and settle in!

Check out full video with transcript here: Check out video and a full episode transcript here. 

00:00 | Updates & News 

>> INBRAIN Neuroelectronics raised a $17M Series A 

>> Rune Labs raised a $22.8 Million Series A 

>> Inscopix Launched Cloud-Based Platform for Data Management and Analysis

2:15 | Meet the panel and pick up a book

1:54 | Jester King Brewery  

2:25 | Rune Labs  

2:50 | Neurostimulator for deep brain stimulation therapy  

3:23 | INBRAIN Neuroelectronics  

4:11 | Inscopix  

5:24 | Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'The Dispossessed'  

6:19 | Yuval Noah Harari’s 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'  

6:32 | Daniel G. Miller’s 'The Tree of Knowledge'  

6:40 | Jiddu Krishnamurti’s 'The Book of Life'  

7:34 | Barack Obama’s 'A Promised Land,' ‘Dreams from my Father,’ & ‘The Audacity of Hope’  7:56 | Karl Popper’s 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'

9:25 | Venture Capital in Neurotech

34:44 | Business Strategy in Neurotech

40:32 | Tom Oxley, CEO, Synchron  

43:58 | Dr. Thomas Insel  

44:06 | Mindstrong Mental Health Care  

44:35 | Aduhelm controversy  

52:25 | Galvani Bio  

59:39 | Percept Neurostimulator  

1:00:32 | Neuromodulation and the future of treating brain disease  

1:07:21 | Software as a Medical Device FDA Guidance

1:09:12 | State of Animal Model Systems

1:14:28 | α-Synuclein in Parkinson's Disease  

1:18:01 | Alto Neuroscience  

1:18:36 | Flatiron Foundation  

1:18:45 | Gaurdent Health  

1:19:03 | Melanoma Trends & Rates

1:21:41 | The Pharma-Data-Device Ecosystem 

1:21:42 | Frank Fischer, Chairman of Neuropace  

1:22:28 | Neurotech Pub Season 1, Episode 9  

1:26:35 | Roche acquisition of Flatiron Health & merger with Foundation Medicine   

1:27:12 | Companion Diagnostics  

1:28:29 | Adhulem and PET imaging  

1:29:09 | Resignations at the FDA over Alzheimer’s Drug  

1:29:32 | Derek Lowe’s take on the Aducanumab Approval, FDA Committee Votes, Halting the Aducanumab Trials, & The FDA Advisory Committee Briefing Document on Aducanumab  

1:31:39 | Donanemab receives breakthrough therapy designation in 2021  

1:36:58 | Mapping the Frontal-Vagal Pathway  

1:37:09 | The Human Connectome Project  

1:40:07 | Teal Organizations and Holacracy  

1:41:18 | Society for Neuroscience  

1:44:37 | Affymetrix (Thermo Fisher Scientific)  

1:44:39 | Illumina

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Welcome to the Season 1 finale of Neurotech Pub! 

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, speaks with fellow Neurotech CEOs, Konstantinos Alataris, Frank Fischer, and Marcus Gerhardt. 

"We cover a lot in this discussion, but one of the big themes is how challenging it can be to raise money, to build neuro devices. This episode was originally recorded last winter, and it was instantly one of my favorite episodes. So like a fine wine, I laid it down until the time was right to share it with friends.

Since the episode was recorded, Nesos, Paradromics, and BlackRock all had major funding announcements. Nesos and BlackRock underwent rebranding campaigns, and NeuroPace went public on Nasdaq. This podcast was recorded during a bleak winter, but our optimism proved prescient. The podcast aged well, and now the field is the strongest, best funded, and most exciting that it's ever been. I know you'll enjoy the discussion."
- Matt Angle, CEO, Paradromics

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-9-building-and-funding-neurotech-companies

01:08 | Meeting Heros

08:02 | Company Origins: NeuroPace, Blackrock Neuro, and Nēsos

25:28 | Now vs Then, a Decade of Neurotech Entrepreneurship

1:04:50 | Investor Backing in Neurotech

1:20:44 | BCI Future Is Underway

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, brings together memory-researchers Nanthia Suthana (Assist. Prof. of Neurosurgery and Bioengineering, UCLA School of Medicine) and Gyorgy Buzsaki (Biggs Professor of Neuroscience, NYU School of Medicine), and scientist-entrepreneurs Dan Rizzuto (CEO of Nia Therapeutics) and Nick Halper (Co-Founder of Braingrade) to discuss memory, and memory enhancement applications of BCI.

