The Inventivity Pod

Alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency, a genetic disorder, is a common factor in lung diseases like COPD and emphysema. Dr. Mark Brantly’s research examines how AAT interacts with environmental factors that trigger the disorders. His findings are important because many physicians remain unaware of the genetic background of the diseases they treat.  Much of Brantly’s work has been funded by University of Florida royalties derived from Gatorade, the brainchild of Robert Cade.   

Alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency, a genetic disorder, is a common factor in lung diseases like COPD and emphysema. Dr. Mark Brantly’s research examines how AAT interacts with environmental factors that trigger the disorders. His findings are important because many physicians remain unaware of the genetic background of the diseases they treat.  Much of Brantly’s work has been funded by University of Florida royalties derived from Gatorade, the brainchild of Robert Cade.   

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Orphan diseases. What are they, why should we care? And who is out there trying to cure them? I’m your host, Richard Miles and today we’ll be talking about one such disease with Dr. Mark Brantly, a professor of medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Welcome to Radio Cade, Dr. Brantly.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 0:54

Thank you, Richard.

Richard Miles: 0:55

Okay if I call you Mark?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 0:56

Absolutely.

Richard Miles: 0:57

Good, okay. So your research focuses on a condition called Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency. Did I say that correctly?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 1:05

Absolutely.

Richard Miles: 1:05

Okay, good. So what does that mean exactly? Who gets AAT and what is actually going on inside the body?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 1:12

Well, so Alpha Antitrypsin Deficiency is a somewhat rare genetic disorder that is associated with a increased risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or pretty bad lung disease, and also liver disease, particularly in children and as well adults, Alpha Antitrypsin Deficiency is relatively common in the Caucasian population. And in about one in hundred individuals have at least one abnormal gene, people that have two copies is about one in 3 000 people. So in the United States, there’s up to one and a hundred thousand individuals that have Alpha Antitrypsin Deficiency.

Richard Miles: 1:48

So this is actually much more common than I thought. I thought this was an extremely rare condition, but it sounds like this is much more common.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 1:55

That’s absolutely correct. And indeed it is the most common genetic cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema in the United States.

Richard Miles: 2:03

So if I understand correctly though, by itself, is it going to necessarily cause lung cancer having the deficiency will everyone with AAT eventually get lung cancer or are there other factors involved?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 2:14

Right. So they don’t get lung cancer. They actually get destructive lung disease or obstructive lung disease, but you’re absolutely correct. Not everybody develops lung disease from alpha antitrypsin deficiency. And indeed there’s a very strong environmental component. I have patients that come see me that are 80 years old and their biggest complaint is they can’t dance as fast as they used to. However, if you smoke or you’re exposed to environmental toxins, particularly aerosol wise, you can develop rapidly progressive obstructive lung disease and then become extremely short of breath from it.

Richard Miles: 2:47

Is this something that is connected with age at all? Or it’s just something that if you have the deficiency, you’ve got it from birth or do you not develop it until later on?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 2:55

So you have the genes that predispose you, it from the beginning, you were inherited from both your mom and your dad. However, because of the environmental component, it’s not typically seen in children except in the manifestation of the liver disease and indeed Alpha Antitrypsin Deficiency related liver disease in children is the second, most common reason for liver transplants in the United States for the lung disease that typically takes time and exposure to toxins before that develops. And typically when individuals start smoking within 10 years, they have significant lung disease. And unfortunately, people that smoke oftentimes shorten their life by up to 20 to 30 years.

Richard Miles: 3:37

Before you started doing research on Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency, was anyone else studying this or did you already kind of know what you’re looking for? Or how did you arrive at this?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 3:48

I had the good fortune of studying genetics when I was in college with an incredible person, Margaret Menzel at Florida State University, who really got me interested in genetic diseases in general and genes in particular. And when I was on house officer in , in, during my training, I came across a patient that was aged 35 that had devastating emphysema. And as it turns out that patient had Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency, I was absolutely fascinated by this genetic disease at that point, and really decided almost at that point that I wanted to make that focus of my research career.

Richard Miles: 4:23

For folks who are not medical researchers, including me funding is always a tough issue, right? I mean, if you’re a researcher, you could have a great idea, but you’ve got to get that approved and funded, right. Wanting to pay your own salary. And then presumably a team that’s going to help you in lab time and all that. Tell us about the funding process. How does that even start? If you’ve got something you want to study.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 4:43

The funding process is tricky. Particularly oftentimes ideas, new ideas are not particularly exciting to reviewers in the such . And so you have to convince them. And those reviewers also hold the strings to the purses . As far as grant funding. From that standpoint, I think most investigators start with very small grants, particularly foundations in the such to pedal ideas that they have and then get small amounts of money. They use that small amounts of money to then build upon the work they have and basically the go to larger and larger grants that are available, particularly the top grants, which are federal grants or an NIH grants for biomedical research from that standpoint. So it’s rare for people to start their career and get grants straight away. And oftentimes people will partner with established investigators that say, listen, I have a good idea. Can you help me develop this? And that really is the key component of mentorship and developing scientists as well, because oftentimes when you work with somebody that believes in you and help support you, you can get to that stage of actually getting your own independent funding.

Richard Miles: 5:51

So there’s actually a kind of a cool connection with Gatorade with the AAT research, right? And that some of the funds were provided by a fund that the college of medicine has funded by Gatorade royalties . Can you tell us something about that process?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 6:05

I mean, you know, Gatorade affect me from the very beginning. I spent 16 years at the national institutes of health in Bethesda, Maryland doing research on Alpha One. And then basically the University of Florida recruited me to come here and the money to actually help me start my research program here was provided by Gatorade funds. And I was incredibly grateful to have those funds and it was allowed to basically transfer my work, which was funded by the NIH when I was there to basically start building up my grant portfolio to do this research. If I hadn’t had Gatorade, I’m not sure that I’d be here today.

Richard Miles: 6:40

We love to hear that the at the Cade Museum you have since moved on or you’ve added on, I guess, other research topics to your portfolio and in one of those sounds like it has a, or does have a commercial potential. Tell us about that new research. And then we’ll talk a little bit about kind of your path to market.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 6:57

Sure. So one of the huge issues about Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency, is that unfortunately patients are typically not diagnosed. If you could imagine an iceberg, the people have been diagnosed as just the tip, whereas the undiagnosis this huge group of people that have not been identified, there are a number of reasons why that occurs. One is that the vast majority of physicians out there have never been trained in genetic medicine. Therefore they don’t think about genetic diseases being part of the patients that they see. The other thing is there hasn’t been great diagnostic testing to identify individuals with Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency. And indeed in several studies up to seven physicians a re required for the diagnosis of Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency and so patients going from one physician to the other, and then finally the diagnosis is made. So to increase the possibility of b eing diagnosed, we’ve done a number of different things, pu t a p articularly partnering with the Alpha One foundation, which is a patient organization that has been very supportive of my career as well, developing educational materials for both patients and doctors has been very, very helpful. And then my laboratory developed an easy to use blood collection system in which we can do the diagnosis off the small drops of blood in the office. The patient comes in the doctor, pricks his finger and sent it to the laboratory.

Richard Miles: 8:20

And with that, you’d be able to make a diagnosis.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 8:23

Yeah, so the technology that allows us to do this is basically predominantly DNA based. These are mutations in the gene and are located on the chromosome 14, which is one of the major chromosomes in our gene makeup, we basically construct segments of DNA that replicate either the mutation or normal. And we then basically take a punter and they extract the blood from those filter papers t hen on that card and then isolate the DNA from that and then use those genetic sequences basically probe for the abnormal mutations.

Richard Miles: 8:59

So it sounds relatively simple, but as you know, is that a class one medical device by FDA standards or what category does that fit in? But regardless, I imagine a tough process to get FDA approval.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 9:10

Absolutely. And not only does it require FDA approval, but it also requires state licensing as well because we test all over the United States and several States have their own licensing programs. We basically have to get licensed in all 50 States in the United States. So there are many steps in proving that this assay is safe and effective to use on patients that involves validation of the technology. And there’s this relatively complex process to do that devising standard operating procedures so that everything is done officially. And according to the rules that each of the States and also the clinical laboratory enforcement act follow, then gearing up and being able to do many tests simultaneously.

