The Inventivity Pod

Amir Rubin is the co-founder of Paracosm, a company that developed a handheld device that creates 3D color maps of real-world environments. “We’ve turned reality,” says Amir, “into a video game.” Amir is a second-generation entrepreneur. Both his parents are PhD’s, but his father quit academia to start a hardware store, and later a bakery. Amir wonders if any entrepreneur would make it without some level of “blind enthusiasm.” 

Amir Rubin is the co-founder of Paracosm, a company that developed a handheld device that creates 3D color maps of real-world environments. “We’ve turned reality,” says Amir, “into a video game.” Amir is a second-generation entrepreneur. Both his parents are PhD’s, but his father quit academia to start a hardware store, and later a bakery. Amir wonders if any entrepreneur would make it without some level of “blind enthusiasm.” 

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 in 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

A three-dimensional world that used to be something only for science fiction and now it’s an everyday part of reality and we’re pleased to have here on our show this morning Amir Rubin, founder of a company called Paracosm, which deals very much in the 3D world and other inventions. Welcome to the show Amir.

Amir Rubin: 0:56

Hey, thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard Miles: 0:58

So, Amir, I always like to start out with the inventor themselves explaining what the invention is, the core technology at least behind it, what it does in very simple terms, and then we’ll come back and talk later on about sort of how you develop that. So what did you invent Amir ? And what does it do?

Amir Rubin: 1:18

So, I co-founded a company in 2013, Paracosm, that has invented the world’s first handheld color lidar mapping system and a lot of fancy words there. But basically it’s a device that, the product is called the PX80. And it’s a device that you can hold, has a little handle, and you just go for a walk and in whatever environment you want indoor, outdoor, and when you’re done, we spit out a 3D replica, like a digital twin of the real world environment in full color. So it’s like we’ve, you know, one way I describe it is maybe you could think of it as we’ve turned a reality into a video game level.

Richard Miles: 2:15

Okay. So, I’ve seen the product, the application before, and I’ve said it’s very impressive. I think one thing that struck me was the speed at which you can do it because the technology has existed I think for a w hile. A nd you can do 3D mapping, but your invention enables you and this i s as of several years ago a nd I know you’ve improved it to do it very quickly and pretty, very accurate to a degree that’s useful to a lot of t hings.

Amir Rubin: 2:46

Yeah, exactly. So there’s been 3D scanning technologies that had been really good since, you know, the eighties and nineties, and they’ve been scanning for oil fields and oil rigs and other industrial applications and the way old or traditional scanners work is there like laser scanners that are mounted on the old, surveyors , tripods. You might have seen them when you drive by a construction site by the side of the road, you might see a crew with a survey, tripod doing surveys. So that’s a pretty similar to how 3D scanning is, has been done and is currently done. And our big Aha moment is what happens if we ditched the tripod and let people just go for a walk. And it lets you capture data really fast that’s never been possible before and lets people go into capturing new types of environments. Like we have customers, for example in Japan who mount our little 3D mapping pod onto a backpack and they go hiking through the mountainous forest of Japan and they’re able to 3D map in full color, the mountainous terrain and forest that covers 70% of Japan.

Richard Miles: 4:16

So we’re going to come back a little bit later and talk about the company you founded Paracosm and what that was like but first I want to talk somewhat about your background. You have a very interesting background Amir just the little bit that I know about you is very interesting. You’ve been associated in town in Gainesville with a number of companies who are well known, Shadow Health, Prioria Robotics. You also have a patent for 3D cameras to weigh cows, which I wager is one of a kind. But let’s go back before even, and your a graduate from the University of Florida computer engineering. But let’s go back before that. Tell me where, where you’re from, what were your sort of early influences as a child, maybe what your parents did for a living and that sort of stuff?

Amir Rubin: 5:09

Yeah, I would say that that all had an influence on me. Both my parents are PhDs. Um, and you know, it’s kinda funny. My Dad was a scientist, he was a PhD in Biology, but he quit before I was born and decided to start his own business. So, I’ve always kind of been used to seeing my dad own his own small businesses and he ran a hardware store when I was a kid and then started a bakery when I was in middle and high school. So kind of a funny combination of science.

Richard Miles: 5:46

So here in Gainesville?

Amir Rubin: 5:46

In a south Florida. And then my mother is a PhD in Education, PhD and as a teacher. So probably where some of the nerdiness came from I think.

Richard Miles: 6:04

Were you a good student in school and starting out?

Amir Rubin: 6:09

I was, I was like one of these annoying students, I never did my homework and I never studied for class,

Richard Miles: 6:15

But you ended up doing well.

Amir Rubin: 6:17

Yeah. Math and science. I never needed to study for the test. When I would take a test or do a report, the answer would just pop into my head. So I never really had to work too hard at it, which always drove people crazy.

Richard Miles: 6:36

So, did your teachers find this endearing or frustrating and did your parents, were they thrilled by this ability for you to pull it out at the last minute?

Amir Rubin: 6:45

I think it frustrates everybody. Yeah, I remember I even for math and science teachers, they’re cool with the English teachers hate it because I would, I got like the highest score on the the IB AP exam without ever actually reading any of the books.

Richard Miles: 7:05

And your fellow students I’m sure were probably,

Amir Rubin: 7:10

Well they were, they were super smart too.

Richard Miles: 7:12

So in terms of science and math, I mean it sounds like you were always had an ability to do it. What were sort of the first, I guess, was it a class or you know, I know there are some people that their introduction to science or coding was, you know, a computer game for instance. Is there any sort of epiphany that you had in terms of that you think led you into the field you are now?

Amir Rubin: 7:36

Yeah. There was two or three. The first was my parents bought a computer, went out when we were, um, when I was like 10 years old. So I’ve always had computers in the house and it was my, I spent every day on it. You know, um, learning how to code and, you know, initially basic and you know, other learning languages from back in the 90s, like Pascal and then, you know, this was the , this was, you know, dialing in to the local, you know, bbs and , and all this fun stuff. Um, but I’d never, you know, one thing that we kind of take for granted in the Cade, it’s like something that the Cade does a lot of work on is like the STEM and the STEAM, uh, you know, education and letting students know and you know, now we have first robotics and we have STEAM. So it’s, it’s a known thing now when if you’re in like a elementary/middle of school that, uh, engineering as a career. And I never know , no one ever told me that. Like, I didn’t know until I graduated. I was halfway through college that there was such a thing as engineering, let alone computer engineering. So people think it’s silly. But in high school, a big moment for me with taking, um , physics 1 and that was like the most mind opening class I’ve ever taken that to see that the world can be partially modeled by, you know, uh, physics equations and theories and our physics teacher was like, you know, you can become a physicist. And so that I came to University of Florida as a physics major, um, because that seemed like a career path. And one day, um, I went to a career fair and, uh, like my sophomore year, and there was not a single company hiring physicists, but there’s a few who are asking, who were like, hey, we’re, we’re, we’re looking for computer engineers. And I was like, wait, that’s, you can be a computer engineer? That’s a thing?

Richard Miles: 9:37

What year are we talking about?

Amir Rubin: 9:39

This is, um, uh, 2000-2001. And so yeah, it was , it was kind of unheard of back then to be a programmer or a computer engineer. And then I had the fun of graduating in 2003, which, um , was the collapse of the computer engineering industry and everyone had declared that, um, you know, computer programming, computer science and engineering is done . It’s done, it’s dead. They’ll never be an industry in this, in the U.S. it’s over. And, uh, there’s not a single job to be had in it. So that was fun times too.

Richard Miles: 10:09

So you’re one of those rare students, uh, that before you even finish school, you’d already founded a company. So what you describe how your dad ran his own businesses. Running a business is really different than, you know, sitting in a classroom, right? And, and studying and doing assignments. What was it about, was there something about the business world that attracted you in addition to, you know, the , the content. I mean, you could’ve gone on and just gotten a graduate degree and a PhD, but you decided to found a company and then you, before you’re even at a school and you joined another startup company, Shadow Health, and then you found it in another one. So what, what was it about that side that attracted you? The business side?

Amir Rubin: 10:52

It was, um, combination of all that. And I had stayed with my sister who lives in the bay area in California, um, the summer before I graduated and she worked at, before the dot com collapse in 99′-2000. She had worked at a, um , one of these San Francisco dot com companies. So I visited her and I was like, Hey, this is pretty, this is pretty cool. They have these cool office chairs and free snacks. And so,

Richard Miles: 11:21

It’s always the snacks.

Amir Rubin: 11:23

It’s always the free snacks. And, um , so when I graduated finally in 2003, by this time, you know, uh, by the time I had stayed with my sister, you know, and, and, and seeing all that, I was convinced you know by that time I had switched from physics to computer engineering major. And then when I graduate and graduated in 2003, there was just simply not, not an economy for, for programmers or , or , software engineers. And this was before the startup craze, you know, it was like Facebook probably was just started, you know, um, and no one outside of the few schools knew about them. There was no y Combinator or anything. So I thought to myself, well, I, there’s no, there’s no jobs here, but I’ve, I’ve seen it, seen it done before. I should probably, um, you know, start my own company with some friends. And, um, my then girlfriend now wife was, um, just, uh , accepted into UF Veterinary School. So it’s like, and I need an excuse to stay in Gainesville a few more years . So I’ll start, uh , computer engineering company right here in Gainesville.

Richard Miles: 12:33

So that’s a, that’s a fascinating story. So, um , so I was just going to add an addition to the snacks, there’s always a girl involved, right?

Amir Rubin: 12:39

Oh yeah, always, yeah.

Richard Miles: 12:41

Um, okay. So, uh, so let’s talk about your current company Paracosm. Um , you founded that in 2013, so now going on, uh , gosh, six years close , right? What was that like? I mean you had, you already at that point had the core idea for the 3D sort of handheld or did you? Or did you found the company first and then the idea comes , or was it the other way around?

Amir Rubin: 13:02

It was all the above. So it’s always a chaotic jumble.

Richard Miles: 13:07

And , and so you obviously had to hire, I mean how many employees did you have at the beginning? Was it just you or did you?

Amir Rubin: 13:13

It was myself and four other co-founders. We started with the team of five.

Richard Miles: 13:18

And were you guys , did you have any money? I mean where?

Amir Rubin: 13:20

I just, I’d put in, um, everything I got from, uh, my first startup. Okay . You know, from, from all the money I’d saved up from my previous start up and the first company I founded out of school. So, you know, I emptied out my 401k and my savings and I maxed out my credit card and you know, just put it, put it all in.

Richard Miles: 13:40

And then your then girlfriend decided to become your then wife right?

Amir Rubin: 13:44

Basically yeah, yeah. So that makes, that’s best financial decisions here.

Richard Miles: 13:47

Pretty gutsy thing, cause at that point did Paracosm have any clients or sales or nothing? Nothing. Just an idea. It’s an idea. Um, all right. So you started out with, you said three co- founders or four co-founders and how many employees does Paracosm have now?

Amir Rubin: 14:04

We , we were acquired last year by a larger startup, uh , Occipital. And the Paracosm division is currently 22 employees.

Richard Miles: 14:13

And how much, are you in a manager role now or do you or are you like the chief technical officer?

Amir Rubin: 14:20

I’m , I’m the equivalent of like CTO / general manager, president of the division.

Richard Miles: 14:27

So do you, um, how much of your time do you get to spend on developing the technology or new technologies and how much time is sort of meant, uh , spent actually managing the division?

Amir Rubin: 14:38

We have a pretty good workflow, so I spend, I spend a lot of time sitting with the engineering team, but don’t do the actual engineering work myself anymore and,

Richard Miles: 14:50

Do you miss that or?

Amir Rubin: 14:52

Um yeah, you know, a little, but you know, it’s kind of, um, it’s really hard to do both. I think. Um, you know, the, in order to do engineering work, you have to be able to have just singularly focus on the design problem or the engineering challenge you’re working on. You have to be able to have, you know, four to eight hour blocks of time set aside just to work on, on your, um projects.

Richard Miles: 15:19

So not going to meetings, not messing with emails.

Amir Rubin: 15:20

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so once you start having to, um, be in a role where you’re communicating and pitching and selling and yeah , like I said, responding to to people, then it’s really hard to do both.