Like many of you I approached, and to some extent still do approach, the concept of memory enhancement with skepticism. But the conversation today is going to be a grounded one, and I think you will see that there is some real science here that can give us reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of memory and BCI. I hope you enjoy the episode.
- Matt Angle

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-8-the-drinks-bring-back-all-the-memories

00:43 | Guest Introductions

07:38 | Types of Memory

26:47 | Building a Memory Prosthetic

38:05 | Predicting the Future: BCI to Decode/Reconstruct Memory

46:26 | Clinical Evidence of Modulating Memory

1:02:52 | New Approaches For Enhancing Memory

1:17:48 | Closing the Research-Clinical Gap

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, brings together Karen Rommelfanger (Neurotech Ethicist, Strategist, and Associate Professor at Emory), Anna Wexler (Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at UPenn), Ana Maiques (CEO of Neuroelectrics), and Stephanie Naufel Thacker (Technical Program Manager at Facebook Reality Labs). We talk about the role of ethicists in tech. Stephanie announces a new collaboration between Facebook and the Columbia NeuroRights program. We discuss data privacy, and I am mostly listening except for two excursions on 409A valuations and Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-7-neurotechnology-startups-and-the-e-word

00:30 | Guest Introductions
Karen Rommelfanger, PhD
Ana Maiques
Stephanie Naufel Thacker, PhD
Anna Wexler, PhD

01:00 | The E Word

27:29 | Innovative Businesses and Ethicists Collaboration

44:05 | What Neural Data Can Reveal

56:39 | Voices Not in the Room

1:01:18 | Eroding Privilege of Mind-Body Duality

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, discusses the science of olfaction with Andreas Schaefer, Gabe Lavella, and Dima Rinberg. Gabe and Dima also unveil their new startup, Canaery, which uses BCI-enhanced animals to digitize the olfactory world.
 
Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-6-cyborgs-that-smell

00:10 | Guest Introductions

00:43 | What They Wanted to Be When They Were 8 Years Old

09:21 | What You Don't Know About Olfaction That You Should 

16:17 | Dimensionality in Olfactory Space

22:26 | Architecture of the Olfactory System

31:24 | Natural and Artificial Olfaction

38:19 | State of the Art of Olfaction Neural Recording Modalities

46:21 | Engineered Olfactory Receptors

51:32 | Implications of High Data-Rate Olfactory BCI

1:06:19 | Olfaction Resources

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, discusses ethical considerations around brain-computer interfaces. Our guests are Tim Brown, Leigh Hochberg, Sydney Cash, and Amanda Pustilnik. A central theme in the discussions will be how neuroethics differ from traditional medical ethics or bioethics and what we can draw from other fields and experiences to prepare for a world where BCI is more prevalent and more powerful.

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-5-a-lawyer-a-philosopher-and-two-neurologists-walk-into-a-bar

00:15 | Guest Introductions
Amanda Pustilnik at Harvard Law

Dr. Tim Brown at University of Washington

Dr. Leigh Hochberg and Braingate

Dr. Syd Cash's Cortical Physiology Lab at MGH

01:00 | Innately-Held Unproven Moral Beliefs

01:00 | Neuroethics: A Field of Its Own

06:57 | Device vs Pharmacological Brain Therapies

21:01 | When Patients and Clinicians Don't See Eye-to-Eye

41:11 | Researchers' Burden in Equitable BCI Dissemination

51:05 | Data and Privacy in a BCI World

1:06:04 | Legal Brain Data Protections, or Lack Thereof

1:22:20 | Should BCI Eradicate Disability

1:35:36 | Balancing Near-Term Utility and Long-Term Harms

Neurotech Pub is a podcast from Paradromics Inc, that features heavy-hitters from academia and industry in the field of Neurotech. But unlike a traditional panel, we bring you conversations that would normally happen after the conference, while unwinding at the pub. We hope you have enjoyed this discussion, for more please checkout our other episodes.

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, Vikash Gilja reprises his role as Vikash Gilja. We are also joined by Konrad Kording, Chethan Pandarinath, and Carsen Stringer. We talk about how dimensionality reduction is used to better understand large scale neural recordings. This episode is fairly technical, but it contains many great references if you are interested in learning more. We open with a brief explainer video by Paradromics’ own Aditya Singh.