Richard Miles: 9:55

So that’s lots and lots of hurdles to clear, which it sounds like you’ve already done next . You , you do have a company it’s already producing these tasks, selling them, and you’ve diagnosed a lot of patients worldwide. And this is a story we’ve heard often on Radio Cade in which someone who starts or is in the academic field, develops an idea, takes it to market forms, a small company. And it’s a challenge, right? Because you’re in a different world, all of a sudden then the world of academia, what has been your experience with that? The highs and lows of taking this research that you’ve spent the majority of your career on. And now moving that into the market.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 10:28

I have to say that the technology was easy compared to that step . In a lot of ways, I was not trained as a businessman and understanding all the stock market and equity buyers and investors, and that kind of stuff was totally new to me from this. And I had to have a crash course in it. And there were a number of hard knocks associated with it as well, including working with people that perhaps was more interested in the money than the patient aspect, which of course, as a physician, I’m most focused on from that standpoint, making it easy to use test , to help people from that standpoint. But there are market realities and we have to deal with those and also constructing the company and buying the land and building the laboratory were really tricky things to do. Fortunately, I had a partner to help me with some of the business aspects, but both of us were just from academia. And so we learned on the fly, how to do this,

Richard Miles: 11:19

Are you and the partner CEO’s are sorta co-running this, or do you have a business person as a CEO now? And you’re just so you can go back to research.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 11:28

So right now I am the medical director of the program and, and responsible for basically all the testing programs. My partner helps with the business aspects of it. But since we’ve expanded quite a bit, we’re actually hiring a business manager soon to help us to do the job better from that standpoint.

Richard Miles: 11:44

And you said you’re doing production, the tests already out in Alachua, near Gainesville?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 11:49

Yeah, so we , um, just outside of Progress Park, we renovated a building that was actually an old printing shop and made it into a laboratory. And it has about 8,000 square feet. We have 12 employees and it’s really been a lot of fun, but challenging to make things work from that standpoint and particularly this concept of service and having clients and that kind of stuff is pretty new to an academic researcher in a lot of ways.

Richard Miles: 12:13

And your customers are who? Are hospitals or individual physicians ?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 12:17

Our customers are, we have a pharmaceutical company, which basically distributes our test kits and our customers are both the pharmaceutical company and the physicians that send in the test to us from that standpoint.

Richard Miles: 12:30

Mark , let’s switch up here and talk about you, your personal background and let’s move pre academic career. Where were you born? Were you raised, what did your parents do for living and , and sort of when did that moment hit that you said, I know I want to be a research scientist if ever.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 12:46

I think back a long time. So I was born in Orlando. I’m a Florida boy. My father was in the air force. We moved around every three years, pretty much all through high school. From that standpoint, my father was an air force officer. Eventually he worked his way up from being an airman and basically went into college on the GI bill. This is my third time back to Gainesville.

Richard Miles: 13:07

Really?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 13:08

My father came here,

Richard Miles: 13:09

You keep trying to escape.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 13:10

Yeah, it’s exactly right. It has a draw to it, my father taught ROTC and in fact, taught Steve Spurrier during those times back in the sixties and the Vietnam era, we moved away and then came back again. I came back from medical school in the early 1970s, and then I returned again about 21 years ago when I was recruited out of the NIH by the University of Florida to start a big research program.

Richard Miles: 13:37

I remember in your bio, did you go to Westwood Middle School?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 13:41

I did.

Richard Miles: 13:42

So same here. Okay. Mini reunion. I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody who went to Westwood Middle School, even in Gainesville. So.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 13:50

And indeed I went to GHS and Tom petty was a senior when I was a freshman, so,

Richard Miles: 13:55

So truly clearly distinguished cohort.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 13:58

Right, right. Truly. I have Gainesville in my blood. And actually when we moved from Washington D.C. to here to raise our children, it was just a wonderful environment to raise children in.

Richard Miles: 14:08

And it must have been nice being back in a place that you had roots or at least memories of it .

Dr. Mark Brantly: 14:12

Yeah, absolutely. Gainesville is a wonderful town in many different ways. I’d had changed a whole lot and over the years from that standpoint, but it remains a wonderful place to live. And I think that the small town thing is actually a really good thing.

Richard Miles: 14:26

And growing up as a student, were you always a good student?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 14:30

Absolutely not.

Richard Miles: 14:31

You weren’t? Okay. And why not? How bad a student were you Mark?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 14:35

Well, I mean, I think in high school I was a C and B student. When I got to college, I wasn’t really even prepared. I, it really got a couple of D’s when I was a freshman . And then all of a sudden I sort of figured it out. Part of it had to do with a couple different things. One is that as a f reshmen, I got into the wrong orientation group. I wanted to be an adventure, a Marine biologist, but I got into this orientation group pre-medical and I had this remarkable individual, a guy named Bud B eringer who’s passed away since then. I t said how wonderful it is to be a physician and a healer. And I said, Oh my gosh, I love this idea. I think this puts things together for me. And so I started working harder and actually started getting lots of good grades and applied for medical school.

Richard Miles: 15:21

And this is your first year of college?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 15:24

Yeah . Yeah. So it was my first year of college, but I wasn’t very, very well prepared again because I hadn’t been working very hard.

Richard Miles: 15:30

So I take it like in high school, you didn’t either like, or do particularly well in biology or chemistry or any of that.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 15:36

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It interesting though . And I have to say, in retrospect, I realized that I always loved science. I was a camera assistant and a dissection kit kid, and I was always out looking at the moon and stars and that kind of stuff. And I really had to absorb my love of science to really start to integrate that with my idea of being a physician as well. And I think by the time I arrived in medical school, I was blessed with some incredible mentors, including Bob Cade , Waldo Fisher , and others who basically clearly love science, but also love taking care of patients. And I think with those great examples, I began my idea of being a physician scientist began to bud.

Richard Miles: 16:20

Right. So it sounds like as soon as you kind of recognized or appreciated , I guess the healing aspect right? Of the science. So it’s not just sort of science for science’s sake, you’re actually helping people and doing all this hard work in the lab.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 16:33

That’s absolutely right. That was the thing that clicked for me in a lot of ways. And it made my love of science and connecting it with healing, very important aspect of my life and something I really want to pursue.

Richard Miles: 16:45

I imagine you are probably asked to speak from time to time to maybe kids or youth groups or in some sort of mentorship capacity. If you had that, if you haven’t had that opportunity and you did, what would you say to say a group of ninth graders or even 12th graders? That haven’t figured out what they want to do in life. Would you make a pitch for going straight into medicine for instance, or what would your advice to those sort of people?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 17:10

I think the past can be many fold. I think that advice to young people, as I give to my children is that number one, to be successful, you have to marry two things, your passion and your skill as you grow, you will become good at certain things. And it’s great to marry that passion for those things, with your plan for your career. From that standpoint, the other thing is I’ve met many smart people in my lifetime. I’ve met Nobel prize winners. I’ve met many people that were so bright, but those people weren’t successful because they were bright. They were successful because they worked really hard. They didn’t give up, they kept trying, they had faith in themselves. And most importantly, they had good mentors that supported them. And those mentors come in all shapes, sizes and colors. So we have to look for the right mentor when you find those people listen to them carefully.

Richard Miles: 18:04

That’s great advice. It reminds me a little bit of the business book. Good to great. I think Jim Collins and he has this Venn diagram and it’s like, one circle is the stuff you’re passionate or enthusiastic about a nd o ther circle is stuff you’re good at. And then the third circle is the stuff that people w ill actually pay you for. So where a re those three intersect? That’s where you should logically put your career, w here the other things could support hobbies or things like that. But yeah, it’s particularly good to be good at the things you’re enthusiastic about. Otherwise you might not find an employer out there. Y eah.

Dr. Mark Brantly: 18:35

Creative people oftentimes have many different pursuits.

Richard Miles: 18:38

That’s a very good observation. You knew Bob Cade and you probably knew that he was a musician and he liked growing roses and collecting cars and everything. Do you have any artistic or off-beat hobbies outside of science?

Dr. Mark Brantly: 18:49

I have to say that my hobbies are mostly outdoors. I love hiking and climbing mountains and swimming and being at the beach and the such. And I also like reading and I like writing a lot as well.

Richard Miles: 19:04

So Mark , thank you very much for being on Radio Cade. Uh , it’s fascinating hearing your continuing journey best of luck with your company. It sounds like it’s poised for success. And we look forward to having you back on the show. Thank you very much. I’m Richard Miles

Outro: 19:20

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Can video games be used for education? Co-host James Di Virgilio puts that question to Lindsey Tropf, founder and CEO of Immersed Games. Unlike other educational software, Immersed Games uses online, multi-player experiences to teach things like STEM skills to middle-schoolers. Eventually, the programs can be customized by individual teachers to achieve their specific learning goals. A gamer herself, Lindsey became an “accidental” entrepreneur while earning her PhD in education.  