Richard Miles: 15:36

So I imagine the fact that you were acquired means that, uh , you were profitable and you had clients at that point.

Amir Rubin: 15:43

We were on the verge of it, we, we, um, we are now.

Richard Miles: 15:48

I remember when we took a tour of Paracosm offices, uh , had to been at least a three or four years ago or longer. Uh , I remember at the, at that point, the type of applications you had, I remember very distinctly one was for like a military type of application, special forces. Oh , another one that’s sort of like for designers, interior designers, and you listed a few other ones. What, what has developed as kind of like your number one application or number one industry, so to speak, that loves your product?

Amir Rubin: 16:19

The short answer is, uh , surveyors really have been taken taking to our product. So, you know, it’s sort of like the, the, you know, the early adopters are people who are already doing lots of survey, uh , for their businesses and they see this as like a , a really like shiny new tool that they can do their jobs much, much faster now. And so that’s been our early adopters as people doing land survey building survey. And you know, we’re starting to expand into other use cases because early adopters just are seeing the PX80 the lidar mapping system we developed as a tool to make their jobs much easier. And that’s great for getting us a good flow of early sales. But you know, we fundamentally see this technology as enabling an entirely new class of applications. So we see what we’ve done as a way to, to always have an up- to-date digital copy of reality so that it enables entirely new ways of thinking. So we’re starting to get adoption, for example, on construction sites to be able to scan a construction site every week to precisely monitor progress and do quality control. And we’re starting to get people use the PX80 to monitor like industrial facilities, factories, warehouses, you know, data centers, things like that are constantly changing and the facility manager needs to know what, what’s happening in their facility . So, uh, we’re, we’re starting to see, you know, new classes of, um , use case that, that are pretty exciting.

Richard Miles: 18:01

So these are still mostly commercial applications right? There’s, there’s not a retail in game at this point?

Amir Rubin: 18:08

No, no. We started out thinking there would be some, some interesting consumer and retail or end user use cases. And for a lot of reasons it turns out that’s , that’s a , that’s a very hard sell, right? One of the companies, I think doing a really successful job at that is actually like a , the Niantic, the makers of Pokemon Go. They have a incredibly popular App. It’s a Pokemon game where you hunt Pokemon in the wild. But you know, future versions of that app will start to use the players, you know, the Pokemon trainers, a camera phone to map, uh , parts of the real world environment. And so, you know, what we kind of realized is to make a consumer play, there needs to be a primary driver, uh , to the consumer beyond 3D mapping. Uh, for example, Pokemon Go or, or fun engaging games like that. Whereas, um , in the, uh, you know, enterprise industrial world people, people need their data. So you can, you can make a business just to selling tools to get people data.

Richard Miles: 19:21

I had a guest, I think, you know, Randy Scott, local entrepreneur now in adventure capital and, uh , he said one issue he found with sort of adventures and co-founders is that one of the pieces of advice he gives them is the first thing they have to do is learn how to fall out of love with the science behind the invention. Um, and , and coldly look at what are the sort of commercial applications, commercial potential. Yeah . And he said once he could do that, then you know , adventures can really understand. Okay. Just as you said, there’s ultimately there’s gotta be a market or somebody wanting to use that.

Amir Rubin: 19:56

Yeah, yeah. We, we, we initially thought this, that this tech we developed would be, um , really popular with game designers and, you know, like augmented reality games and, and experiences and fun things like that. And so when we realized kind of like what, what Randy is saying, they want to realize the application is industrial. Well, we made kind of a tough decision as a team to , um , just focus full time on very unsexy, very kind of nose to the grindstone industry . You know, land survey, construction, facility management, these are not, they don’t grab any headlines, but when you talk about important problems, I mean, we all live in buildings that need to be built. We all drive on roads and bridges that need to be inspected and you know, hopefully done on a budget, finished on budget and a complex facilities need to need to stay running. And so there’s real need and real budgets to um, to support that. And that was a , you know, shift for us. But as soon as we made that shift, things started going our way. So the one kind of conceit we have to our old idea of like whimsical consumer games. We’ve kept our branding and our logo as like a fun kind of whimsical characters and the branding we , we uh, and the, uh, we, we made, um, for the old vision of the company. We brought that into our new product and our new market and it actually helps it stand out. Like I company mascot is a parakeet, you know, the Paracosm parakeet and uh, you know, people, people know what the parakeet means now the industry.

Richard Miles: 21:40

Yeah. So it sounds like you’ve learned a lot just in the last few years. It was something you said reminded me of uh, our , our architects that built the Cade Museum, um , did a great job and it’s a fabulous innovative building. We love it. And, um, and they were very excited to build it. And , and I remember asking one of them, I said, well, you know, don’t you guys get to build stuff like this all the time? And they said, well, no, the majority of what we build is schools, hospitals, administrative buildings. You know, we’re, we’re rarely asked hey, you know, build this museum of creativity and invention and kind of do whatever you want.

Amir Rubin: 22:10

They’re very innovative.

Richard Miles: 22:12

They’re very excited. But it was an insight for me to understand that that part of the business were substantial. You still need schools, you still need to outsource administrative buildings. You need Compton architects to do that. Yeah .

Amir Rubin: 22:21

But we do use the Cade Museum in all of our marketing.

Richard Miles: 22:24

Oh good, good.

Amir Rubin: 22:24

That’s a beautiful building. So we have it scanned many times and that’s the scan we show off because it looks cool.

Richard Miles: 22:30

So Amir, uh, you’re not by any means an old guy, but you do have a lot of experience, you’ve done a lot of things. Sort of looking back on your career, both sort of, in, in school and then also as an engineer and a business. I’m a guy. What, what sort of lesson learned would you give to uh , um , someone who, early twenties, maybe reminds you a little bit of yourself and they’re all charged up with a great idea and they’re , they’re off to the races, they’re going to do the next big thing. What would you sit down and tell them over a cup of coffee? Hey, here are the things you definitely should do and watch out for this.

Amir Rubin: 23:09

Yeah, that’s, that’s always a tough one because I think about that question often. And sometimes I wonder, you know, if you’re not dumbly and blindly charging forward with the naive enthusiasm of just being out of school and the irrational overconfidence, you know, would you even get anywhere? And so I,

Richard Miles: 23:33

So you have to be a little bit blind. Right?

Amir Rubin: 23:34

Yeah. I don’t like to, um, I don’t like to give you know too much advice, you know, a lot of times I find like a lot of the advice I give might sound cynical or jaded. And when I spend with students who are starting new projects, um,

Richard Miles: 23:49

Cause you probably get asked a lot, right? I mean, Amir, you’re a rockstar in Gainesville. So I’m sure people go ask Amir and he’ll tell you the

Amir Rubin: 23:55

In the past week alone. Yeah. I find that at least, you know , usually between two and four hours a week meeting with people just to, you know , try to spread the love and give a little encouragement. And so I find it’s better to just sometimes give encouragement. And if someone’s about to face a very obvious pitfall, try to kind of steer them away from a pitfall. But there’s something to be said for like the high energy of when someone has a lot of enthusiasm. Like I learned from that a lot of times when I talk to people.

Richard Miles: 24:27

What are some of those common questions you get from those people? I mean, is it all just tell me how you did it or do or there’s something specific that they , they, think they need to know and that you can tell them .

Amir Rubin: 24:37

I prefer when there is something specific um, sometimes people just wanna kinda, you know, it’s sometimes people just want to hear like my experience and , and let themselves, they’ll draw their own conclusion. It’s just a nice little data point that they can, I could say something like, okay, well in your situation, here’s, here’s what happened to me and draw your own parallels to that. Sometimes people have a specific problem. Like there’s a company here in town that just received a very large order unexpectedly for their product. And they’re like, how are we going to build this? How are we, how are we going to get, you know, $50,000 to deliver this in a month? And I was like, well, you know, good luck with that. Um, but you know, I, I help however I can, the most difficult problems I encounter and that I usually am able to kind of see right away even if the founders don’t is, you know, like, well let’s, let’s dig into the relationship between both of you here and like, um, I think that’s probably one of the main lessons learned is the relationship aspect of starting a business, especially with your employees and your co-founders and your investors. These are all relationships that, you know, will be strained heavily from the stresses of starting a company and trying to make payroll and stay in business. And that’s, you know, my biggest advice is always for people to be mindful around that. And in fact, you know, when, when, when people get far enough along the process and if I’m like really able to be more involved in mentoring or coaching them, I always, you know, my biggest advice is to learn about mindfulness and, um, how to, you know, control your breathing and your thought processes to be a , a , you know, to be more effective communicator and in the very stressful situations that pop up when you’re starting a business.

Richard Miles: 26:35

It’s interesting what you say about sort of maintain that balance, I’d say between trying to inspire somebody, right? And encourage them, but also sort of, uh , speaking realistically and honestly, Um Phoebe who, you know, my, my wife and co-founder Cade Museum was asked to speak on a panel and the subject’s panel was loosely sort of like, uh , uh, you know, starting a start a museum, you know, what do you think and Phoebe sells to be the shortest panel ever. I’ll say, don’t do it. Um, but, uh, it sounds like you have acquired, uh, you know, I almost see a budding venture capitalists here. I’m here. I gotta say, you know, you have all this, a very actual useful information and insights into how these companies are formed. Um, and, and sort of what tends to succeed in what doesn’t, what’s, what’s next on the horizon for you, do you, do you see yourself staying? Well, obviously you’re not going to tell me if you’re gonna leave, but I mean, what, what is on your bucket list, I guess, say 10 years from now? Where, where do you see yourself being?

Amir Rubin: 27:34

Um, uh , you know, I always, when, when we started Paracosm, I said, I’m not going to make the same mistakes. Um , I made at, at my previous, uh , startups and my previous companies and, you know, we’ve , we’ve gotten further than, than, than I had before. And so, you know, uh , Paracosm and, uh, you know, we, we still have a lot of, uh, a lot of items on our to do lists that we’re focused on. But, um, you know, in , in 10 years, you know, life, uh, you know, the next next adventure will be, um, I, I work really hard to suppress the ideas in my head to be able to focus on Paracosm. But you know, there , there, there’s always a next idea and, and you know, in 10 years I would see myself hopefully being a right back on the hamster wheel with , with a new idea and making a new set of mistakes. Um, you know, just, uh , keep trying to, you know, refine. Um, the, the, the, I don’t like to call it a process is like keep trying to refine the experience of starting a company and, um, you know, make new mistakes, don’t re learn from the old mistakes and try to do it a little better each time.

Richard Miles: 28:51

So, uh, Amir when you have that new great idea, come back on Radio Cade we’ll talk about it. We’ll charge five bucks to download the episode. Once we go platinum we’ll , we’ll give you a few percentage points.

Amir Rubin: 29:03

There you go, I’ll take it.

Richard Miles: 29:05

Um, Amir, thank you very much for being on Radio Cade this morning, I’ve learned a lot and uh , I hope to see you back on the show.

Amir Rubin: 29:11

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Richard. This was a lot of fun.

Richard Miles: 29:13

I’m your host Richard Miles.

Outro: 29:17

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support, Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and inventor interviews, Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing, and production of the podcast 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 son of a Pennsylvania preacher, Philip Koehler made his way to Florida courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Eventually he became a Professor of Urban Entomology at the University of Florida. He’s developed a mosquito and fly trap that uses a minimal amount of insecticides, and he also has developed a trap for bed bugs. He patents inventions because “you can write an article for a scientific journal and no one will ever use it."

The son of a Pennsylvania preacher, Philip Koehler made his way to Florida courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Eventually he became a Professor of Urban Entomology at the University of Florida. He’s developed a mosquito and fly trap that uses a minimal amount of insecticides, and he also has developed a trap for bed bugs. He patents inventions because “you can write an article for a scientific journal and no one will ever use it.”

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

Bugs. We’re back to talk about something that everyone who lives or is from Florida is very familiar with and very happy to have on Radio Cade this morning, Dr. Philip Koehler, who is a professor of Urban Entomology at the University of Florida. Thanks for being with us Phil.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 0:51

It’s wonderful to be here with you.