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-4-trading-spaces-dimensionality-reduction-for-neural-recordings

00:40 | Dimensionality Intro

04:42 | Podcast Start

07:50 | Janelia Research Campus

08:56 | Translational Neuroengineering Lab

09:35 | Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab

10:10 | Shenoy Lab

12:00 | Deep Brain Stimulation

12:57 | Chethan’s work on retinal prosthetics

15:00 | Immunology

15:20 | Jonathan Ruben

15:30 | Byron Yu

15:41 | Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit

18:00 | Joshua Tenenbaum

18:30 | Kording Lab at UPenn

18:46 | Neuromatch Academy

19:47 | Neuromatch Academy Q&A

21:21 | Dimensionality reduction for neural recordings

26:22 | The Curse of Dimensionality

30:11 | Principal Component Analysis

32:20 | Neural Firing as a Poisson Process

33:13 | Shared Variance Component Analysis

35:18 | Cross validation in large scale recording

38:29 | A theory of multineuronal dimensionality

39:10 | Random projections explained with visuals

42:24 | Correcting a reductionist bias

48:30 | Noise Correlations

49:35 | More on Noise Correlations

57:40 | LFADS

01:01:51 | What is a stationary process?

01:06:02 | Inferring single-trial neural population dynamics

01:06:46 | Task Specificity

01:07:28 | Lee Miller

01:08:18 | “I don’t know, I might be wrong”

01:13:16 | Neural Constraints on Learning

01:15:00 | A recent exciting paper from Yu and Batista Labs

01:19:01 | Hume on Causation

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, speaks with Stuart Cogan, Vanessa Tolosa, Thomas Stieglitz, and Loren Rieth about how to protect neural implants from the harsh environment of the body. This discussion is all about longevity and endurance, and, fittingly, it’s almost 2 hours long. Loren leaves early for a faculty meeting--wonder if his colleagues know that he came straight from the pub?

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-3-connectors-cans-and-coatings

03:27 | UTD Neural Interfaces Lab

03:39 | EIC Labs

03:59 | Cogan’s highly-cited review paper

04:16 | Lawrence Livermore National Lab

04:56 | Rieth Lab at the Feinstein Institute

05:18 | Loren’s work with the Utah Array

05:39 | Human peripheral nerve stimulation

05:58 | Preclinical Vegus Nerve stimulation

06:11 | Stieglitz Lab

06:22 | Flexible Electrodes

06:41 | Long Lasting Electrodes

07:41 | Jerry Loeb: Materials Legend

08:29 | Phil Troyk

09:24 | North American Neuromodulation Society

10:44 | Melosh Lab at Stanford

12:53 | Packaging Development

17:02 | Helium Leak Test

19:01  | Work by Pancrazio

21:34 | Finetech-Brindley Stimulator

29:05 | Emerging technology @ University of Sydney

33:10 | Calvin and Hobbes

34:12 | Revolutionizing Prosthetics

35:00 | Canned Utah Array

35:35 | Flip-chip connecting

36:04 | Nick Donaldson: Mr. Clean

36:47 | Failure mode analysis

36:55 | Scaling up the Utah Array

37:54 | DARPA’s NESD Program

38:28 | High density Utah Array

39:52 | The Michigan Probe

40:00 | Vanessa’s work with Loren Frank

42:05 | Parylene C encapsulation

42:56 | Thin film

44:15 | Clean rooms

46:50 | NeuroRoots

47:28| Test structures

49:17 | Implant size

50:35 | Testing strategies

52:40 | NeuroNexus

53:59 | Tissue response studies

54:27 | Cogan Lab’s work on Silicon Carbide

56:10 | DARPA’s HAPTIX Program

56:30 | Reactive Accelerated Aging (RAA)

58:15 | RAA with hydrogen peroxide

58:55 | Deep Brain Stimulation

01:02:55 | Hydrolysis

01:09:00 | Silicon Carbide device

01:10:26 | Neuropixels collaboration

01:19:05 | Atomic Layer Deposition

01:26:55 | Focused research orgs

01:36:14 | Second Sight

01:43:48 | Search for Paradise by Jens Naumaunn

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Welcome back to Neurotech Pub!