Dr. Christian Jobin, a professor of medicine, is an expert on how microorganisms behave in the intestine. When they behave badly, this can lead to conditions like inflammatory bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer. “Academically I wasn’t very gifted,” Jobin says, and at first he didn’t have the grades to get into college. Instead, he went to a community college and trained as a technician, before eventually getting a PhD in Microbiology. Among other bits of wisdom, Jobin advises prospective researchers to “have fun.”  

Dr. Christian Jobin, a professor of medicine, is an expert on how microorganisms behave in the intestine. When they behave badly, this can lead to conditions like inflammatory bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer. “Academically I wasn’t very gifted,” Jobin says, and at first he didn’t have the grades to get into college. Instead, he went to a community college and trained as a technician, before eventually getting a PhD in Microbiology. Among other bits of wisdom, Jobin advises prospective researchers to “have fun.”  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Gut instinct, guts and glory. Go with your gut. I’m your host, Richard Miles. And today we’ll be talking about the gut with Dr. Christian Jobin, a Gatorade trust professor of medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Welcome to the show Dr. Jobin.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 0:52

Richard. Thank you for having me.

Richard Miles: 0:53

So mind if I call you Christian or Christian? Okay, great. So before we talk about the research, let’s talk a little bit about your title. What exactly is a Gatorade trust professor?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 1:05

Well, the Gatorade trust professor was born, I guess, from the discovery of Robert Cade an associate of Gatorade drinks. So portion of the process royalty goes through a university, especially the department of medicine and they use it for research and they wanted to support me for years to come to continue my research. It was a great honor to have that as salary support. It’s not the money research, it’s just support salary so that when I get grants, I could divert this money to support my staff and not me. So it’s a great tool to have freedom of doing research.

Richard Miles: 1:37

Right. So it acts a little bit like seed funding covers your costs and that thereby makes other grants more useful right?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 1:45

It gives you a little bit more room to breathe and your research enterprise, because you have money.

Richard Miles: 1:50

Okay. So now let’s talk about your research. And from what I understand, it, it focuses on host, microbe interaction, the intestine, and especially how disrupted interactions cause problems such as inflammatory bowel disease and certain types of cancer. So can you break that down for us? Tell us what does that mean? You know, what are hosts? What are microbes and how are they supposed to act in the intestine? And what’s a normal intervention?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 2:14

Well, Richard, as you may know, and your listeners, we are almost born germ-free, which is without any bacterial viruses, we evolve in a terrible from a mother. And as we go through the birth canal, we got colonized by bacteria, almost instantaneously. So we have microorganism that start to colonize inside our bodies . And one of the big p lace that these m icroorganism a re going is in the a ntis time. So we c alled that in microbiota and these assembled of microbes are very important for life. So we acquired them as we h ave b orn and we keep them on until we die. And they are very important to inform us of the environment, either by the diet we eat, the stress and medication, these microbes react to that, and they are either helping you evolve in the health, or they may be on the bad side of it and then could cause disease. So it’s a very important set of microorganism that we need to care so that the host is us human and the bacteria, or the microbiota is the assemble of microorganism.

Richard Miles: 3:17

So just to make sure I have this correct, this starts from the minute we’re born, or even before we are born?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 3:22

Well , this is contentious whether or not it started before. And it’s people that think I’m amniotic fluid has some macro organism. It’s not clear. So I won’t go there because we may have an argument. But for sure, when we are born through either C-section or birth canal, C-section, you will have microbes from the skin of the mother. And those are different , uh , birth canal. You won’t have the microbes from the vaginal biota, and then you are seeded. And it’s a very simple seeding, very few microorganism. And as you evolve through your childhood, up until age three, you’re going to collect a lot of microorganism. And when you reach three years old, then you get pretty much stable on this. You have exposure to repetitive antibiotics as you’re young and sick, that will disrupt your biota. But usually yet from three years of age, you will have a stable, fully mature set of microorganism that he acquired through exposure with the environment or the mother, because we’re seeded by your mother.

Richard Miles: 4:19

Right. And so the biota in your intestine, I imagine there’s a range of what’s considered normal or healthy. And that is what affected by environmental factors, genetic,

Dr. Christian Jobin: 4:31

Absolutely. Absolutely. So we are very different. I mean, you’re closer to the biota of your family, but you’re different from the neighbor and different from France . So close proximity tend to get you by different transmission biota, so that’s how you transfer them. But family are more similar, but every single of us have a different microbiome. I did this exercise in the lab with my team. We finalized the microbiome of every single member and we could see how different they were and it started questioning what kind of diet and exposure the people in the lab, which are all healthy. Why do they have this microbe so different than another person and starting a conversation about lifestyle. So it’s quite fascinating actually, but yes, we are different. And these differences don’t mean that you’re smarter or more healthy. It’s just a collection of bugs that are different. The big breaking point in the health issue with microorganism is when you have it drastic rupture of microorganism function, that then influence disease. So that’s what I study basically.

Richard Miles: 5:32

So do you have like a , a prize in your lab for like cleanest gut or, you know, messiest gut, or some, it’s kind of intimidating.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 5:39

No, actually , actually we have not defined , it everyone has a number, so we didn’t want to put names. We have a chart, we had described the microbiome, so we didn’t want it to have a name attached. So that was more anonymous, but people kind of broke the code and know who is who, and they want it , Hey, how come you have this bug? And I like to have this bug because it’s associated with health. So it was almost like a price that they was one or two person that wa s l ike very high content of microorganism that everyone wanted to have. Right?

Richard Miles: 6:04

Right. So, but I imagine you don’t spend your entire day just looking at healthy people, right. That’s not what doctors do. So tell us what, you know, what is going on in terms of unhealthy biota and what is your research found and why exactly are you studying it ?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 6:19

Right. So, because we acquire micros or very early on, and these microbes perform very important tasks for health and they formed something called a network of health, and that’s called this and in condition where people exposed to Mid-City and mitigation of chronic antibiotics, you disrupt this network and disease such as inflammatory bowel disease, because I’m interested in the gut, shows a signature, a fingerprint of microbes. That’s different in these patients then LT subject . So these what we call case and control differences in microbiomes intriguing, and the research visit in general also found that colorectal cancer patient also have a different set of network microbes organization. So for us in the land was try to understand the functional consequences. When you have differences. It doesn’t mean that they are implicated in a disease onset. It may be just a side show and phenomenon. Oh, by the way, this is a consequence, not the causation. So what we tried to do in the nineties to see, identify microorganism, that could be causative of disease like IBD or colorectal cancer.

Richard Miles: 7:25

I see. So does it have a predictive function? So if I were to go in and get my biota tested, I might not have IBD, but you might be able to tell me, well, you have a profile that you better watch out. Is that correct?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 7:36

Yeah Richard, you’re exactly right on the money. That was the goal. I mean, in medicine, some physician and researcher thought that that could be a marker. So if I collect feces, stools of individual and then the lines in their microbiome, could I say, well, you’re having a collection of microorganism that fit people that develop IBD . What could we do about that? This is an open question. We don’t have the answer for this , but there is clinical trial right now that tried to replace these microorganisms . They will give you a brand shiny new microbiome by a technique we call fecal microbiota transplant FMT. So they will give you a healthy donor microbiota to replace your defective one. It’s not ready for prime time. So there’s two aspects to your question.

Richard Miles: 8:19

It doesn’t sound easy.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 8:21

Well, no, I mean, actually it’s not that bad. I mean, you have either anemia, they come from the back or oral with an upper scope and they will deliver these microorganism that comes with, you know, they could be an infusion or it could be an appealed form of pill.

Richard Miles: 8:35

So that’s the actual treatment?But on the production side diagnostic, is this something that somebody could do easily one day at their primary care physician, they go in, they get a sample t ested a nd that?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 8:45

Well, IBD less. So for colorectal cancer, there is a research, it’s pretty advance, and the prediction has been the most rendered proof of principle that you predict is already there. It’s not at the bench side or the clinical environment yet, but if someone wants to bring it, they will have a proof of principle as possible. The question is how strong is the predictive value? So everyone talked about Colonna Gar , and they have a screening tool you could do at the home with your feces. And that’s interesting, but when you have a false positive, so it says, Oh, you have a chance to have colorectal cancer. Actually, you don’t, it’s a false positive people get nervous. And a false negative is also bad because you don’t know. So you want to narrow this gap. And this is where we are with the microbiome. It’s feasible to do it, but we’ll want to decrease this false positive negative rate. And it may come to the clinic actually.