Richard Miles: 0:53

Phil, I know if I tried to describe your technology I would completely mess it up. So I’m going to ask you to sort of tell me a little bit about your, your core technology core invention , um , and explain it as if , uh , and in this case, very realistic scenario. I don’t know anything about it.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 1:11

Yeah, we, we started back in , uh, back in around 2010 or so trying to take on flies and mosquitoes as very dangerous animals that needed to be controlled because they , uh, they are very important from the standpoint of human welfare. There were very few products that were environmentally friendly to be able to control these , uh , these potential disease factors. And we’d gotten some funding from the military in order to develop, first of all, fly traps. And second of all , um , mosquito traps in order to be able to control them. And we’ve, we’ve developed several new technologies that have now been patented and are in the process of being commercialized throughout the entire world.

Richard Miles: 1:53

And so if I understand correctly, these technologies , um, they’re, they’re mostly not, or do they have anything to do with sort of insecticides or sprays or anything, or these are different types of pest control?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 2:05

Everything that we’ve done utilizes insecticides, however, they are contained so that people won’t contact them. And also they’re not a danger to the environment because they are contained.

Richard Miles: 2:16

Okay, so they’re not like sprayed on a field or they’re more in receptacles or containers?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 2:23

Exactly. We’re, we’re putting them associated with something that the insects like to go to. So you don’t have to, you don’t have to spray large areas of land. And that was one of the things that I was concerned about back in 2015, that the state of Florida, in order to control Zika factors, u h, they were spraying by air, over large tracks of land. And in many cases, that was the only thing that they had available to them.

Richard Miles: 2:50

Okay. So I think, I , I think I understand more or less, and I hope our listeners do as well. So let’s, let’s go back in time to a young Phil Koehler , uh , sort of tell us your origin story, where were you from and how did a nice guy, like you ended up , dealing with bugs?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 3:05

Oh, I started growing up in Southeastern Pennsylvania and , uh , my family actually goes back to like 1702. They bought the farm from William Penn. So we were longstanding in the state of , uh, of Pennsylvania. However, I ended up in Florida somehow. And, and I remember when I was playing little league baseball, I was always the right fielder, which was always the sorriest player on the team. And if a ball was hitting my direction, I would never know it because I was watching the ants crawl around on the ground. So I always have enjoyed insects in one way or another through my entire life.

Richard Miles: 3:44

So, at what point did you know you weren’t going to make the majors, pretty early on in your baseball career?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 3:49

I was, I think the , the managers of the team hated to put me on the field. And so I think it was pretty clear I was not,

Richard Miles: 3:56

And this is the days before helicopter parents. Right? So it’s not like your dad stormed onto the field and demanded more playing time for you, right?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 4:02

My dad didn’t do that. He did not storm onto the field because I was bad player.

Richard Miles: 4:08

So were either of your parents, scientists at all?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 4:11

Neither one, as a matter of fact, my father was a minister and, u h, he was, u h, he was for years in, in Pennsylvania then, u h, went to Virginia and then retired back to Pennsylvania again. So it’s, u h, so probably I have a long history of people talking i n my family.

Richard Miles: 4:33

Um, so how did you end up in Florida? Did you come here as an undergraduate or did your family have a connection here?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 4:39

Actually, no. What happened was I did my undergraduate work at Catava college, which was a college that was affiliated with the church that my father, my father was a minister in . And so I got a really good break because ministers don’t get paid very much. And so I got a good break as far as cost . And then,

Richard Miles: 4:59

So, this is in Pennsylvania?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 5:01

Uh , this was Catava College is in North Carolina, Salisbury, North Carolina. And while I was there, I was picked up for two NSF fellowships at Oak Ridge National Lab. And I was working on chironomid midges. In other words , uh , uh, insects that grow on the bottoms of lakes. And they had a Lake there that had been contaminated with radioactive waste from building the bombs for , uh , bombing Japan. They’d put that waste in 55 gallon drums, buried it in the hillside. And when they rusted out, they built a dam then to contain the radioactive waste. So I would walk out there and the radioactive waste, collect these midges and then determine the , the abnormalities that were a result of radiation. So I did two summers there, and then I went to Argonne National Lab and was doing neutron activation a nd gamma Ray spectroscopy, which is a physics project. And I found out what I really didn’t want to do in life, which was that.

Richard Miles: 6:02

So let me guess, did you, did you volunteer for this, Phil? This sounds sort of like dangerous work, radioactive midges, and I mean, did somebody have a gun to your head or what?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 6:11

There were many days that someone was walking behind me with a Geiger counter to see how much radiation I was actually getting. And maybe that’s the reason.

Richard Miles: 6:18

He said it was a Geiger counter right there. Just make sure you weren’t didn’t turn and run away.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 6:21

Of course, that may be why I’m so strange today.

Richard Miles: 6:25

So you shifted from that , um, into, or did you already have an interest in entomology before that sort of academic interest?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 6:32

Yes. I had an academic interest in entomology and actually I took my first entomology class at Catava College. But then I went on to Cornell University and got my PhD at Cornell University. I was going to be drafted into the army. They already had me down for that . They already did my physical and were going to put me in the trenches in Vietnam. And I had the opportunity to get into the Navy as an entomologist. And I went in as a Lieutenant , uh , entomologist and spent three years then in Jacksonville. And because I was at Jacksonville and, and teaching classes , on insect control to two Navy personnel, I got to work closely with some of the faculty here at the University of Florida. So I ended up then getting hired, u h, at the University of Florida as an assistant professor back in 1975. So I’ve been here for 44 years.

Richard Miles: 7:31

So who knew, thanks to the U.S. Navy, you ended up in Gainesville, Florida.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 7:35

That’s right. And what was interesting was I got in the Navy because they needed another entomologist to go to Vietnam, to take care of some of the mosquito problems there. And , um, and at that time they started winding down Vietnam. And so I stayed there in , in Jacksonville for my entire tour of duty. So I had three years , uh , three years there and now 44 here.

Richard Miles: 8:01

So I’m going to have to start giving the Navy professional credit here. Cause you’re actually the second guest in a row. I just had a guest on and his sort of trajectory was also to do with the Navy and it was in the area of radio-frequency antennas and he eventually went into the MRI business and so on. And so, you know, go Navy, I guess. Um, uh , okay. So let’s, let’s come sort of back to where you are, did not start a company with your technology, but you did license the technology and understand there’s a company in Italy that is using it?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 8:28

Yeah. So, so what happens at the University of Florida is , uh, when you have something that you think is patentable, you let the university know because they have first choice to , uh, to decide whether they want to adopt it or not. The University of Florida adopted these technologies. And then , uh, found a partner with a company that is actually managed out of Italy, but is a Florida company now. And it’s called Florida Insect Control Group. And they’re just to commercializing the technologies that we developed.

Richard Miles: 8:59

And who are , who are the major clients, I mean, are these sort of governments that are buying or anybody, these aren’t retail products right?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 9:05

Okay. The , the process for this is , is very long and convoluted in order to get the technologies that we have available because we’re using insecticides. We have to go through all of the registration processes for every , uh , for every country that, that these products are going to be sold. And so right now , uh , we’re in the last stage, the company’s in the last stages of getting EPA registration in the United States and also European union , uh , registration , uh , for European countries and also former colonies of those of those countries as well. So, so basically the only registration that we have for use right now is in Poland. And I have no idea why Poland, I can’t even read the label on the product, but it was, it was one that, u h, that seemed reasonable for them to go to. First,

Richard Miles: 9:59

I noticed also that you are, you have been inducted or were inducted in the pest management professional hall of fame. I have to say, you’re the first inductee in the pest management hall of fame and I’ve met so, honored here.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 10:12

Yeah . So that was, that was quite an honor because they , uh, they try to choose the people that have made the most outstanding contributions to the pest management industry throughout the country and throughout the world. Actually, most of the , uh, the, the organization national pest management association is , uh , is not national. It’s a worldwide association where they have participants from all over the world, including India and Japan. And another thing that I forgot to tell you was that this year I’m being inducted as a fellow in the National Academy of Inventors and,

Richard Miles: 10:48

Oh, congratulation in Tampa right?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 10:49

It was first started in Tampa, but this year the, the award is going to be in Houston at the space center there. And from what I understand, the, the award will be passed out by the gentlemen who is in charge of patents and trade for the U.S.

Richard Miles: 11:04

Oh, Congratulations.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 11:05

So it’s quite quite an honor for me. And also I think for the University of Florida.

Richard Miles: 11:10

Um, Phil, if you’re allowed to tell us, what are you working on now in terms of research, sort of what’s on the horizon , um, in terms of your , uh , sort of academic interests , or do you have anything else that you are getting ready to license or patent that you can talk about?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 11:25

Well, actually , um , uh , I think that according to the University of Florida records, I have 19 patents in the U.S. that have been issued and probably five international. And , uh, there are five more that are being issued at this point. So, so we have quite a, quite a stack of them going through that are novel inventions that, that we’re trying to bring to people, to be able to manage insights that are dangerous in their own yards and in an environmentally friendly way.

Richard Miles: 11:57

One thought that occurred to me, Phil is how much do you have to know of or work with? Um, uh, I guess sort of like urban planners or urban designers, or even sociologists, because it occurs to me that some of the patterns in what you’re dealing with right, are , are concentrations of people making decision on somewhere to live, and those patterns change over time. And they change city by city country, by country. How much of your work intersects with that world in which you’re , you’re actually looking at the sociology of the urban environment before you look at the bugs there?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 12:28

Yeah. Well, we haven’t really worked with the sociologists all that much. Um , what we’ve, what we’ve been trying to do is work with people in material science and engineering in order to come up with formulations that can be used in the way that we want these products to be used. So by putting together the people that have a knowledge of the molecules, along with the people that have a knowledge of the insects, we’ve been able to come up with novel ways of approaching insect control. So one of the first products that we came up with was a fly trap. That was a color blue. And if you’re familiar with fly traps at all, they’re usually yellow. Now I did not understand why they were yellow because flies always go to blue over yellow and as a matter of fact, it’s like two to one, they’ll go to blue over yellow, but most of the fly traps were developed in agriculture for agriculturally important pests. They’re attacking plants and a sick plant is yellow. And so the i nse cts attracted to things that are, that the agricultural pests are attracted to things that are mostly yellow in color. So they just went ahead and said, we control flies too. W ell , guess what? Blue is a better color. So we came up with blue. And one of the things that I noticed was flies like to squeeze into small cracks and crevices. And I couldn’t believe it. We grow flies at our l ab, of course, and you can put them in a plastic bag and, and crinkle it up. Like you would a bag of potato chips and try to try to seal it off as tight as you can. And the flies would find their way out. They love squeezing into cracks and crevices. So they’re actually attracted to the blue color and then secondarily the black color of a crack. So what we did was we put, uh, w e p u t a piece of yarn on there, treated the yarn with insecticide, and we could kill thousands of flies in a short period of time. We hung them over dumpsters and the flies would, would fall dead. And we catch them in a tray underneath and be able to count them. And it was thousands of flies and like a 24 hour period that you could kill with just a little bit of product on, uh, o n m a ybe 12 inches of yarn on a blue w ith t hat’ s put on a blue background and they’re attracted to the blue color. They think there’s a crack there because they see the black on the blue and they go to that and there’s food there. So they eat it and they die. And it’s a very nice way to be able to control flies without spraying everything around your property and around your, um, y o ur farm for fly control.

Richard Miles: 15:05

So you, you make it sound kind of easy, but this, I imagine took hours and hours of research. I mean, I just pity the poor grad assistant who had to count all those flies, right? I mean, this is, this is how long did it take just to , uh, determine what you just told me is that months of research or is that years of research?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 15:21

Oh it was years. Actually, we started out by putting, by doing electroretinograms on the flies. Now he’s like electroretinogram is where you shine a particular wavelength of light onto a fly eye. And you have a probes set in there. So you can determine whether there’s an electrical impulse going to the brain or not from that , uh, from that light. And then you can change the wavelengths of light and find out what the fly is most sensitive to. And they’re most sensitive to blue and they can see yellow. And that’s actually, that was the only color that repelled flies. And so the traps that are out there, u h, for the most part are yellow and r epelling flies.