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, speaks with Beata Jarosiewicz, Vikash Gilja, Sergey Stavisky, and Frank Willett about how brain computer interfaces can be used to restore communication in patients with tetraplegia. They take a deep dive into state of the art thought-to-text technology compared with the current state of speech decoding.

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-2-what-weve-got-here-is-failure-to-communicate

1:49 Braingate Clinical Trial Program |
2:32 Beata’s New Job at Neuralink |
2:43 Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory |
2:53 Leigh Hochberg |
3:05 Andy Schwartz |
5:14 2020 BCI Award|
8:44 Subjective Experience of Control |
10:39 Closed Loop Calibration |
12:08 Animal Models for Prosthesis Development |
14:21 Keyboard Optimization |
15:33 Tablet PC Control Papers | See Also |
16:01 Palm Pilot Graffiti |
16:24 Frank’s Preprint on Handwriting |
17:40 Video Abstract on Frank’s Work |
21:38 Penfield and Boldrey 1937 |
22:04 A Quick, Lay Summary of Penfield’s Work |
24:21 Hand Knob |
26:43 Output-Null Neural State Space Dimensions |
34:23 Matt Kaufman’s Work |
38:29 Vikash’s work with Paul Nuyujukian |
39:07 Mark Churchland |
42:01 Review Paper by Eb Fetz |
44:18 Chang Lab at UCSF |
44:46 Robert Knight’s Group on Speech Decoding | Imagined Speech |
50:38 Speech Decoding in Hand Knob |
50:55 Phoneme Decoding |
52:48 Auditory Decoding in NHPs |
54:58 Moses et al., 2019|
55:12 Makin et al., 2020 |
1:07:11 Nir’s Paper on Error Signals |

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Welcome to Neurotech Pub, hosted by Paradromics Inc and SynBioBeta.

In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO, Matt Angle, speaks with Tim Harris, Cindy Chestek, and Philip "Flip" Sabes about the big programmatic challenges in neurotechnology. We talk about the differences between labs, startups, and large research consortia. We discuss the difference between neuroscience and neuroengineering, and Tim explains how one of the biggest breakthroughs in neurophysiology was the product of….lawyers.

Check out full video with transcript here: https://www.paradromics.com/podcast/neurotech-pub-episode-1-biologists-engineers-and-lawyers

2:04 Jester King Brewery, Dripping Springs, TX |
3:03 Bell Labs |
7:31  Michael Jordan |
9:05 Krishna Shenoy and Reid Harrison |
9:49 Stevenson's Law |
12:10 The Utah Array |
13:43 Neuropixels |
14:06 Dendrites by Nelson Sprusten, Greg Stuart, and Michael Häusser |
24:47 Low-power neural signal processing by Chestek Lab |
26:54 Spike sorting, Dimensionality, and Decoding |
27:30 Neural Task Complexity |
28:43 A 16-beam system that records ~1,000 neurons @ ~10 Hz |
32:16 The Braingate clinical trials |
34:15 Using Muscles as Bioelectronic Amplifiers in Peripheral Nerve Applications |
35:28 Jack Judy, University of Florida |
37:59 Touch Sensation |
38:06 DARPA HAPTIX Program |
39:22 Muscle Taco |
41:22 Janelia Research Campus |
45:59 Steliglitz Lab |
50:50 Power Consumption |
54:31 Eddie Chang and Chang Lab |
55:20 Buzsaki Paper |
55:45 BioRxiv pre-print on the Paradromics Argo System |
56:16 NeuroGrid: Recording Action Potentials from the Surface of the Brain |
1:01:30 Physical Principles for Scalable Neural Recording |
1:02:03 Pierebone lab’s work with DARPA |
1:04:18 Carbon Fiber Ultramicroelectrodes |
1:05:05 IMEC work with nanolaminate |
1:05:05 Picosun and Brown University |
1:05:16 Stuart Cogan |
1:05:18 Michel Maharbiz |
1:07: 08 Takashi Kozai and Daryl Kipke |
1:09:44 Utah Array, Blackrock Microsystems |
1:12:29 DBS for Depression |
1:18:37 The Sewing Machine |
1:22:32 Paradromics Laser Surgical Tool |
1:22:42 Recent Papers from Schaefer and Melosh Group |
1:23:46 Tim Gardner's work on Carbon Fiber Arrays |
1:23:54 Mechanics of Microwire Penetration |
1:25:38 FDA scientists work on Accelerated Aging | 

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