Richard Miles: 9:37

Right. Christian, is there other research that you’re working on at the moment or are you focused entirely on this problem?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 9:42

We don’t work on predictive value of microbiome for colorectal cancer. We working on predictive value of response to drug against cancer. So if I give you this medication, you have a high chance because you have these microbes to have a high response to the medication . So it makes you higher responder and maybe having a higher chance to survive cancer. So you want to give the drug with the best effective way and not waste time on a drug that will not work for you. And the microbiome may have this prediction. So this is on YouTube now is on YouTube. We want to know if microorganism could be analyzed in a way that I will say a patient. Number one is not responding to this drought . If I could give this patient XYZ, microorganism, that patient will respond. So it’s very powerful.

Richard Miles: 10:28

I see. So, a lot of the guests on the show are inventors. Who’ve already identified a technology, they’ve tested it out and they’re kind of on their way to market. But in your case, you’re still very much in the primary research phase, right? You’re not exactly certain or not necessarily even trying to find that commercial application yet. This is something, hopefully that one day someone will be able to either put, I guess, into a drug form or some sort of process right?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 10:53

Yeah, Richard you’re right. I mean, there’s a lot of actions from Pharma, either startup or mid sized pharmaceutical companies that are including this type of therapeutic link with microbiome, either for predictive value of drugs or responsiveness or to block or terminate disease. So my fecal microbiota transplant, so we are in the early, so what we tried to do is generate intellectual properties on specific microorganisms that we think could be useful if you want to link them to drug XYZ . So we don’t test them in patient, but I could protect this IP through the Gatorade foundation and the help of the University of Florida so that a company will like to maybe acquire license. And then they do the clinical work because there’s so much an investigator could do. I was not interested in starting a company, whereas other people very good at that, but I could give them target and tools that he could use to move this to the clinic.

Richard Miles: 11:45

Right. Which is really the first step in that kind of, it’s gotta be a good idea.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 11:50

Yes. Well , you have to be a good idea. So we prove by animal model . So we could take feces of patient that have been shown to respond to drug. We put that in a mouse versus a one model, any model versus feces of patient that have shown not to respond, and then we could identify microbes. So at least we have preclinical evidence that the cocktail that we put in is working and then we’d give it, protect that and pass it to football to the next layer. Right.

Richard Miles: 12:16

Christian, let’s talk some about your personal background. And , and as you said, your accent is already revealed you not to be probably from Iowa, but neither are you from France, right? I mean, you were your true blue Canadian?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 12:29

I’m French Canadian . So that’s a province on the East coast of Canada next year, Ontario , if you know your geography and I was born in Trois-Rivières. Which is between Montreal and Quebec along the St. Lawrence river. It’s a big river, 80% of people in Quebec live around the St. Lawrence river, but it’s huge. Quebec is six times the size of the house, but yet we have 8 million people. But then my parents moved to a small village called Saint Louis de France. It looks very exotic Saint. Louis de France really. And I was like one traffic light, u h, one middle school and one church, but I was a great place to grow because I had a lot of wild around me, wil dlife. S o we could go and with buddies goi ng hu nting and fishing and pretending we are pioneer dis coverer of the wildness. So it was a great place to live, but there was a rural, very rural, it’s not the place that you get your exposure to th e big science. Let ‘s sa y that.

Richard Miles: 13:22

Tell me about your parents for either one of them, a researcher i n scientific fields?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 13:27

Oh , my mom was a housewife and my dad was working for store manager sales representative. And then later on became a manager of a radio station where he was part of the advertisement selling. So sometimes I was going to his studio and I was recording advertisement .

Richard Miles: 13:45

I knew you’re a natural. There’s something here, you’ve done this before.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 13:48

I wanted to see the playback of that because I remember I was on the radio when they were making you repeat a very simple two sentences. And I was like, I can’t remember seven or so.

Richard Miles: 13:58

If the Cade Museum ever needs commercials in French we’re going to call you.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 14:02

Yeah, I could do that. So that was the environment. No one was a scientist and my brother was mostly in the business side and my sister also more administration. So I was kind of the exception.

Richard Miles: 14:13

Do you remember at all as a child or maybe even in high school, when did you start gravitating towards science? Was there a particular moment that you remember or was it just, you always liked those sorts of subjects better?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 14:24

You know, it’s hard to define that. I mean, I remember getting a chemistry set and microscopes and they must have given me that because I was interested in science. Right? I remember I was in the chemistry, dark chemistry. I was trying to invent compounds and make stuff. So they gave me this chemistry kit that was spending a lot of time playing with not following the rules of the booklet, not how to do this and that . But,

Richard Miles: 14:46

So were there a lot of explosions in your house?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 14:48

Yeah, well, yeah there were moments where I, I should not have done that, but I think it was given to me because I was interested in biology and how things work and observing, and that kind of put the seed inside my head, but academically, I was not very gifted, so they weren’t , and they was a problem here.

Richard Miles: 15:04

Really? but you did your initial studies in Montreal, correct? Right?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 15:08

Right. So I did what we call college community college. I wanted to go to university, but again, my grades were not good. So I ended up doing a technical degree in biochemistry, so a technical degree, three years. So I could be a technician in the lab. And because there was more hands-on things, again, I’m more an artistic type. I like to have control and think about stuff. And that degree led me to do that. So without the hardcore studying both book and intensity that you see in university, but after the three years and the rotation in different place and decided to go to Quebec city in a college, tried to catch up on courses that I needed to go to university. So when I had all the courses and I enter the university in a program , uh , in microbiology and , uh, I was a hard reality check on that , how difficult it is. And I was not well-prepared . So I remember getting a letter from the director of the program after my first semester. And they were saying that your grade is too low we’ll have to kick you out. If you don’t move this up. The greater maximum is five. And I had 2.4. So it was a failure. And it was difficult, you know , because it had difficulty readings and I’m memorizing things. But I made it, I made it through, in the final degree, baccalaureate and I, I didn’t have the score to get to graduate school. So I had to go meet the director and plead my case. I’m good with that. I could interact with people. I convinced him that he was not making a mistake, letting me in graduate school. And when I got in, it was much better because now I was in the lab, I could do stuff. And really from there I got A’s and it really changed my life.

Richard Miles: 16:38

So I hope you saved that letter from the deans, that when you get your Nobel prize, you can read from it at the podium.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 16:45

Actually, I went back to the director and he retired now , but I gave a talk to Quebec and I talked to him and he came to my talk without me asking. And he came to my talk. He said, I remember the day you were in my office. And I’m very happy. We did that. So, yeah, you don’t know.

Richard Miles: 16:59

In the Cade Museum, we actually do have a letter from Dr. Cade’s fourth grade teacher home to his parents. His mother is saying that he was never going to really amount to anything, he’s so disruptive in class. You prevented other people from learning. So we have it. Christian, at the end of the show, we always offer each guests the opportunity to dispense words of wisdom. And you’ve been in your career long enough to where, you know , if you were to see a young researcher today, what are the things that you would say, you need to think about this, no matter the discipline, and then try to avoid these things, or do you have a list that you carry around in your head?

Dr. Christian Jobin: 17:32

From , from where I started, I will say, if you have a passion to something you need to follow it. My mistake would have been to keep doing the technical degree and entered the job market. None of that, it’s not a good proficient is that it was not a fit for me. Follow your passion. If there’s an obstacle, try to get the resource around and keep going. And once you don’t have the passion, then you need to start looking around and said , what could I do? But usually if you have the passion, you could plow through obstacles and don’t get discouraged and have fun. If it’s not fun, then you may think that I’m not doing this for the excitement. I’m doing it for some sort of, I need a job and nothing wrong with that. But I think the passion drives you through a lot of obstacles that will be in front of you when you try to reach the goal.

Richard Miles: 18:15

So it’s interesting. You’re actually the first guest . It is actually mentioned fun,

Dr. Christian Jobin: 18:19

Yeah, fun!

Richard Miles: 18:20

Everyone else talks about hard work and diligence or anything you want. I’m not saying it’s not hard, but important point. I think you’re right. You’ve got to ask yourself why you’re doing this. And if you’re not having at least a little bit of fun, maybe when you’re doing something wrong. Christian, thanks very much for coming on the show this morning and hope to have you back at some point and best of luck with your research.

Dr. Christian Jobin: 18:40

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Great pleasure .