Richard Miles: 16:03

In your experience, Phil , is there a certain personality type of people that are attracted to entomology research? Cause it’s, you know, they’re animals for sure, but they’re not like cute furry animals and they’re not plants. So have you noticed any commonalities and you know, you and your colleages?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 16:19

Well for a lot of the people, and I must admit this goes back quite a few years, my experience with antibiotics , uh , they’re very much like engineers, they’re socially awkward. And so, so it’s , uh , it’s rather interesting dealing with both engineers and , and entomologists as well. And one other thing,

Richard Miles: 16:38

It’s almost like the , the joke, you know, accountants will tell about actuaries and actuaries tell about accounts and who is the more socially awkward, is it something like that?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 16:45

Yeah, and maybe the entomologists have been engineer’s beat and you asked how many flies we had to count in order to get this thing done. It was amazing how many flies that we had to count. I had a, I had a student that came to the University of Florida , uh, from Thailand and she didn’t speak very much English and I couldn’t figure out what project to put her on. So I told her to count all the flies and we had one of those traps that we had made, and we wanted to see how many flies it could kill with one charge. So we hung with hung that trap in a cage and we killed flies and we, and we, then we would add more flies in, cause we couldn’t get all the flies in the cage that all at one time we keep on adding flies as they died. And then she had to count every one and she spent three months counting flies. We got up to 40,000. We were still killing 99% of the flies that we released in the cage. And she had to go back to Thailand and so we stopped counting, but every morning I would go in there and she would, u h, she’d separate the flies out into piles of 10. And she would have the days kill there, which m ay b e four or 5,000, u h, flies. And then, u h, then count each fly individually.

Richard Miles: 18:06

So I can imagine she went back and had great stories to tell a parties. What did you do in the United States for three months? Well I counted flies.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 18:12

Yes. It was an exciting place.

Richard Miles: 18:16

Hopefully it didn’t scare off of entomology .

Dr. Philip Koehler: 18:18

Actually that information was quite valuable. We killed 40,000 flies with the thing with one charge. And we did that over three months now , you know, whether it’s effective or not. Yeah . We didn’t have to retreat it at all. And so it’s been , uh , that , uh , that whole process of development of that , uh , of that product was, was actually quite interesting. And , um, and Florida insect control group acquired the rights to that and is commercializing that now.

Richard Miles: 18:44

So Phil, you’ve also done some work with bedbugs. Tell me what that’s about.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 18:47

Yes. We’ve been working extensively with bedbugs over the past 20 years. They started coming back in the U.S. Somewhere around the turn of the century where around the year 2000 or so , uh , bedbugs came back and people really didn’t have a good way to , uh, to manage them. What we’ve done is invented a new type of trap that you can put underneath a bed. And one of the things that they can’t do at the hotels and motels is u sed traps very effectively because they, underneath the mattress and box Springs, they usually have wood that’s on the ground, like a t wo-by-six, u h, that is underneath the mattress and box Springs as a frame. W ell, we’ve invented, u h, u h, a trap t hat can go around those beds and w e’ve feel that we can eliminate the b edbug problem in many of the hotels and motels that would have problems with ifestations.

Richard Miles: 19:41

That sounds like a huge commercial potential there, right? I mean, I’ve known a few people, who’ve had bedbugs and it sounds like an absolute nightmare in terms of actually getting rid of them.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 19:49

And everyone’s fear is you, when you travel, you stay at a , you stay at a place and you may pick up bedbugs and it’s very easy to bring bedbugs home. And you may be faced with , uh , with a $1,000 or a $2,000 bill in order to have them controlled in your house. They can be much more expensive than even termites to control.

Richard Miles: 20:07

Because the conventional treatment now is you have to wet seal off and fumigate a room? Is that how you do it?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 20:13

In many cases in Florida, they’re doing fumigation. However, there is heat treatment that’s also available. Uh, but none of those provide longterm protection. As soon as you have the temperature, go back to normal or release the gas, then the bedbugs can come back in again from someplace else. So the next time you stay at a motel, you may bring them back in and it may cost. It may cost a lot of money in order to be able to get them controlled. So we’re trying to come up with some solutions that people could put under , uh, under the legs of their bed, or even in hotels and motels that can be put , uh , put as a frame or underneath the frame of the bed in order to catch bed bugs that are, that are brought into the place.

Richard Miles: 20:55

Phil, as you look back on your career, you know, starting in Philadelphia and going to North Carolina and then to Jacksonville , then to Gainesville , um, you know, what, what sort of lessons have you learned or what lessons would you impart to say a younger version of you if you met them on the street, you know, a researcher and in particular, you know, since the Cade Museum , um, you know, we like to tell stories of inventions and inventors, particularly those who think that they’ve got a great idea, the idea may have market potential. Um, you know, what, what should they be thinking about , uh, now, or, you know, what , what do you wish you had done, if anything, and what do you wish you hadn’t done? So that should be enough material in that question to go for quite a long time.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 21:37

Okay. Well that was to go for , for quite a while . As a matter of fact , um , my advice to , to kids is they , they need to go to a college that they really , uh , there that really fits their personality. Not every, not every child is destined for the University of Florida and not everybody that gets into the University of Florida is going to be able to adjust, adjust to the size of the university. Because I went to a small place like Catava College that had somewhere around 1100 students, which is, you know , maybe the size of our department at the University of Florida. Um, it allowed me to be able to grow as a person with a small group that , uh, that we all knew each other. And you can survive at the University of Florida if you have a small group. And like at the end of biology department, we do a very good job of, of taking care of our students individually. But there are other departments that have thousands of students in them. We have, we have probably 50 undergraduates and maybe 140 , uh , graduate students. So we’re a small department in the overall scheme of things at the University of Florida. And I think it’s very important for, for kids to be able to find a place that they’re comfortable with , uh, based on their own personality. And even at the University of Florida, it’s a big place, but if you get into a small department, then you have kind of a small field to , uh , to a big place.

Richard Miles: 23:06

As far as , uh, you know, a big invention. We had a recent guest on here who said , um, he , he thought a lot of people , uh, were focused on the short-term nature or the short term desire to hit it big out, you know, do something along the lines. But , uh , three to five years, and, and, and his experience was much different. He said, look, if you’re not willing to invest 15 or even 20 years into a project or a company or whatever , um, you know, you , it’s very unrealistic to think you’re going to succeed. Has that been your experience?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 23:41

That’s very much my experience. And as a matter of fact , uh, I got in, I got into doing some of the patents and inventions , uh, because you can go ahead and publish a scientific article and put it in a book on a shelf and nobody will ever use it. And I thought that, that, that was a shame because a lot of good scientific research never gets implemented because the professor is being rated on how many publications he’s able to get into scientific journals. And they really don’t take much into account when they’re evaluating you on how many things that you’ve tried to do to make sure that what you’re doing is, is really effecting people’s lives to the positive. So, so I kind of look at it that it’s a long-term investment. And as a matter of fact, anytime that you’re dealing with , uh, with insecticides and trying to contain them in a way that would be environmentally safe, there are a lot of hoops that you have to go through and it’s a long-term process. And we started out way back in 2010 on the mosquito invention. And , uh , we still don’t have EPA registration yet. And part of the process was, was , uh, were some things that happened that I would have never anticipated. And one was that, u h, that when we, what we try to do in that mosquito invention is put a surface on the inside of a container because container mosquitoes are extremely important f or, for people’s health. Those container mosquitoes can transmit d aggy, u h, Zika, u h, Chicken Gunyah. And of course, yellow fever is coming back throughout the world. So those are container breeding mosquitoes. We can treat the interior of our container, have it the right c olor. S o the mosquitoes are attracted to it. So we have black and red is t he colors that are, that are attracted. And then we have a polymer because insecticides b reak d own very rapidly when they’re in high humidity or in water conditions. So we have a polymer to slowly release the chemicals i n the mosquitoes. Then in order to lay eggs, they land on the side of the container, or they rest inside the container b ecause they don’t fly all the time. U h, and then they die when they contact the insecticides, or if they lay eggs before they die, then the larvae then die in the container as well. Well, to make a long story longer, what happened was that EPA wants to know how long that insecticide is going to be at the right concentration when it’s on the shelf. So you have to do a two year study that you have to a pprove a two year shelf life. We ll, because we have a complex mixture. Everyone that deals with insecticides always does gas chromatography in order to determine the amount of chemical that’s in th ere, gas chromatography does not work for complex mixtures like ours. So we spent probably two years doing the wrong thing, trying to figure out what’s wrong with, with this assay, odd , w hy can’t we measure the amount of insecticide that’s in that container. And, and finally, I got so frustrated. I was, I would say, we need to use high pressure liquid chromatography HPLC in order to determine the concentration. And because the company that we’re working with is run out of Italy. They found a lab in Italy that goes, yeah, there isn’t any reason why you should have ever looked at gas chromatography for this. You sho uld ha v e do ne a H P LC right. To begin with. And so the y, t hey did it, everything came out fine. And now we’re dealing with EPA. And again, u h , th at the , t he data has been submitted there. So is it alo ng, t his is a long story, but guess what? Uh, i t ‘s not, as long as the story that we’ve had and tr ying to commercialize this, because you, aren’t going to make a fortune in a year, you aren’t going to make a fortune two years. And it probably is 15 to 20 years out that everything is going to work. We have players who are wanting to use this worldwide, and we have one company has a 37, 0 00 employees that does mosquito control throughout the world. They, they look at this as something that will be integrated into their programs and will work very well with what they’re currently doing. So they want to get a hol d of i t, but we’re stuck with a reg u latory hurdles right now in both the European union and the U.S. and China and Australia, and all of those other places.

Richard Miles: 28:13

So here’s some free advice for you, Phil , when you give your acceptance speech at the National Academy of Inventors, repeat a lot of what you just said. I just heard the founder of that. Paul Sanberg, one of the founders, u m, talk about, u h, exactly what you said, that the process of patenting a nd commercialization is a far more effective way to expand the body of knowledge, u m, b ecause y ou g ot t o prove something works, u m, as opposed to simply publishing something academic journal, which may or may not get read, and then maybe forgotten about, but patenting by definition means you have to prove a certain standard and it’s, it’s widely available, widely use may be implemented. And so he argues all the time that inventors play this special role in expanding the body of knowledge, as opposed to, u h, just researchers. I mean, a lot of vendors are also researchers, but the inventors go that extra step of exactly what you just described t o h aving to prove something actually works.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 29:03

You don’t often think about it from the standpoint of science, that the proof of science is to publish it in a peer reviewed journal. But the commercialization of that is a whole different process and, and very much , uh, very much different than what most academic people are used to dealing with.

Richard Miles: 29:21

My final comment. Uh Phil’s I can’t wait to win a bar bet or trivial pursuit game by saying that insects are actually attracted to blue and not yellow. So I know it’s going to, if I just wait long enough, I know I’m going to , I’m going to win some sort of argument somewhere. Phil, thank you very much for coming on Radio Cade has been very , uh, interesting and , um, good luck and best luck with your research and your product.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 29:43

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 29:44

I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 29:48

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.

Jeff Fitzsimmons, a professor of radiology at the University of Florida, invented a way to use RF antennas to capture detailed signals from body parts that are undergoing an MRI.   A native of Newark, New Jersey, Jeff moved to Florida as a kid, where his dad worked at the (future) Cape Canaveral in the early 1960’s. “One of my biggest thrills,” he says, “was going out to the range with my dad to see a missile fired.”  His dad was also a radio amateur, which introduced Jeff to the concept of antennas at a very early age.  This came in handy when Jeff was a Navy communications specialist during the Vietnam era and at the National Security Agency.  Later in life he formed a successful company that was bought by Philips Electronics.  

Big public infrastructure projects used to be synonymous with corruption, including bid rigging. Super-smart professors Jim McClave and Tom Rothrock figured out a way to detect bidding irregularities and catch cheaters. As a kid, Jim loved solving puzzles and did well at school, but suffered from bad “comportment” according to his teachers.  Tom, a farm boy from Missouri, went to a one-room schoolhouse in a town of 100. “Not a lot of education took place” so he struggled in school, but “math came easy” to him.  In 1977, Jim and Tom formed a business called InfoTech and have been collaborating ever since. 

