SKRAPS: Deep Dive

We try to capture myriad voices on Skraps, but this one is legendary. Truly. If you don't trust us, we have a few testimonials to prove it. Dr. Robert Hamlin is a DVM and Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University (please don't get Arun started on his Buckeyes) and he knows more about the heart (animals and humans) than any single person has a right to.

We dive into a fan favorite of his distinguished lectures - "'Slightly' Modified, Giraffes Would Make Great Fighter Pilots, and Bats, Great Cardiologists ... and Please Give Me a Heart That's Part Guinea Pig, Part Spider, Part Rat, and Part Goat ... or It's Lucky We're So Smart!" as well as his role in making sure that every drug you take is safe. 

You can also learn about the most innovative use of a ball point pen - ever.

It was a genuine honor to spend time with this remarkable man.

TK Kozai is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. You can check out his prolific research publications here, but don't miss out on the story behind the investigator as we take on the peer-review process, lab culture and contracts (get that heart rate up!), being an outsider to both of your own cultures, sleep and exercise, and InequalityInSTEM (which his wife aptly points out should be STEAM!) an effort driven by Dawn Taylor that TK whole-heartedly endorses.

Believe me when I tell you, you'll understand the "Oh, no he didn't" when you hear this episode of SKRAPS. 

"Two Virginians and an immigrant walk into a room

"Diametrically opposed
Foes

"They emerge with a compromise
Having open doors that were previously closed
Bros

"The immigrant emerges with unprecedented financial power
A system he can shape however he wants
The Virginians emerge with the nation's capital
And here's the pièce de résistance

"No one else was in the room where it happened..."

Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" may be dark on Broadway for now, but his light is shining brightly in people like Juan-Pablo Mas, a founding partner of Action Potential Venture Capital and founding board member of LatinxVC.

Arun and JoJo speak with Juan-Pablo about each of the portfolio companies funded by APVC (Axon Therapies, Cala Health, CVRx, EXO, Neuspera, Presidio Medical, Saluda Medical, and SetPoint Medical) and then dive head-long into what it's like to be a Puerto Rican American influencing the future of medicine, exploring what it took to get there, and what he'll do now that he as arrived. Answer: He's not just talking about it - "Hire someone, mentor someone, spotlight someone." Check. Check. Check. 

Arun and JoJo have a candid chat with Anil Achyuta - a founding member of TDK Ventures and recently ranked as #2 of the Global Corporate Venturing's Rising Stars of 2021- and yes, you'll get to hear how he feels about that. 

You'll also get to hear about what's in a name? To some folks, an awful lot - to others, not so much. Have a listen and find out what it's like to fit into a new culture - how you need to adapt and how others should adapt to you. 

We hear so much about diversity and inclusion these days, but we don't hear as much about what putting that into action looks like. 

Sometimes we all just have to laugh at ourselves - and there's no shortage of that here. 

How exactly do you get your foot in the door in digital health? I had a hunch you'd be asking that. And so did Carolyn Casterton, engineer, business person, and founder of Healthtech Hunches - a resource dedicated to learning and sharing about life in the digital health careers.

Casterton worked her way through the bigs (Edwards Lifesciences, Boston Scientific, Stryker, and Verily) and picked up a thing or two along the way. She's broken the land-speed record in medical device product development, built successful teams across continents, worked with Google, Verily and others to scale COVID testing sites in a pinch (entirely online, too), and is ready, willing, and able to share those lessons with you. She has also recruited some other impressive leaders to have a little fireside chat with you, too. 

She has scaled the mountain - and now she's giving you the Cliff's notes (for you youngsters out there - those are basically cheat-codes) on how to do it yourself. 

Join us as we talk to Professor Lynne Carpenter-Boggs about the new trends in final remains disposal - human composting (or more tactfully called Natural Organic Reduction). If you've tried to live a life of sustainability, why stop there? Why not let your final act of earthly love be 1.4 tons less carbon than cremation or burial?

Sound crazy? It is. It's crazy cool. 

Carpenter-Boggs is a professor at Washington State University's Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Her research is centered on sustainable and organic agriculture and is the foundation of the latest advances in NOR. 

Have you ever wondered or seen someone and thought they could be a psychopath or have psychopathic tendencies? What if you found out if you really had the all the attributes of being a psychopath?

Does it make you question everything you have experienced and have been trhough wondering what if you had flipped and why you hadn't flipped yet?

This is exactly what happened to our guest., Dr. James Fallon. His journey, chronicled in the book (Link Here) outlines and we had a fantastic conversation with him. Listen in and find out about this stellar scientist and a great story teller. 

Join Dr. Hubert Lim for a fantastic virtual  fire-side chat where he talks about how his love for biomedical engineering starts off with wanting to understand music preferences a.la Napster, then branching to auditory implants, invasive and non-invasive neuromodulation. We talk about his fantastic journey into figuring out a treatment for Tinnitus via his company, Neuromod Devices. They published a fantastic study by performing bi-modal stimulation of the brain using tongue stimulation and sound to treat Tinnitus. 

He also recounts how a lot of his sojourn into immune-modulation with his company Second Wave was an accident and luck (we call it hardwork and being tuned to opportunities). 

Resources: 

1. Link to Tinnitus Trial Data: https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/564/eabb2830.short
2. Full PDF copy at our blog post for this episode on www.skrapsofbrilliance.com
3. Hubert's team tribute to Doug Weber that he alludes to:  https://youtu.be/sVPCe8Y5EnM

It's true. You can run but you cannot hide. Such is the power behind Alissa's SARS-CoV-2 illustration. As a wannabe vet and an artist who took up medical illustrations as a career, Alissa's career has surely been an unusual one. She has mastered the art of pushing beauty and uncovering of sense of awe and fear into people's minds with her illustrations of Zika, Ebola and now infamous - SARS-Cov-2. 

Some incredible resources: 

• Alissa's Twitter: https://twitter.com/eckmulti
• Lessons that Alissa knew and used but was described to the world in this piece: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-unveiled.html
• CDC's antibiotic resistance information resource:  https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest-threats.html

• Have you ever realized that a neuro-surgeon could be faced with an interesting conundrum? The very patient that gave him consent might ask him to stop doing what he is doing when he is inserting an electrode to treat depression. Does the surgeon do what the patient says on table or does he work off the informed consent form that the patient signed? 
• What if, some of the data that is currently mined is used to inform a third observer of the state of mind? What if, this data can be used for purposes other than to treat the patient from whom it was obtained from? 
• Who does this data belong to? 
• Are regulations evolving at the same speed as the technology? Are the regulators even aware of the type of future implications of such data? 

In a world where "your"data is commoditized, how willing should one be to provide access to their deeper brain activities? Who should benefit? Get an account for what is here and now with Dr. Paul Ford and Dr. Lauren Sankary, but we go into areas that we will revisit with them in the future.