Richard Miles: 18:42

I’m Richard Miles

Outro: 18:44

Radio Cade, would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

The engineering part of Augi Lye helped solve a problem for his musician self. How to speed up the aging of wooden violins, which enhances their tone? Augi not only came up with an invention, he formed a successful company that sells devices to all string players. Â Now Augi is using artificial intelligence to help vision processing. The son of immigrant parents, Augi was thought to have a learning disability as a young boy. His fourth-grade teacher told his parents, "I've seen this before. Augi will blossom in his junior year of high school." Spoiler alert: He did. *This episode was originally released on December 5, 2018.*

The engineering part of Augi Lye helped solve a problem for his musician self. How to speed up the aging of wooden violins, which enhances their tone? Augi not only came up with an invention, he formed a successful company that sells devices to all string players. Â Now Augi is using artificial intelligence to help vision processing. The son of immigrant parents, Augi was thought to have a learning disability as a young boy. His fourth-grade teacher told his parents, “I’ve seen this before. Augi will blossom in his junior year of high school.” Spoiler alert: He did. *This episode was originally released on December 5, 2018.*

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and there inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:40

Vibrating violins, unmanned, aerial vehicles, and video games. What do they have in common? Turns out Augi Lye, my guest today on Radio Cade. Welcome, Augi.

Augi Lye: 0:48

Hey, how’s it going?

Richard Miles: 0:49

So I think I first met you right after you had founded tone. Right? If I remember correctly, which I remember being a really cool idea. So why don’t we start by you talking about tone, right? Which was, I think the first of your companies that you founded, if I’m not mistaken and then a little bit about the technologies that you’ve worked.

Augi Lye: 1:07

Yes. So all my life, I was a musician. I started my musical studies at five, played the violin all my life and pursuit of the perfect tone in your instrument that I was obsessed about. And when you’re shopping for a violin, there’s a common problem of instruments that haven’t opened up yet. Especially new instruments that they require about 30 or 40 years of being played on constantly for them to open up. That’s one reason Strads sounds so good. They’ve been played on for hundreds of years and that constant being played on improves the sound. So how it all started was I was still in college and I bought this new cello. I could tell this cello is a good cello, but it was closed up. It n eeds to be played on for next few years before w e r eally could really start sounding good. And I didn’t want to wait that long. So I was playing around with electronics. At that time, I was studying electrical engineering and I put together a little device that would play the instrument overnight while I was sleeping. So I invented this little contraption and I put it on the instrument. I left it on overnight and I did this for about a month. And then a month later I brought the cello back to the maker and the maker was j ust like, what did you do? This thing? This doesn’t sound like the cello I sold you. And I went back to my car and pulled out this little electronic contraption, not thinking much of i t. I t’s just a little thing I made for myself. And his next words were run to the patent office.

Richard Miles: 2:32

How does it work? I’ll give you that for you want to say contraption, what exactly?

Augi Lye: 2:35

It’s a device that sits on top of the violin bridge or on top of the strings on a guitar. And it induces subsonic frequencies into the instrument , simulating being played on and over a course of a week, if you use this every night, it’s comparable to about six months of being played on it’s night and day.

Richard Miles: 2:54

And this is something you can just plug in and put on the bridge of your instrument overnight, and it, you don’t leave anything. And then when you wake up Next morning, you take it off and you play it. And it sounds so much better, a particular frequency or tone that you’re going forward , that you have to sort of tweak it or adjust it, or is this history universal or?

Augi Lye: 3:11

There’s a dial, which you can modulate the amplitude. But other than that, pretty much turnkey. Yes . It’s very turnkey. It’s very easy.

Richard Miles: 3:17

So we’ll talk a little bit about how you had the skillset to figure this out. Cause you’re also an electrical engineer, but before that, there are at least a couple of other technologies you’ve worked on since tone, right? That if you could just explain what’s going on there. I think computer vision processing and something to do with UAVs.

Augi Lye: 3:32

So the first startup I joined, not as a founder, but I was employee number one was a UAV company. And we were the first company that built a plane that could see a tree and fly around it. And this was back in 206. Before UAV’s , b ecame hot. And I was a c omputer vision sc ientists t h at c ame up with the algorithm that could do this. But yeah, that was a lo t of fun.

Richard Miles: 3:54

And then recently also in the AI space, you’ve been working on just kind of a crowded space now.

Augi Lye: 4:02

Yeah. It’s a hot market, like 10 years ago. No one knew what AI learning was. There wasn’t the word, deep learning. All these words weren’t even invented yet.

Richard Miles: 4:08

Right. Now all you have to do to sound sophisticated cocktail parties just drop AI into a sentence .

Augi Lye: 4:13

All of a sudden you’re popular. So my latest company is Charlotte AI. We came up with a bunch of optimization tools for Facebook marketing in particular, we have a feature called common control and it’ll read through all your Facebook pages and ads and see all the negative comments, jot them down, analyze them. And then if they’re bad bullying, negative, toxic, it will automatically hide them.

Richard Miles: 4:37

Wow. Is this meant for like a business or an organization that has a Facebook page or could it be an individual ?

Augi Lye: 4:42

Well , even parents that want to monitor their children’s Facebook pages, make sure there’s no bullying going on or anything like this.

Richard Miles: 4:49

Uh , my question is, the internet. Where on earth are you going to find negative comments? I mean, I don’t get it Augi. It’s a wasteland. It’s nothing but a civic discussion.

Augi Lye: 4:57

I’m trying to clean things up.

Richard Miles: 4:58

Okay. All right. So we’re going to talk later on a little bit more of the business angle of each one of these technologies. But before we do that, let’s talk about you a little bit, go back to pre academia even. And what did your parents do for a living? Where were you born? What were you like as a kid and t hat sort of t hing?

Augi Lye: 5:13

Yes, my mom is from Korea and my dad’s actually a refugee from Burma. Burma, Myanmar has an interesting past, he was a Burmese, but ethnically Chinese and in the fifties and sixties, they kicked out all their Chinese. Basically ethically cleansed them all. So my dad came to America, studied very hard, became a doctor. My mom’s a nurse. So they, they met in New York City. I was born in New York. Ended up in Florida.

Richard Miles: 5:39

First time that’s ever happened, right. So what age were you when you moved to Florida?

Augi Lye: 5:43

I was like two.

Richard Miles: 5:44

Oh, okay. Okay. So you basically grew up in Florida.

Augi Lye: 5:47

I’m a Florida boy.

Richard Miles: 5:48

In Gainesville or elsewhere in Florida?

Augi Lye: 5:50

Jacksonville.

Richard Miles: 5:51

Jacksonville. Okay. U m,

Augi Lye: 5:53

I survived Jacksonville.

Richard Miles: 5:53

So your dad was a, what kind of doctor was he?

Augi Lye: 5:58

Psychiatrist.

Richard Miles: 5:59

Psychiatrist. Okay. And what were you like as a student? I’m guessing you were a great student.

Augi Lye: 6:03

Many of my teachers thought I had a learning disability

Richard Miles: 6:07

Interesting. And this was because?

Augi Lye: 6:09

This was because I would often just stare in a corner and just think elementary school, middle school, and a good portion of my high school. I wasn’t a very good student. There’s only two things. I was good at mathematics and science. But my fourth grade teacher, she told my parents I’ve seen this before. Your kids are very good kid. Junior, senior year of high school expect him to blossom. And that’s exactly what happened. Like my parents t ell me this now, but like,

Richard Miles: 6:35

They were probably panicking at the time. They were like,

Augi Lye: 6:36

What’s wrong with our son? Like his sister is so smart, but something’s wrong with him. But now literally, like if you looked at my GPA prior to junior year of high school, my GPA was like terrible. It was like 2.5, then all of a sudden junior, senior year I made straight A’s and in graduated,

Richard Miles: 6:54

Do you remember something clicking all of a sudden, did it?

Augi Lye: 6:57

Yeah . Like my brain also in like crystallize , all the other subjects started making sense.

Richard Miles: 7:01

Right. So you were strong in math and sciences. And where did you go to school?

Augi Lye: 7:05

I went to University of Florida.

Richard Miles: 7:07

University of Florida. Okay. And did you know right away you wanted to go into engineering or did you consider?

Augi Lye: 7:12

I initially went into music. I went into violin performance major my freshman year.

Richard Miles: 7:18

So clearly you are good at other things than math and science when you’re a kid , when did you start playing music? Oh , we already said five.

Augi Lye: 7:24

Yeah, I started at five. So all my life up until like 22, I wanted to be a musician. That was like my obsession in life with music. Absolute obsession was music.

Richard Miles: 7:34

And you started on stringed instruments?

Augi Lye: 7:35

Yeah I started in violin. I started on the violin.

Richard Miles: 7:39

And then graduated to cello?

Augi Lye: 7:40

Yeah I picked up the cello along the way.

Richard Miles: 7:43

And so were either of your parents, a musician?

Augi Lye: 7:45

My mom plays a little piano, not professionally as amateur pianist .