Detecting diseases in water is harder than it sounds. The normal process involves expensive, time-consuming lab tests. Joseph Moss of the University of West Florida has invented a better method that spins out water-borne pathogens to help identify them quickly and cheaply. A native of Holland, Pennsylvania and the youngest of five children, Moss was a “fidgety” boy who loved being outside because “everything fascinated me.”  After a “rambunctious phase” and a “dead-end” job on the West Coast, Moss, who had initially failed out of college, returned to school and became a researcher.

Detecting diseases in water is harder than it sounds. The normal process involves expensive, time-consuming lab tests. Joseph Moss of the University of West Florida has invented a better method that spins out water-borne pathogens to help identify them quickly and cheaply. A native of Holland, Pennsylvania and the youngest of five children, Moss was a “fidgety” boy who loved being outside because “everything fascinated me.”  After a “rambunctious phase” and a “dead-end” job on the West Coast, Moss, who had initially failed out of college, returned to school and became a researcher.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:20

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the 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

Today we’re entering the spin zone. Now you haven’t accidentally downloaded a political podcast. I’m talking about literal spin as in an invention called a spin concentrator. And we’re pleased to have the inventor on the show today. Joseph Moss, who is a researcher at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Welcome to Radio Cade, Joe.

Joseph Moss: 0:56

Thanks for having me.

Richard Miles: 0:57

So, Joe, I think I last saw you in 2012 or 2013 maybe when you were a sweet 16 finalist or you just finished being a finalist in the Cade prize. And I remembered the judges were very impressed with your entry, though I have to admit, I didn’t really fully understand how it worked at the time. So I think, I know after having been through the prize, but I’m going to roll this description by you. Tell me where I’m wrong. Um, but I’ll ask you to elucidate now, so I know it’s a type of water filter which basically can detect a disease producing organisms in water. Um, and that is essentially the core function of it. But what I don’t fully understand, you can explain, is sort of how does this differ from other existing water filters and you know, what is, um, you know, what is unique about it? Obviously there’s something unique because you’ve had some commercial success with this. So let me stop there and let you tell us and tell listeners what exactly a spin concentrator is.

Joseph Moss: 1:56

Okay. Well you’ve got it mostly right. Um, it is a spin concentrator or spin device, um, which simply separates particles, microbial particles, whether it’s our actual microorganisms or um, nonliving microbial, uh, particulates. Doesn’t matter. It depends on the researcher what they want to do. It helps it aids in the separation of these particles so that you can subsequently down the line, evaluate your samples and see whether that pathogen or microbe or particle exists. So it doesn’t detect the organism itself. It helps in the process. It speeds it up.

Richard Miles: 2:37

I see. Okay.

Joseph Moss: 2:38

It’s a simple, fast way of doing it.

Richard Miles: 2:40

So traditionally, like what, um, you know, previous to this, what is for the traditional way of doing what you have to take like a water sample and send it out to a lab in order to do the same things.

Joseph Moss: 2:51

Yes. So the current method is the one that’s set up by the EPA that’s warranted for all the labs to use. It’s called EPA method 1600. Uh, I think it’s 1600. I forget the exact number, but basically it’s been around for let’s say two decades now. Um, or almost two decades. It’s long, it’s convoluted, it takes expertise and it’s not cost efficient. So…

Richard Miles: 3:21

So in a typical scenario like let’s say a, you know, post disaster relief or or something like that, if you’re trying to measure concentrations of water, it would involve some sort of long delay or just additional cost.

Joseph Moss: 3:35

It wouldn’t work because there’d be too many samples and not enough, um, scientists to get it done. It takes 24 hours to do a few samples with the current method. Cause what happens is… I’ll briefly explain it. First you have to filter the water and then after you’re done filtering the water, that costs about 60 to $100 for that filter.

Richard Miles: 3:58

Wow.

Joseph Moss: 3:58

Yes. Okay. Then it gets even more expensive. Then you had to back flush that filter and basically spend that water sample down to a certain amount, about 10 milliliters. Then you have to use a kit that has antibodies that are specific for the micro organisms, let’s say cryptosporidium and Giardia, the reason why I built this device. That takes a few hours. It works well but takes a few hours and you’re adding another $60 maybe $100. And then after that you have to stain the organisms and then you have to put it onto a slide and then you have to have an experienced scientists to evaluate that slide to determine whether or not those organisms are on that slide.

Richard Miles: 4:39

And so this obviously all has to take place in a lab setting, right?

Joseph Moss: 4:42

Yes.

Richard Miles: 4:42

Okay. And if I understand your invention, there’s a handheld version of it or is that…

Joseph Moss: 4:48

Well, my version is set up for molecular techniques. So the current method uses microscopy so they had to look under a microscope.

Richard Miles: 4:58

Okay.

Joseph Moss: 4:58

And so you have to be trained to be able to identify it. But nowadays we can do things genetically and we can find out what’s in the water by just having DNA markers. All right, it’s pretty standard now. But, uh, the EPA is slow and we still have this one method I’ve been pushing as long as, as well as some other scientists to “let’s come on, let’s go, let’s get into the molecular field because it’s a lot quicker.”

Richard Miles: 5:23

So does that mean that somebody, a volunteer or someone who’s not a scientist could use your device and come up with valid results? Or would they still at some point… would a researcher have to step in.

Joseph Moss: 5:36

They would need some training. But they wouldn’t have to have the training in order to identify the protozoa. That takes hours and hours of training to have that eye to be able to identify what’s there.

Richard Miles: 5:49

Okay. So really we’re talking sort of speed and cost.

Joseph Moss: 5:53

Speed and cost per sample for the EPA method between $400 to $500. That’s the last I checked and that was a few years ago.

Richard Miles: 5:59

And that’s just a single sample?

Joseph Moss: 6:00

That’s a single sample.

Richard Miles: 6:01

Okay. So if you’re in an area in which you need to do multiple samples, you’re talking about big price.

Joseph Moss: 6:06

So if there’s an epidemic, there’s going to be spending a lot of money.

Richard Miles: 6:10

Yeah. It’s interesting cause you know, I think, um, it’s pretty obvious, right? We’ve known that waterborne pathogens and dirty water is a huge problem, particularly in third world. But it seems like it’s taken a while for the sort of quicker, faster, cheaper methods to develop of, of making sure that people in underdeveloped countries have access to clean water. It’s an issue, it hasn’t been an issue in the first one for a long time. Right? I mean…

Joseph Moss: 6:35

Yeah, that’s correct.

Richard Miles: 6:35

Okay. So great. So now I think I understand the technology better. I hope our listeners do. Um, let’s go back in time to sort of, um, pre academic Joe Moss. So where are you from? Where’d you grow up? What were you like as a kid?

Joseph Moss: 6:53

Uh, originally I’m from Bucks County, PA, a town called Holland, uh, right on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I was born and raised there and stayed there until I was about 21. I was a fidgety, outdoorsy, kind of, not spastic, but I’d like to go out and play and enjoy life. And there’s plenty of streams and rivers and creeks and fields and, uh, tree nurseries everywhere for someone like me to…

Richard Miles: 7:25

So when you, when you went outside were you interested in the natural world. Did you just like being outside or did you already have an inkling that you liked water, you’d like to study things or not really?

Joseph Moss: 7:37

Everything fascinated me, it’s just going out and just playing and seeing everything. “Wow, look at that! Wow, look at that!” and “Wow, a crayfish! Oh look at that, a salamander!” But yeah, okay. Water was a little bit more… it influenced me more when I went to see when it was in water and like rivers and lakes, you’re always guessing. It’s kinda like fishing. You’re wondering what’s down there. You throw your line and your, you’re always inquisitive of what’s down there, what’s going on. Imagine as a kid, you know.

Richard Miles: 8:07

How did you do in school? Were you drawn towards science type classes or biology?

Joseph Moss: 8:11

I was always good at science and math.

Richard Miles: 8:14

Really, okay. From the very beginning.

Joseph Moss: 8:16

Yes.

Richard Miles: 8:16

Were your parents, uh, also researchers?

Joseph Moss: 8:20

No.

Richard Miles: 8:20

Really. Okay. What did your parents do for a living?

Joseph Moss: 8:23

My mother was a stay at home mom. Five kids. She had her work cut out for her. My father worked at Philadelphia Electric Company, so he was kinda like the Homer Simpson. He was behind it. Yeah, exactly. He was behind there with the dials and he worked long shifts and you drive all the way to the inner city of Philadelphia and do 12 hours, 16 hour shifts and come back.

Richard Miles: 8:45

And what number child were you in?

Joseph Moss: 8:47

Number five.

Richard Miles: 8:48

Number five. Okay.

Joseph Moss: 8:49

Yeah, I was the little one.

Richard Miles: 8:49

So you’re like the, you’re like the Hail Mary pass, right? Um, any of your other siblings, did they go into research or science at all?

Joseph Moss: 8:57

No. Well engineering, it was close enough but no, the rest were teaching, accounting. So engineering was the closest one.

Richard Miles: 9:08

Engineering, okay. So how did you make the long journey from Pennsylvania to Pensacola? We got all the time in the world here, Joe.

Joseph Moss: 9:18

I got a little rambunctious and then forgot about as a teenager you forget about, you get involved in something and other teenage aspects and you forget about your true passions when you were younger. So, um, it took me a while to find my way back. I did some traveling and then later on in the west coast when I was working at a dead end job, I decided, well, I can’t do this. I need, I was like, what was I interested? Oh, that’s right. I love biology. And actually my mom, she’s kind of reminded me, she’s like, why don’t you go back to school? I’m like, yeah, you know, I should, and it wasn’t that easy, but basically I noticed that I didn’t want to do the basic nine to five, so I was like, I need to get back and get my degree.

Richard Miles: 10:04

Was this your undergraduate degree you’re talking about or…

Joseph Moss: 10:08

Yes, so I was off the beaten path for a little while. I actually failed out my first college and then I realized, okay, um, you know, I need to buckle down. It took a little while.

Richard Miles: 10:22

And uh, when you did decide to buckle down, did you know right away you wanted to go into a science related field?

Joseph Moss: 10:27

Oh absolutely.

Richard Miles: 10:28

Um, okay, let’s fast forward now to your research. Um, at what point, um, was there a certain point when you sort of had the inspiration for the spin concentrator or did you sort of iterate your way to, it was a series of steps or did you kind of have, you know, one of those classic Aha moments, but I’m not sure how often it actually happens, but you know, some people say they had an insight because they heard something. You know…

Joseph Moss: 10:52

Actually, the whole impetus of this was because of Dr. Richard Snyder. He was my boss and my mentor. He had a grant, a small grant to work with microbes, particularly Giardia and cryptosporidium to find a better way. Uh, at the time before I started working with him, he had a postdoc working there who was trying to make the molecular technique better. And more efficient, but it was actually the wrong path. So that postdoc left for another job or something I forget. And Richard Snyder called me up and said, you know, I have a position open. So I went there after a little while. Uh, with his help we decided that the molecular technique wasn’t a problem. It was the precursor was the separation of the microbes because a lot of water is turbid. So it’s really hard to find. It’s like getting a needle in a haystack.

Richard Miles: 11:45

Right.

Joseph Moss: 11:46

So that’s the hard part. So we worked on that.

Richard Miles: 11:50

And once you go through the separation, then it becomes easier.

Joseph Moss: 11:53

It gets easier for the molecular techniques to work.

Richard Miles: 11:57

Okay.

Joseph Moss: 11:57

Because even though molecular techniques were great, um, there’s always problems with inhibition because you have certain things in the water, like Tannins, I can go on and on… acids and whatnot, and it just interferes with the chemical process.

Richard Miles: 12:13

And so were you already at University of West Florida at the time or did you, you were invited by Dr. Snyder to come there?

Joseph Moss: 12:21

I left the University of West Florida to get a job at the EPA as a contractor, a biologic contractor. My contract was ending and I was actually going to go work in Alaska as a fisheries observer.