Richard Miles: 7:49

So clearly at some point, was it in college that you then started getting into engineering? Or what, how did that sequence happen?

Augi Lye: 7:56

Yeah, what happened was I joined a rock band. I toured for two years. And then when that didn’t work out, I was like, screw music. I g ot t o do something else. And I always loved mathematics. So engineering was just right there.

Richard Miles: 8:08

So you started out as a freshman music major and then what? By next year or the couple of years later, you switched to an engineering? But you still continue to play music, right? You didn’t give that up?

Augi Lye: 8:19

No, I still play.

Richard Miles: 8:20

Alright. So, interesting started as a musician ended up in engineering and now you continue to do both. And to what extent do you think your musical training shaped your ability to do what you’re doing now in the tech field?

Augi Lye: 8:33

Absolutely. So there’s one thing about music. That’s very paramount is focus and concentration. If you’re performing on stage, you have to have the most intense focus t o play perfectly or else it’s going to fall apart. So I think that applied very well with engineering, especially with coding.

Richard Miles: 8:50

Right. I’m not a musician. I wish I were, but my wife is, my son is and what it’s always fascinated me about music, particularly classical musicians is in the same space. You have to be very disciplined, very, very creative, or there’s a space to be creative within that discipline. So it strikes me that in coding, right? You have something similar. You have definite rules absolutely must be obeyed, but yet you’ve got this wide space to be creative in.

Augi Lye: 9:16

You’re absolutely correct. So when you write code, if you wander off certain constructs, you won’t even compile. You’ll just get error message . Won’t work. It just won’t work. It’s almost all or nothing. But within those constraints, you have all the creative things in the world to create almost anything.

Richard Miles: 9:31

You have to create something new . Right? Otherwise what’s the point. Okay. Let’s talk about now the business angle, right? So obviously you started one business, at least one business, and yo u’re b eing associated with it at some other businesses. Describe for our listeners, the business angle of all this, you’ve got a great idea or great ideas. You’re trying to get them to market to d escribe the highs and the lows of that. What is sort of b een really pleasant about those experiences and what has not been so pleasant?

Augi Lye: 9:57

All my life I am a complete introvert. That was just my genetics. Starting these companies. One thing I realized very quickly was I had to break out my shell I have to meet people. I have to interact with people. I have to build a network so my companies have customers that was extremely difficult for me to do, but it was completely necessary. You cannot build a business being in a s how, impossible,.

Richard Miles: 10:23

Cause it’s not just investors. It’s employees,

Augi Lye: 10:25

It’s employee’s, it’s customers, it’s investors. So that was extremely difficult for me to do . But a complete necessity.

Richard Miles: 10:32

Did you seek out business mentors or did people with a business background come alongside and say, Hey Augi, here are the five steps you need to do to set up your business. Or did you have to try to figure this out on your own?

Augi Lye: 10:43

I had some good mentors. And that’s one o f my first suggestions. When I meet young entrepreneurs i s like find a good network, a good group of people that you can bounce ideas off of. Very important.

Richard Miles: 10:53

Let’s go back to tone right now. So you founded that, I think in 2006. Is that right? More or less?

Augi Lye: 10:59

Yeah, around 2006. It was sort of like a hobby until 2008. And then 2008 I went all in.

Richard Miles: 11:06

Okay. So how’s it doing now?

Augi Lye: 11:09

It’s doing good. Distribution in 39 countries, sales every month, smooth sailing.

Richard Miles: 11:13

And how is the word getting out? Is it mostly word of mouth? Are you having to do a lot of advertising?

Augi Lye: 11:19

Mostly word of mouth, the little social media. I mean our best advertisers are our customers.

Richard Miles: 11:25

And so your average customer, are they professional musicians or?

Augi Lye: 11:29

They’re accomplished musicians.

Richard Miles: 11:30

And they actually know the difference, so this is not something that some kid who’s learned how to play, the guitar is probably gonna buy or their parents.

Augi Lye: 11:36

It’s something more geared towards higher end.

Richard Miles: 11:38

Right. And do you find, is it primarily violinists or also?

Augi Lye: 11:42

The guitarists. Guitarists outsells everything 10 to 1.

Richard Miles: 11:45

And is that because they’re just more of them?

Augi Lye: 11:48

There is more of them.

Richard Miles: 11:48

Okay. What is actually happening with the ways it’s an aging, the wood in some way, or it’s conditioning, the wood or what is going on? It’s physical.

Augi Lye: 11:56

Yeah. It’s sort of all the above, there’s like 12 things going on. The most thing in particular that’s going on is a process called damping. And in damping the violins comprised of 77 different parts. And as a system settles down as it ages, if you induced vibrations into them will start vibrating together. You see this in other fields, metallurgy is a good example. They would often induce vibrations as metal cools down to prevent it from cracking and same thing with the violin after it’s made, if you induced vibrations into it, as it’s settling down, it starts singing as a chorus.

Richard Miles: 12:34

Wow. That’s fascinating. One of the things I like best s pending a s p odcasts, I feel t hat smarter after I talked to the actual inventors. Okay. So tell me about the other companies that you’ve been associated with. How are they doing in terms of their growth and business model and so on ?

Augi Lye: 12:48

So in 2010, I started a video game company did really well. We made a game called Dungeon Offenders, became a top 10 game. We released it on eight platforms, X-Box PS three PC, iPhone, Android. And it grew that company to about 125 people. And then in 2012 we sold the company.

Richard Miles: 13:07

What kind of transition was that from the world of music and engineering into video games?

Augi Lye: 13:13

Completely different , absolutely complete different.

Richard Miles: 13:15

But I presume you had an interest in video games as a kid or?

Augi Lye: 13:18

Yeah, well the software. If it’s software I’ll be interested.

Richard Miles: 13:23

Is that sort of a very niche market in terms of the type of people that play this type of games, as opposed to other types of software?

Augi Lye: 13:31

It is. So video games is entertainment. The entertainment industry is very different.

Richard Miles: 13:35

From the little I know about it. It’s a very sort of demanding market. Right? I think we talked about this a few years ago and you’re telling me that if there’s a mistake or something wrong in the game, you hear about it, like instantly yeah. In no uncertain terms, you really have to get those new versions. Right. Or near perfect. Or you’re going to hear about it immediately.

Augi Lye: 13:56

Well, first of all, if the business model of video games is the entertainment industry, it’s very close business-wise to movies because it’s based off blockbusters. One in 10 video games will make profit and the rest fail. So from a business model standpoint, it’s very difficult.

Richard Miles: 14:11

And I mentioned , there’s tons of competition ,

Augi Lye: 14:14

Tons of competition, It’s a profession of passion. Many of these video game designers, they do it out of passion. And whenever you deal with that, you have a lot of them. And you have to compete against all of them.

Richard Miles: 14:25

So for those of our listeners who don’t know, we’re in Gainesville, Florida, and one of the strengths of Gainesville a nd the University of Florida in particular is a pretty strong engineering department. So you had, I imagine one of the recipes for success in h i s c o mpanies, you had a pretty good supply of coders and engineers that you could tap.

Augi Lye: 14:43

Yeah. That’s the reason I’m here and I’ve stayed here because every year, 5,000 geniuses walked through those Gates and the University of Florida and the cost for a smart kid in this town is half that of San Francisco.

Richard Miles: 14:58

Gainesville has a competitive advantage in terms , hang onto those , that talent. Okay. What about the UAVs again? I think we mentioned it’s a crowded space. Obviously a lot of people have developed various models now of drones. Where do you see that going? What kind of applications are we going to see in the next five years? You know , already, we know now that photography is great and construction companies love them. And farmers love them. What’s around the corner that we’re going to be seeing UAV’s.

Augi Lye: 15:25

Yeah. So I think the biggest application for USBs is actually making them bigger. A lot of the science that went into UAV’s becoming stable. I was in San Juan over the weekend and there was a UAV over the pool. Someone was filming the pool in this resort and it was a constant 30 mile an hour wind. And this thing was lock stable. This was an engineering feat making this thing stable in that wind gusty one, too , and those same algorithms and techniques applied to something bigger will revolutionize aerospace. So that’s where I see that technology being applied to controls an d m ade that thing stable. Imagine that into something like a plane, we ‘re g oing to see i n the next 10 years start seeing some really interesting flying things. Th ey’re g oing to take people,

Richard Miles: 16:11

Like pilotless planes .

Augi Lye: 16:12

Exactly. Ok ay. And it was all developed from th ese small UAV’s.

Richard Miles: 16:17

So it’s interesting. I had assumed that the direction of the market would be heading towards smaller and more consumer applications where they’ll make money, they’ll make money, but it sounds like the big money is going ,

Augi Lye: 16:28

Could be in the larger, the larger planes. People are willing to pay a nice penny for it .

Richard Miles: 16:34

And then I guess, along with the UAVs , do you need special types of either coding or algorithms to process video and sound? Or do you even have sound?

Augi Lye: 16:43

Oh yeah you have sound.

Richard Miles: 16:45

Is that in any way a technological challenge, the quality of that information that a UAV can pick up versus processing out on the ground? Or is that insignificant?

Augi Lye: 16:54

You just explained some very tricky things. So vision processing is continuing to improve exponentially at this point, much research and resources being thrown in it right now. Very soon, you’re going to be able to have basically robots that can sit down, see that this is a water bottle. Know, that it’s a water bottle and can interact with it. That’s around the corner and in the lab very happening. That’s extremely exciting, very difficult problem. In the field of AI. The first step is what’s called situational analysis, basically a robot, knowing what kind of situation it’s in, Hey, I’m in a room, there’s a microphone in front of me. There’s a water bottle in front of me. Once we pass that step, which is very close. If not already happened in the lab, now we can start talking about,

Richard Miles: 17:39

What do you want to do with it?

Augi Lye: 17:40

Yeah. So we’re at literally the inflection point of AI. Wow. We’re in the last 30 years, it’s been just hardcore research, hardcore research, basically money being thrown in a pit. What’s going on to where like now we can actually make money. Great examples. That is Tesla. So I just picked up my Tesla yesterday and it drove me home. Huh ? Amazing. Of course there was a 50 mile learning period, but then after 50 miles I just turned it on and I did not have to steer anymore. Hit the brake. It just did everything. I was like, this, this is a greatest car that ever drove me. In fact, it was the only car that ever drove me.

Richard Miles: 18:15

So Augi one more question. A s someone like you, 10, 20 years ago comes to you and with a similar background, similar interests, and they’ve got a great idea and they want to put in t heir idea and sell it. Now that you’ve got all this accumulated wisdom, I don’t know if y ou had to boil it down a nd say three things that you’d give advice to a younger version of you coming along and having a great idea. What would you tell that person?

Augi Lye: 18:36

Three things and most things in life can be broken down into three things. So these are my three things that I look for. Number one, be a good person. Number two, work hard, work, hard that’s life. And number three, be smart, in t hat order, and if you stick to that, you will be successful in anything you do.

Richard Miles: 18:59

A little bit more complicated than Woody Allen’s prescription. That 90% of life is just showing up, but you’ve got to show up, be good, work hard and be smart. And that’s it?

Augi Lye: 19:09

Yeah. It’s easy. Right? So easy.

Richard Miles: 19:12

I’ll get this from fascinating conversation. Thank you for coming this morning and look forward to seeing your businesses develop and great success and look forward to seeing your Tesla on the street.

Augi Lye: 19:21

I’ll be sleeping in the back of it.

: 19:22

Thanks very much Augi for coming too.

Speaker 3: 19:26

Thank you.

Outro: 19:29

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Beloved by corporate HR departments and government agencies alike, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator measures personality types. Betsy Styron, board chairman of the Myers-Brigg Foundation, explains how the assessment works and what it should and shouldn’t be used for.  An introvert herself, Betsy powers through a great interview.  

George Sklivanitis, founder of Extreme Comms Lab, believes we can build underwater wireless networks. Using enhanced modems on existing nodes (such as ships and submarines), his team’s technology can boost signal strength under the sea by 10 times.   A native of Athens, Greece, George studied on the island of Crete before moving to Buffalo NY, and finally Florida Atlantic University. His advice to prospective inventors: “Use criticism as a fuel to keep going. Don’t give up.”   

George Sklivanitis, founder of Extreme Comms Lab, believes we can build underwater wireless networks. Using enhanced modems on existing nodes (such as ships and submarines), his team’s technology can boost signal strength under the sea by 10 times.   A native of Athens, Greece, George studied on the island of Crete before moving to Buffalo NY, and finally Florida Atlantic University. His advice to prospective inventors: “Use criticism as a fuel to keep going. Don’t give up.”   

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

IPhones , deep sea Netflix and scuba surround sound. Sounds impossible, right? Maybe it still is. But my guests this morning may have brought us a step or two closer to a bunch of impossible things. I’m your host Richard Miles. My guest today is George Sklivanitis founder of Extreme Comms Lab. Welcome to Radio Cade, George.

George Sklivanitis: 0:58

Thank you Richard for the invitation.

Richard Miles: 0:59

So let’s start George, talking about your core technology , sort of what is it and how does it work?

George Sklivanitis: 1:04

So today we’re living in exciting times, right? Every day we are using devices that are almost always, and at any time connected to the internet from your smartphones to your smart watches, to Alexa at home to Siri, you name it. Can we leverage this exciting technology developments that we have seen for land-based communications and somehow use them to wirelessly connect our oceans, to the internet? Well, to give you an idea of what’s the existing infrastructure out there, first of all, it’s very expensive and it’s very limited. U.S. Navy. For example, the submarines are using acoustic signals to communicate. The signals are very low frequency, very low bandwidth. And as a result, under water communications today is very, very slow. So the Extreme Comms Lab, we started to change that by building underwater communication modems, that can boost wireless connectivity up to 10 times. This moden scan communicate in 360 degrees. They are only directional. They can both transmit and receive, and they are fully reprogrammable on the fly so that they can efficiently utilize all of their available resources. We have buttoned pending software and hardware, which is easy to install, easy to operate and offer compatibility with existing infrastructure. So we are trying to disrupt underwater communications today to give you an example, the state of the art modems out there, it’s like using your 1990s , dial up modem to download an email or stream a video from the web. It would take forever, right?

Richard Miles: 2:33

So I remember those days well, I winced just hearing that, but, okay. So in addition to this sounding very, very cool. This household sounds very, very expensive because if I understand the analogy correctly, if we think about above ground , right, we have cell phone towers and wireless networks, and that has been built up over a decade or so of cell phone towers on every corner. Is that also how this would work? Would you have the equivalent of towers underwater or buoys underwater that would be serving the same sort of function in a network?

George Sklivanitis: 3:01

So as of now, we do not see a need for deploying permanent infrastructure like cell towers, but we are leveraging software defined radio technology, which has actually become commodified over the past few years. So this is small form factor programmable radios, which can be programmed to act as base stations, but also by just changing the software, you can make them as cell phones. So the infrastructure is already available out there. It’s cheap. Hardware is cheap . What we are building is software and a method that will enable this hardware modems to communicate faster underwater .

Richard Miles: 3:39

So the existing nodes are actually existing radios and these would be on ships or submarines or?

George Sklivanitis: 3:46

Yeah. The idea is to attach them to potential users of an underwater network like submarines, scuba divers, as you mentioned, but we will be building that network using two technologies. One of them will be swimming vehicles, which wi ll b e gu arding o ur own underwater mo dems, and we’ll be able to communicate and navigate underwater. And the second key technology is gateway se a s urface stations. Th is s tations will be sitting at safe sp ots a t the sea surface. They will be equipped with extreme co me s l ab c ommunication solutions, which will be offering dual underwater and over the air communication. So they will be acting as a r elay gateway sitting at the sea surface, relaying all the data from our underwater modems to maybe a satellite or a cellular base station that is c l osed b y. So you will be able to access data from underwater assets from wherever you are in the world.

Richard Miles: 4:39

So let’s talk about the range. You know, if I want to go and use wifi, I can go find a Starbucks, but I got to sit in the Starbucks or maybe right outside the Starbucks. And then with cell phone towers, if I get too far away from an existing cell phone tower, high reception, it gets sketchy. What sort of range are we talking about? If you had a mode say on a submersible or a ship, you have to be within a mile five miles, 10 miles how would that work?

George Sklivanitis: 5:02

Under the weather is really sort of like deep space for communicating. So you have to trade the c ommunication speed for communication r ates. So say that you want to communicate a t 10 miles. As of now, M arines are using very, very low f requency. The same m entioned sort of what the whales are using to communicate. So they will lower down their frequency and that will limit t heir communication speed. But if you h ad, for example, in a port and you want to monitor incoming vessels, you might not have t o c ommunicate a t such large distances, so you can increase your frequency, get more bandwidth, and that w ould give you more speed. So there is no one size fits all solution, but at the end of the day, you need the programmable on the fly modem that can adapt to the application. So if the application is having hi gher c ommunication specifications, then we can on the fly reprogram the entire network to satisfy these requirements.