Richard Miles: 12:33

Really?

Joseph Moss: 12:33

Yeah. I was almost gone. I was, it was like a day or two and I was going to leave to go up there to train for the position and he called me up and you know, lucky for me, I mean not there’s anything wrong being in Alaska, but I really wanted to stay in Pensacola.

Richard Miles: 12:45

It’s funny, when I was in undergraduate school and University of Washington in Seattle a popular summer job for people who were from Washington was go up and work on the fishing boats in Alaska. And so I thought, well, you know, I’m going to do that. And so I put in an application, never heard back from anyone. Then I found out years later, it’s like one of the most dangerous occupations on the face of the earth. Fishing boat in Alaska, you know, I mean there’s a whole bunch of occupational hazards. It did pay very well and that’s what attracted me. But I’m sure that took one look at my thin CV and the fishing department and that’s why I never had a call back. Well that’s cool. So you stayed there and then obviously it has become, it just reached a degree of success. You, you did make the Cade Prize finals in 2012 and then soon after that, right, you signed a licensing deal.

Joseph Moss: 13:33

Yes we did.

Richard Miles: 13:34

And so tell me about that process. I mean, they obviously liked your technology, but, uh, did you come up with this deal on your own or did UWF did they give you help or…

Joseph Moss: 13:47

No, actually it was a lot who you know, and uh, people talk and a friend of mine, Andres Knocker, he was my mentor when I was going through my grad degree, he called me up and said, hey, I know some guys that are interested, um, you should speak to them. So I did. And these were the guys at Scottish water, so they were interested in buying two of the devices just to try it out. So it was like, great. So I actually flew over there…

Richard Miles: 14:15

To Scotland.

Joseph Moss: 14:17

Yes. Edinburgh. Went over there, spent a couple of days with them, showed them the device, showed how it worked, explained everything. And then we, uh, did some basic science stuff and went out and had a dinner and you know, the normal stuff. And then after that, uh, it turned out there was some guys in Barcelona, that were interested as well. And I was like, well, im already in Edinburgh, I’ll fly over to Barcelona. So the guy picked me up and this was a wild story that I’ll sum up. He picks me up and brings me to their manufacturing place in Terasa. And I go there, they’re showing me around being polite as Europeans mostly are, and I’m looking around great. And um, next thing I know, they bring me into this room and there’s 10 to 12 guys and they’re sitting down and like, “Okay, you ready? Are you ready to talk about the device?” I’m like, “Wow, okay. Uh, all right.” So I sit down and they closed the door and I’m like, I start getting intimidated. I’m looking at it like, did you do, uh, do you have a PowerPoint? I’m like, “no, this is my first time ever doing…” I didn’t tell him this

Richard Miles: 15:19

This sounds like nightmare.

Joseph Moss: 15:20

Uh, it’s funny now. Um, so I just thought to myself, all right, I’m here. Uh, just speak the truth. Just tell them. I mean, I loosened up in about a minute. I just, I talked to him for about five minutes and they all just listened tentatively. And then I stopped, sat back. I said, well that’s it. And all of a sudden across the table, back and forth in Spanish. I could, I couldn’t keep up and thank God one of the guys just looked at me and said, relax, we’re spit balling. I was like, that’s fine. I took a glass of water.

Richard Miles: 15:48

This is all in Spanish.

Joseph Moss: 15:50

Oh yeah, I’m not, I’m not fluent in Spanish. German, I would have done better, but not Spanish and we’re spit balling. I’m like, fine. Take your time. About five minutes later they looked at me and he said, oh, “We like it. We’d like to do a deal.”

Richard Miles: 16:05

Wow.

Joseph Moss: 16:05

And that was it. And I was like…

Richard Miles: 16:07

Easiest pitch ever.

Joseph Moss: 16:08

I know. I was like, and then we went out to dinner. We had tapas.

Richard Miles: 16:11

So based on that Joe, I’m guessing that either you are the most fantastic presenter in the world or uh, and or the technology kind of explains itself. I mean it sounds like for somebody in, I take it this is a company, a utility company or that the technology is so, uh, you know, blindingly better or obviously better that it kinda just as soon as you explain how it works, they sold out.

Joseph Moss: 16:38

I wasn’t just that it was because it was already developed, they saw the, what’d you call it?

Richard Miles: 16:44

Uh, they saw the prototype.

Joseph Moss: 16:46

I showed him the prototype, but they also saw how they can change and make it better cause it was prototype number one or two that they saw, I had the pieces and I showed them step by step. And they’re engineers. They saw value to it and it wasn’t, I wasn’t asking much. It was…

Richard Miles: 17:03

So, interesting. Was it all engineers in the room or would, was there some like deal maker types in there, executives who…

Joseph Moss: 17:11

I think it was all engineers plus the owners of the business. It was everyone. Uh, yeah, it was, it’s funny now I was for about two minutes. I was terrified.

Richard Miles: 17:21

So let me get this straight. You’re in Scotland. You’ve done your pitch. Did you ever hear from the Scots again?

Joseph Moss: 17:27

Yup

Richard Miles: 17:27

Okay. Did you do deal with them as well or?

Joseph Moss: 17:28

Well, they bought the device. They wanted to look at it and try it out.

Richard Miles: 17:31

And then just sort of on the fly you get another tip to go to Barcelona.

Joseph Moss: 17:36

Well, to be honest, I knew about a week or two ahead of time, but it was, it was almost…

Richard Miles: 17:42

Wow. Okay. Well I bet lots of entrepreneurs would love to have that story. Usually, you know, it’s years and years of going to these pitch contests and things like the Cade Prize to get your name out there before anybody, you know, uh, does a deal like that. Well, congratulations. It’s um, it’s kind of a big deal. Are you still, uh, still refining that technology you or have you moved on to other research projects?

Joseph Moss: 18:05

I’ve moved on. It’s being used or it was being used. I have to check Tampa, not Tampa. It was used at Tampa Water Department, but it was just recently being used at the Los Angeles Water Department. Uh, things have slowed there cause they ran out of money, but I’m still using it and there’s other applications it can be used for so… but no, I have other studies I work on too

Richard Miles: 18:31

Anything that you think has commercial potential at this point on?

Joseph Moss: 18:35

No, no. Um, a lot of boring stuff that you’re listeners wouldn’t want to listen to about or like the diversity of bacteria in the ocean. You know, that’s not like a barn burner, but that’s what I work on.

Richard Miles: 18:46

So have you had, um, has anyone of your fellow researchers in your field or not heard of your success and said, hey Joe, give us tips. You know, how do we, how do we do this? How do we commercialize our research?

Joseph Moss: 18:59

No, no. They don’t want it. I have a big enough head as it is.

Richard Miles: 19:02

They don’t want to encourage you.

Joseph Moss: 19:04

I mean it’s all good fun, but it’s…

Richard Miles: 19:06

This sort of story warms our hearts, particularly at the Cade Museum because as part of the mission of what the Cade is about, trying to basically, um, help or encourage or inspire whatever word you want to use, researchers to take a look at their research and see, you know, what are the commercial possibilities. Um, cause it’s really a lot of times through commercialization, right, does technology actually gets out into the wider world because companies are using it or individuals are using it. So Joe, thank you very much for coming on Radio Cade today. Look forward to watching your progress in the years to come. And probably all those things you say are too boring for the public we’ll all be using in five or 10 years

Joseph Moss: 19:46

Maybe.

Richard Miles: 19:47

Hopefully in Africa because they need it the most. Exactly right. We’ve had, we’ve had other Cade, a lot of actually Cade Prize entrants have dealt with the subject of clean water coming at it from one angle or another. Um, so it’s, it’s definitely topic as you said, particularly for areas of the world in which it’s not standard. Uh, thanks very much for joining us. Congratulations once again, on your success and then look forward to having you on the show again.

Joseph Moss: 20:09

Thank you very much.

Richard Miles: 20:11

Thanks for listening. I’m Richard Miles

Outro: 20:14

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support. Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and inventor 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.

“Smart Steward” is a web-based platform that helps doctors prescribe antibiotics with the goal of reducing antibiotic resistance.  The software helps track what other doctors have given a patient and makes custom recommendations for treatment.  Guest host Randy Scott interviews entrepreneur Guy LaTorre who grew up in West Orange New Jersey, site of Thomas Edison’s lab.  Inspired by a museum dedicated to Edison’s inventions, LaTorre says “I always had an inkling I would get involved in science somehow.” 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:20

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the 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.

Randy Scott: 0:38

Welcome to Radio Cade. This is Randy Scott, your guest host. If you were looking forward to the Silky Voice of Richard Miles, I apologize in advance, but I’m here today with Guy LaTorre, who’s our guest, entrepreneur, and inventor. So Guy, you’re uh, currently running a business called Antibiotic Edge Event, right?

Guy LaTorre: 0:57

Yes, that’s correct.

Randy Scott: 0:59

Tell us in a simple kind of layman or even maybe eighth grade terms or something like that, what Antibiotic Adjuvant, uh, actually does.

Guy LaTorre: 1:09

Sure, sure. Antibiotic Adjuvant is our company. Our product’s name is Smart Stewart and it’s essentially a software program that’s web based that doctors can use during the prescription process for antibiotics with a goal of reducing antibiotic resistance. Uh, which is a key problem, we’re running out of antibiotics that are effective and there’s a lot of now antibiotic resistant bacteria that are killing people and we don’t have any new antibiotics being developed in the pipeline. So we have to try and be better stewards for the antibiotics we do have right now and use them more effectively and appropriately.

Randy Scott: 1:47

So how was Smart Stewart gonna help with that. I mean it’s not, obviously, a drug itself, so.

Guy LaTorre: 1:53

No, that’s a good question.

Randy Scott: 1:54

Yeah. What does it do?

Guy LaTorre: 1:55

That’s a good question. So the problem today is when doctors want to prescribe, they often don’t have the right information for the patient in front of them and they don’t know what other doctors are prescribing and what’s effective and what’s not effective within that facility. So what Smart Stewart does is it guides the doctor through the prescription process and makes the best recommendations, the three top recommendations for antibiotics for that patient, for that infection. And most importantly with the goal of reducing resistance within that facility, we look at the facility and see which antibiotics are working well, which ones aren’t. And obviously we recommend the ones that are working well for those particular infections that other doctors are treating.

Randy Scott: 2:39

Okay. So you’re saying that, uh, not only does the type of illness or bug or whatever that patient had mattered, but somehow the facility in which they caught it matters?

Guy LaTorre: 2:51

Absolutely, because sometimes it’s brought into the facility. So it’s a community acquired infection and sometimes it’s an infection that actually start inside the facility in differentiating between the, both of those is important, not just for the facility but for the community. So if there’s an epidemic, or an infectious disease outbreak in the community, people want to know about that. And that’s one of the things that our software does it detects those outbreaks.

Randy Scott: 3:19

Good. Uh, well that sounds great. We’re going to come back and spend some more time on that. But first I want to just step back a little bit and learn a little bit more about you and your background of course you and I have known each other for a long time for everybody else’s benefit. But tell me something about your childhood. I am not quite sure. Did you grow up planning to be a business person or…

Guy LaTorre: 3:39

No, not at all. It’s funny. Well, I grew up in West Orange, New Jersey and West Orange just happens to be the site of Edison’s laboratory. So Thomas Edison did all of his inventions in the laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. So as a child, I was of course as a young man interested in sports, but I was, you know, as a young child, very interested in dinosaurs for example. I remember knowing all the names of the different kinds of dinosaurs. So I always had that lean toward being interested in, in science essentially. And of course, being inspired by Edison’s museum and actually walking through the museum and seeing where he hung his laboratory coat for the last time and where he put his spectacles on the, uh, on the lab desk for the last time. That was very inspiring for me. So, uh, you know, again, like any kid interested in sports, but I always had an inkling to get involved in science somehow.

Randy Scott: 4:35

You’re now running this company. Uh, so I mean, so at some point you strayed from the, uh, the light side or whatever.

Guy LaTorre: 4:44

Right.

Randy Scott: 4:44

And to the dark side of business.