Richard Miles: 5:58

I see, let’s talk a little bit about submarines. I have a personal interest in this . My son is a communicator on a fast attack submarine and currently somewhere under the Pacific ocean, I don’t know where, and I’m surprised he’s listening to him, as you said, how limited actually the communication options are even for a very expensive military submarine. So is the main market for your technology at this point, military or government customers, or are there enough commercial applications out there that you wouldn’t be dependent on? Government’s buying this.

George Sklivanitis: 6:27

Right. Through our customer discovery. We found out that really the underwater acoustic communications in the robotics market and particularly the defense industry is what is mostly in need of such a technology. And there is actually a growing demand for building indistractable, self-healing, wireless networks underwater for the us Navy. We see that building sets and infrastructure will have also tremendous commercial impact from diver to diver communication, to dive into vessel communication, feast farm monitoring, for example, deep sea oceanography for our scientists and Marine biologists out there. So there is really a wide range of applications, but we see the U.S. Navy and the government as our first customer.

Richard Miles: 7:14

And George, are there other competitors out there or similar technologies that are in this market, or do you have this market to yourself?

George Sklivanitis: 7:21

There is competition out there, of course, in underwater robotics and underwater communications. So there are people building underwater modems at the moment. The problem is that modems are tailored to specific applications. As I said before, you buy a modem that has fixed communication speed at the certain range and at a certain depth. So if you need to use this modem in another application, you really have to buy another product from the same vendor. So, what we offer is really on the fly reprogrammable modems that somebody can throw them out there in the ocean. They can find out what’s the best way to network and be active at all times so that they can react to any interference or anybody that tries to disrupt the communication in this network.

Richard Miles: 8:08

So it sounds like you’re really competing in terms of flexibility and just the ease of setting this up. Right?

George Sklivanitis: 8:13

Correct, correct.

Richard Miles: 8:13

Let’s talk a little bit about the company aspect of it. So this is the technology licensed from Florida Atlantic University, is that correct?

George Sklivanitis: 8:21

So the technology has been developed as a part of our research group while the group was up in State University of New York at Buffalo. Uh, the group had just moved as of last year in Florida Atlantic University. We have a patent provisional patent application that has already been filed from the inventors of Extreme Comms and by the end of this summer, actually we will be filing for the full patent and we plan on filing a second patent by the end of the fall semester.

Richard Miles: 8:49

So you had mentioned a group, is this a company yet? Have you actually formed a company?

George Sklivanitis: 8:52

We’ve incorporated officially as of last October in Florida, our Extreme Comms Lab Inc. We are a research group, as I said, because of the three co-founders of Extreme Comms Lab have other faculty and a PhD student working at Florida Atlantic at the moment.

Richard Miles: 9:08

So, so far you’ve done pretty well as a company. And I neglected to mention congratulate you, that you have made the final four stage at the 2019 Cade Prize Competition. We had a lot of very good entries this year, and you’re certainly one of the best ones, but tell me, what are the next steps? Are you looking now for financing for investors in terms of management? Do you plan on staying on as CEO or y ou’re looking for other management? Describe for me what that looks like right now.

George Sklivanitis: 9:32

Sure. So we’ve had a great run over the past couple of years, we’ve raised more than 60,000 in equity funding from pitching the idea to similar startup competitions. We filed for our first patent and we are actively looking to recruit an interim CEO for the company. Also this year, we are planning to test our technology with swimming vehicles. We will be filing for a second patent and we’re looking to do a small scale field deployment of more than two of these prototypes out in the Atlantic.

Richard Miles: 10:01

And if I’m permitted to ask, have you had any discussions with the military? You don’t have to confirm or deny, but just interested.

George Sklivanitis: 10:07

So we’ve been talking to some program managers at the office of Naval research, and we’ve seen that they are interested in sponsoring under sea communication technologies. And we are in that and we are waiting to see if we can get some at least States funding in terms of an SBAR grant .

Richard Miles: 10:24

That sounds very exciting. I wish my son were a bigwig at the Pentagon. Then you put in a good word for you, but he’s not. And he’s also underwater right now. So we can talk to him. George, I’m just guessing here, but you don’t sound like you were raised in north central Florida. So tell me a little bit about your background. How did you end up in this field, but let’s go back further than that. Where were you raised as entrepreneurship run in your family? What did your parents do for a living? That sort of thing?

George Sklivanitis: 10:46

So I was born in Athens , Greece in 1986. My parents haven’t been involved in entrepreneurship. My mother is a schoolteacher and my mom has been working for a financial institution. So since I was young, I was always tinkering around with computers. I started for my bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at the Technical University of Crete at the Island of Crete down in southern Greece. And then I decided to pursue my PhD in the States where I joined State University of New York at Buffalo in 2011, where I did my bids , the electrical engineering. And this is where I started getting involved with entrepreneurship related activities in the university. And I’ve always been closer to the industry than doing pure research for research. If you may, I’ve always wanted to see what we do in the lab, getting transitioned in a product or same thing , the way people live over or under the water. So that’s where it really all started. And now I’m here at Florida, I think, which is the best state at the moment to do underwater research, both because of the weather and because having the ocean right next to you.

Richard Miles: 12:03

Right? Yeah. You can’t get much better than Florida being surrounded by water almost right? George, were you always a good student? Did you always do well in say math and science classes?

George Sklivanitis: 12:11

I wouldn’t describe myself as the best student, but I was always interested more in math physics and as I said, I was always tinkering with computers, myself, learning to program around 15 years old. I know kids now start doing that thing around six or seven years old. So yeah.

Richard Miles: 12:29

And as you and your colleagues came up with this idea for underwater communications, do you remember a particular moment in time where it just sort of popped into your head or was this a long time thinking about it? Describe how that thought process out .

George Sklivanitis: 12:41

Uh, me and my co-founders, as I mentioned, signal processing and wireless communications and networking researchers. We are solving problems related to communications in different environments, either. This is over the air or under the water or over the water surface. So as I mentioned under water is really like the deep space. 7 5% of the world is covered by water h ere. We do not really know a lot about it, right? If you think about it, we know more about the surface of Mars than we know about 30,000 feet below the surface of the water. So that’s really a big silence. And we think that, u h, commercializing and making available that kind of p roducts to the market will span out the research from similar groups to disrupt a ll ocean engineering and the Marine market as a whole.

Richard Miles: 13:32

So it wasn’t like you were in a boat off of to create and you drop yourself in , in the water. Like if only I could talk to him so well, that’s very interesting. So George, you’re still very young and to be honest, everyone starts looking young to me at my age, but you’ve already been around for long enough to take an idea that you developed in the laboratory and your colleagues. You think it has a market potential, and you’re now making those first steps into the commercial market to see how to move this forward. What are some of the lessons that you feel like you’ve learned over the last few years? And if someone had come to you and ask for advice about what do I do, because I’ve got an idea, what are some of the sort of things that you’d say, well, you should definitely consider this and those things don’t do.

George Sklivanitis: 14:12

So the first thing I would say both to myself and anyone else that asks for advice is, be patient. And this is really not a sprint. It’s really a marathon. You will get bad criticism most of the times just to use it as a fuel, to keep struggling on what you do. Just don’t give up on your ideas, try to use the criticism in both bad and good criticism to make something out of it, use it as a feedback to get better and better. And at the end you will definitely make it.

Richard Miles: 14:41

That’s very good. And it’s remarkably similar to what I hear from other inventors. They talk about patience and endurance and being willing to come in a long time. But I also like the idea of you have to weather that criticism because I think sometimes inventors think that what they’re going to do is it’s a little bit like a rock concert. You’re going to unveil your idea in a stadium bunch of people going to applaud and that’s fantastic, but that’s often not the case, right?

George Sklivanitis: 15:01

It really takes a lot to get all the abstractions of your research and move from the deeply technical side to pitching the idea to people that not really technical savvy and convince them that what you do can maybe since the word at some point.

Richard Miles: 15:18

Well, George were certainly going to be watching your company with interest in just a few days ago, in fact, a company that won arcade prize in 2013, just gotten a three and a half a million dollar investment from Samsung.

George Sklivanitis: 15:28

That’s great.

Richard Miles: 15:28

You know, so they’ve been in that category of plugging away on their technology, working hard and it took a while, but they’re finally doing quite well. So hopefully before seven years read something similar about Extreme Comms.

George Sklivanitis: 15:39

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 15:39

Thanks very much for coming on Radio Cade, and look forward to having you back at some point.

George Sklivanitis: 15:43

Thank you very much, Richard, for the kind invitation and I really enjoyed our discussion.

Richard Miles: 15:47

Great, I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 15:51

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson , and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.