Guy LaTorre: 4:48

Well, yeah, you know, everything’s an evolution in life, right? So, uh, you know, we all grow, we all change. And so what I did is I started as a research scientist at the University of Florida and then, uh, university wanted to start up a research park to commercialize university technology. So, uh, our group was the first group out at the research park out in Alachua, and we started up several companies. And so essentially I had to transfer technology from the university side to the corporate side. And we did that for several years and we started up three companies and eventually I decided to jump over to the corporate side and join one of the companies that we had started. So at that point I was still a scientist, but then I became more of a manager, uh, of people of projects a little bit different than when I was doing for the university. And I did that for several years. And then the company needed me to go out and speak to potential partners and potential customers because I had the technical knowledge. So I was just given the opportunity by a number of important people in my to try and do other things and expand my knowledge base and my capabilities. And I always tried to take those opportunities on and learn as much as I could. So I eventually evolved into a business development guy and then I find myself now running a company as a CEO. So it’s just been an evolution essentially.

Randy Scott: 6:17

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense as a, uh, in the venture capital business now. And you know, one of the things that I see companies struggle with a lot is how to take that technical knowledge and the science stuff and translate it to be digestible for people that aren’t experts in the space. So I could see where that would be a super valuable, a skill, the ability to do that. And of course, I know firsthand some of your ability to do that too. So it’s interesting about the, uh, Thomas Edison thing of course. And uh, I think you moved in high school or something to Florida, is that right?

Guy LaTorre: 6:51

Yeah, I finished high school in New Jersey and then I moved to Daytona Beach, Florida where my parents had moved a year previous and uh, went to Daytona Beach Community College there with the goal of, you know, going to a university at one point. And then I decided to move to Gainesville and I went to the university and the entire time I was going to the university, my wife and I, we weren’t married at the time. All we had talked about is, boy, we can’t wait to leave Gainesville and get out of here. And you know, here we are 30 years later.

Randy Scott: 7:21

Still stuck.

Guy LaTorre: 7:21

Still stuck in Gainesville, but pleasantly stuck in Gainesville. We love Gainesville it’s a fantastic community and it just so happens that we have an incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Gainesville that you’re aware of Randy. So, uh, yeah, we love it here.

Randy Scott: 7:36

And I’m guessing you’ve been down to the Thomas Edison, Henry Ford thing down in Fort Myers or whatever.

Guy LaTorre: 7:42

Yeah, yeah. I actually, I did go down there. I’ve got some relatives down in Naples that’s pretty cool place as well.

Randy Scott: 7:48

For listeners that haven’t been there, that are in state of Florida differently should make a trip for that. So coming back to Smart Stewart and Antibiotic Adjuvant. So you’ve got this system that identifies bugs by what’s going to effectively kill them. The bacteria or viruses or whatever, I guess. Um, well bacteria, if you’re talking about antibiotics. What are the kind of practical applications of this? Is this something that my Walgreens pharmacist is going to use?

Guy LaTorre: 8:20

That’s a good question. So, uh, the software is designed to be used at the point of prescribing. So best way to explain it would be give you a scenario. So let’s say your grandma is in a nursing facility and uh, the doctor thinks that she might have an infection, let’s say it’s a urinary track infection. So they’ll run some lab tests and the lab test will come back and the doctor will look at the lab test to make it and make a decision that, okay, yes, this is an infection and I’m going to treat it. Well, quite often when the doctor’s going through the prescription process, they don’t have all the information they need. They don’t know all the details about the patient. So they typically prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic. And that’s part of the resistance problem. The broad spectrum antibiotics are overused and often unnecessary. So the doc would then pick up his smart phone and open up Smart Stewart and all the patient’s information will be right in front of him. Everything he needs, he or she needs to prescribe. They hit a prescription button and the recommendation engine pops up the top three prescriptions for your grandma. So now the doctor can be more confident about the prescribing process and what he’s giving grandma and grandma will have a better patient outcome because the doctor’s giving her the most appropriate antibiotic. So it’s really designed for use by doctors in small hospitals and skilled nursing facilities as opposed to large hospitals or your doctor and the doctor office. But eventually that’s where we’re going. You know, your doctor will be prescribing using our software in his facility and we’ll be looking at, you know, antimicrobial resistance throughout the community, for example, as opposed to within just a skilled nursing facility. So the longterm goal is to try and reduce antibiotic resistance in the community, not just in a facility.

Randy Scott: 10:16

Yeah. So they can essentially get more utilization from maybe old antibiotics that they normally wouldn’t bother to turn to.

Guy LaTorre: 10:26

Right, that’s correct. So to give you an example, Randy, when Fleming invented penicillin back in 1947, it took eight years before a resistant strain of bacteria showed up to penicillin. The last antibiotic that was commercialized was in 2006, it took eight months to get a resistant strain of bacteria. So bacteria are smart little organisms and they adapt and they learn. And they can become resistant to antibiotics and other things that typically kill them. And so just as in that example, we went from, you know, eight years to build resistance to just eight months to build resistance. And that’s the problem where antibiotics are becoming more and more, less effective because we’re using them inappropriately. So the goal is to use them appropriately and try and save their longevity so that we can continue to use them while developing new antibiotics.

Randy Scott: 11:20

I’m suddenly yearning for a bottle of hand sanitizer. So it sounds like Antibiotic Adjuvant’s gonna really be an important new tool in the tool chest for, you know, doctors and, and uh, even patients, uh, fighting infection, that kind of stuff. If people want to learn more than what the little bit of surface we’ve scratched here, how can they learn more?

Guy LaTorre: 11:43

A-adjuvant.com but that’s our website, uh, or just do a search on Antibiotic Adjuvant you’ll find us very easily on the web. And we got lots of other information there for the company.

Randy Scott: 11:52

So you’ve involved, as you kind of already laid out with a number of startups across a bunch of different, uh, businesses, mostly kind of health care related I think. But uh, if you think about the ups and downs of businesses and that kind of stuff. How do you kind of cope with that as an entrepreneur and how do you, uh, self regulate, so to speak? So you don’t go jump off a bridge a couple of weeks?

Guy LaTorre: 12:18

Well, you know, it’s plenty, and this is a common saying in the startup business, you know, running, starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down. So, it’s…

Randy Scott: 12:33

Don’t try that at home listeners.

Guy LaTorre: 12:34

No, no, certainly not. It’s ripe with challenges and uh, it’s, you know, you’re always gonna run into roadblocks. So, you know, you’ve gotta be smart about how you do it and you have to be patient because it always takes twice as long to get something commercialized as you originally thought in the beginning of the process. So, you know you have to do your market analysis, develop that plan, then you have to execute the plan. But you have to also be fluid and be able to change the plan because your plans going in are never 100% correct. There’s always going to be flaws in them. You’re always going to be faced with market pressures and you have to be able to adjust to that. So, you know, to be an entrepreneur is not for everyone. You have to have the right mindset, you have to be patient. And you have to be diligent and you can never give up because if the biggest thing about being an entrepreneur is, is having staying power, being in the game long enough for something positive to happen. So if you throw up your hands and give up at the first roadblock, then being an entrepreneur is not for you because you’re going to run into that over and over again before you get to that successful commercialization.

Randy Scott: 13:48

Right? Yeah. So how do you know, that’s an interesting point though about the, you know, never giving up is uh, you know, obviously a little bit of hyperbole there because at some point sometimes you do have to give up. So how do you draw that line? I mean…

Guy LaTorre: 14:05

Again, you know, it’s, anytime you invent something, it’s your baby, right? So you think that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. And, and quite often you go into it with that strong opinion, but then as you do your diligence and do your research on it, you get feedback from experts in the field and from end users. And then if you’re not listening to that feedback and willing to change the baby and morph it into what people are actually looking for and what’s commercially viable, then you’re going to have problems. So you’ve got to be able to come up with an idea. But as I said, that idea as you commercialize it and you develop it along the way is always going to wind up changing. So you have to be willing to change. You have to be willing to filter through all the information cause not all the information you gather is correct. Right. And that’s part of being an entrepreneur is to filter through all that information, decide what you believe the strongest in and you feel is correct and trying to adopt that information into your approach of commercializing something. So again, I think it, uh, you know, entrepreneurs have to have several characteristics. One of them is to, is to be able to listen to the people around you. I can tell you that I’ve seen entrepreneurs surround themselves with brilliant people and then ignore them and that’s a recipe for disaster.

Randy Scott: 15:27

Yeah. That does seem to be almost a truism that, uh, because entrepreneurs have to be so resilient and persistent to have any hope for success, that sometimes that also makes them numb to outside good advice and counsel and that kind of stuff and balancing those two things is pretty important.

Guy LaTorre: 15:46

It is. It is. And it’s a challenge to do that. It’s not easy to do. So being an entrepreneur is not for everyone, but I can tell you, uh, it’s one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done. As you said, I’ve always been involved in healthcare kind of plays and you know, the technologies that I’ve been involved with have helped millions of people over the, over the world. And uh, this current, uh, you know, Antibiotic Adjuvant Gig is also, I think one of those kinds of plays.

Randy Scott: 16:13

Yeah, so you’ve actually been an inventor and an entrepreneur. You’ve been an inventor and not been involved in the commercial aspects of the stuff that you’ve been patented and invented that kind of stuff. You’ve been both at the same time being involved in the commercial side of things. And then you’ve been like Antibiotic Adjuvant. It’s hard to say. Uh, you didn’t invent that, you kind of came in to be the leader after I think doctor Yancy or something invented the system.

Guy LaTorre: 16:42

Yeah.

Randy Scott: 16:42

So, do you have a preference between those three things? If you could choose?

Guy LaTorre: 16:47

Well, I tell you, you know, starting from scratch and I’ve done that on several occasions, you know, adopting a technology and, uh, you know, when you and I worked together, for example, uh, they were just a couple of us that started the company. And that was really exciting and challenging. Uh, and I really enjoyed that path, but quite honestly, this, the Antibiotic Adjuvant position that I came into the company had already been started. There was six people already on board. They had some money in the bank, and it was a lot easier to get involved in that startup and have an impact on that startup quickly, uh, than it was, uh, when we did Novamin back in the day. So, you know, I enjoyed both pathways, but you know, as I get older and more experienced, I really did enjoy and do enjoy, coming in later on in the process when the company has already been established and, and a product has already begun to be developed and, you know, pick it up from that point and carry it forward. Uh, I’m enjoying that as well.

Randy Scott: 17:55

For Antibiotic Adjuvant, what’s, kind of the next big step from here?

Guy LaTorre: 18:00

Yeah, I just joined the company, Randy, as you know, in beginning of August. So, uh, we have an incredible team of people that we’re continually adding to. We have three new additions to the team over the last month, which I think is exciting. Uh, the product is going to be completed. Uh, our minimally viable product will be completed by the end of the year. We were excited, we just had our weekly meeting this morning and our development team is on track and ready to finish it and we’re starting, uh, the commercialization process. Essentially, we’re starting selling the software next year, early next year. So, uh, you know, right now we’re focusing and changing our focus from product development to, uh, to marketing right now and you know, so that’s an exciting step for the company and obviously we hope to start selling and become, uh, you know, cash positive during, you know, before the end of next year. And of course, that’ll be another exciting moment in our history as you know, trying to constantly raise money to keep the startup alive is challenging and really consumes the CEO mostly of anybody else in the organization. And that’s not my favorite thing to do, although it’s something you have to do and you have to learn to be good at and you know, put up with all the, the uh, those crazy investors and stuff. But you know, it’s part of the job and so I try and, you know, wrap my arms around that part of the job as well as the other parts of the job that I enjoy doing.

Randy Scott: 19:36

So as we wrap up here, you’ve obviously gave some great advice, already to entrepreneurs and stuff about persistence and all that, but any other, uh, kind of partying gifts that you want to give to our listeners?

Guy LaTorre: 19:51

Sure, sure. You know, being an entrepreneur as, as we talked about is, is challenging and difficult, but it is also very, very rewarding. And I urge anyone that feels like they want to be an entrepreneur and has that entrepreneurial spirit to try and reach out to people in your local community. Gainesville, for example, as I said, is an incredible entrepreneurial community. Uh, we have the innovation hub of course, and a number of other, uh, business accelerators associated with Santa Fe and other organizations. So if you have a great idea and you think he want to be an entrepreneur and start your own company, go out and find somebody that’s done it before and look at local resources and go out and learn as much as you can about it before you jump into the water and make sure that you’re, you know, you’re informed and you know what you’re getting into. But I urge you cause if you don’t do it, you’re going to regret for the rest of your life. If you go out and get that nine to five job and work that the rest of your life, you’re always gonna kick yourself for not following your dreams. So if you have a dream, my advice is to follow it.

Randy Scott: 20:59

That’s right.

Guy LaTorre: 20:59

In the words of Elvis “follow that dream.”

Randy Scott: 21:01

That’s right. Well Great. Well that’s a wrap for here so Guy. Appreciate you making time. And uh, this is Randy Scott for Radio Cade

Outro: 21:12

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support. Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and inventor 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.

Stephanie Bailes is the executive director of the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, the sponsor of Radio Cade.  In 2017, Stephanie was drawn to the Cade’s mission of “inspiring and equipping visionaries, inventors and entrepreneurs.”  A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Stephanie knew of Robert Cade and his invention of Gatorade, but didn’t realize how transformative it had been.  As a girl, Stephanie considered becoming a pediatrician, but ended up with a degree in social work instead.   After seeing terrible cases of abuse, she “realized my heart was too soft to be on the front line.”   But at age 22, she decided she could learn the skills “to make a difference” by running a non-profit.   Along the way she worked in the telecom industry in Atlanta and Washington D.C. before returning to Gainesville in 2010 with her family.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:24

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the 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

“Spark wonder, invent possible.” That is one of the taglines of the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, which also happens to be the sponsor of Radio Cade. And today we’re very pleased to have with us the Executive Director, Stephanie Bailes, of the Cade Museum. Welcome, Stephanie.

Stephanie Bales: 0:56

Oh, thank you for having me here.

Richard Miles: 0:58

So Stephanie it’s a little bit weird cause I know most of the answers to all the questions I’m going to ask you, but our listeners may not. So, um, let’s start out with the Cade Museum. Tell us a little bit what it’s about. A little bit of it’s sort of origin story. Um, and then we’re going to talk about something even more interesting and that’s you. So go ahead.

Stephanie Bales: 1:18

Well, I always start out with the mission of the Cade Museum, and that is to transform communities through inspiring and equipping future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. And I think that mission statement is so important because it contains really the spirit of who we are. Um, in two ways. The first component is transformed communities. And the second component is inspiring and equipping and, um, with the inspiration and the equipping piece, that is what we do every day in this beautiful facility that we have in Gainesville, Florida. And that’s where we bring individuals of all ages into the museum and really give them an opportunity to have hands on experiences, immersive experiences with science and art and technology, um, things that they might not necessarily come across in their day to day.

Richard Miles: 2:14

And why Gainesville and why invention, what’s the connection?

Stephanie Bales: 2:18

Right. So, um, I guess the inspiration for the Cade is, um, actually Dr. Cade and, uh, you know, our founder very well, Phoebe Miles. Um, she is the youngest daughter of Dr. Cade and Dr. Cade invented Gatorade. And Gatorade, you know, growing up in Florida. And well just growing up. Gatorade is a common product. You just think it’s there for um, times when you’re thirsty or hot and sweaty. And what I never realized until I came to the museum is that it was such a transformative product and it not only transformed, um, the science and medical industries that transformed the sports industry. Um, and it really transformed the landscape of university sponsored research. And those are things that you just don’t fully understand when you look at an invention that’s sitting in front of you. Sometimes we’re so used to just using it. Using what’s in front of you and you don’t think about really the implications of it and, and how it may have changed our world.

Richard Miles: 3:27

And I think one of the interesting things about Gatorade, and a lot of people may not know this, but that it didn’t start out in a corporate boardroom. This was not some sort of marketer’s plan to conquer the beverage industry. It was a, I mean doctor Cade was a research scientist, a kidney doctor, right? So this was really, they are just trying, he and his cogs are trying to solve a problem. Specifically for football players, and then kind of took off. Now it helped to be in Florida as you say, where it’s hot and we’ll drink damn near anything. So Stephanie, we’re going to come back and talk more about the Cade Museum and sort of what it’s doing and where it’s going. But I want to talk about you a little bit. Um, you are from Florida, from Jacksonville, correct?

Stephanie Bales: 4:09

Yeah.

Richard Miles: 4:09

Um, and tell me a little bit about, um, Stephanie Bales. So the young girl, Stephanie Bales, you know, what were you interested in? What were you like, um, you know, do you look back on your childhood and sort of see elements of, uh, this, uh, you know, affinity for invention and entrepreneurship back then, or did this drop into your life at a later point?

Stephanie Bales: 4:32

It did drop into my life at a later point when I was young. I always wanted to help people. I, um, my earliest kind of goal was to be a pediatrician. And as I went through school, I recognize that anything below the molecular level, I just wasn’t interested in comprehending. And I started to turn my eyes more towards helping the individual and um, helping them more in a sense of perhaps a social worker or something along those lines. So in my, um, in my studies and such, I ended up graduating from University of Florida with a degree in sociology and my first position was doing crisis intervention for physically and sexually abused children. And I did that for a year. And in that year I had three small children. They died from the abuse that they suffered at the hands of the people who were there to care for them. And I’ve realized as you can tell my heart was too soft to be on the front line, but I still knew I wanted to make a difference. And so in my inexperienced, smaller kind of worldview, 22 year old head, I said to myself, I’m going to go work in business and I’m going to go learn the skills that are necessary to come back one day and work for a nonprofit. And make a difference as an administrator because then I’ll be a little bit further removed from the day to day, but I’d still be able to help.

Richard Miles: 6:07

But you didn’t study business at UF.

Stephanie Bales: 6:11

No, not at all. And now I look back on my career and it’s just unbelievable that I have had the experiences on an international scale that I’ve had and the people that I’ve worked with. I mean, just kind of a quick breeze through it is, um, after I made that decision, I found myself in Atlanta working for Bell South Communications, selling yellow pages, ads over the phone. Quickly learned that was not my skill set either. But I was in it at a time where the local telecommunications industry was blowing up back then AT&T was a monopoly kind of like now Google and Amazon are monopolies and um, AT&T and the baby bells were broken apart. And so it was a ripe opportunity for other companies like MCI, Telecommunications, XO Communications, Telligent to come in and break into those marketplaces. And I was positioned in that innovative entrepreneurial startup environment at the very beginning of my business career. And so I must have worked for seven different companies in 10 years because of the nature of the environment. But in that, um, in that experience I understood the tenacity that was needed, the grit that was needed, the sense of balance and such and the volatility of working in startup and entrepreneurial environments.

Richard Miles: 7:45

Now we’re talking Atlanta, right? Let’s back up just a little bit for people who have grown up in Florida, one of the things that strikes me about Florida, the actual unified state is sort of a collection of cities and anyone who spent time in various cities realize, “Wow, they’re really different.” How was Jacksonville like the rest of Florida and how is it not like the rest of Florida cause it has sort of a distinct feel. Right? So you grew up there, you went to high school there and now you live in Gainesville. What makes Jacksonville, Jacksonville.

Stephanie Bales: 8:21

The Water. Jacksonville is so incredible. I grew up, I think I had a boat at the age of 14 and grew up water skiing on the Saint John’s not appreciating really fully the immense beauty that the Saint John’s offers because it was all I knew. Um, but it is such an incredible river. And then the ocean, um, Ponte Vedra Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beaches, those were my playgrounds in the summers and pretty much year round. And so I think that element, the water, the fluidity, the restorative nature of water makes Jacksonville um, what it is. Also, we have a navy base there and we had a lot of banking industry and credit card financial service industry in Jacksonville. So you have that element as well. On the business side.

Richard Miles: 9:14

It’s always stuck me the Jacksonville doesn’t seem as southern, I guess as other cities in… Would you say that or is that maybe just portrays a fact I haven’t spent a lot of time in Jacksonville.

Stephanie Bales: 9:24

I think Jacksonville is probably more southern than mostly…

Richard Miles: 9:28

I got that wrong.

Stephanie Bales: 9:28

Yeah, no, I think that once you get south of Gainesville around Orlando, the nature of the state, the flavor of the state really begins to change. I feel like the state is separated into two parts. You know, there’s the northern part and the southern part, but Florida is a unique place.

Richard Miles: 9:51

Then you spent some time in Washington DC or in the area right you were there about a decade, right? Decade plus.

Stephanie Bales: 9:57

Yeah, about 15, 17 years.

Richard Miles: 9:59

You worked partly for telecommunications, but also did some other stuff.

Stephanie Bales: 10:02

Well, so this is when my, you know, early beliefs started to manifest itself. I was brought up to Washington DC. I was hired by a company called Telligent, um, to work in their environment in DC. And it was a big change from a girl coming from Jacksonville, Florida, and Atlanta. And, um, through that process, I started a small telecom company with a friend of mine and did that for a couple of years. And he, it really was his, you know, I helped him get it up and running, but it’s still in place today. But after I left that company, I decided to start working in the nonprofit world and I, um, was hired by Special Olympics International, which was probably the best experience of my entire life.

Richard Miles: 10:54

How long were you with them?

Stephanie Bales: 10:56

I was only with them for about, uh, 13, 14 months. Um, I was hired as their director of planning and so I helped put together their first global planning process, bringing in a million athletes, five regions, 72 countries, and aligning their budget with our operational goals. And it was an incredible piece of work to do. I think at the time I was about 28, 29 and it was very much a man’s world. And, um, it was a big challenge. And our first planning meeting happened on 9/11. And so, um, I will always remember the director of HR walking down the hallway toward me around 8ish in the morning. And he looked at me and he said, a plane flew into the World Trade Center. And I was like, Jeff, stop it. This isn’t even funny. He’s like, no. And we had several of our regional directors in the air from Egypt, China, etc. And that was a day where I really learned what it meant to be in a leadership position because our first responsibility was getting all the employees home and then leadership had to collectively make a decision. Do we use the time to plan for the organization to move forward or do we react to the events of the day? And we use the time for the next two days to plan. And if you weren’t in DC or in New York, I mean, it was a dead zone there. It was incredible. I mean, under lockdown, police, fire trucks everywhere. Moving around was difficult. Um, it was surreal. It was like being in a movie.

Richard Miles: 12:46

No, I remember that day well. I was also in Washington and I remember walking back from the State Department to the Metro and crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, and the secret service was out in the Middle Street telling people to run. That’s when you really feel like you’re in a movie and people were running. It was quite incredible. So you were in DC and then you return with your family back to Gainesville. So what drew you back to Gainesville.

Stephanie Bales: 13:11

I got married, we had two small children and we decided to start our own business again. Again, these are things that we didn’t necessarily plan, but just kind of happened upon. And um, my husband and I started a clothing company where we manufactured collegiate licensed apparel. So we learned a lot about the apparel industry, about um, you know, manufacturing textiles, uh, global distribution and supply chain. Also working with, um, you know, university licensing and such. We had a product that was sold all over the US.

Richard Miles: 13:51

So coming back to the Cade Museum, part of the mission of the museum is to create an environment or encourage entrepreneurs, not just inventors and entrepreneurs. Having been an entrepreneur or a business woman yourself, does that help you understand some of the personalities, entrepreneurs that we see in the museum. And what about it? What about them, I guess, do you understand because of your own experience?

Stephanie Bales: 14:15

I believe my experience is so suitable for what we’re trying to accomplish because it is so varied, uh, and um, and diverse and because it is very business and entrepreneurial heavy. I understand what the process looks like. I understand the life cycle. I understand, uh, you know, the challenges that inventors may have bringing their product to market. Um, but I also think I’m the right person for the Cade at the moment because I am an entrepreneur and this organization is very much a startup. And so for me, having this conversation is as much about being like a nonprofit entrepreneur as it is about being the executive director of the Cade Museum and what experiences we offer to the public.

Richard Miles: 15:06

The Cade Museum opened its doors May, 2018 and right now, um, it’s, it’s sort of in the process of getting known in the community of sort of building up an audience so to speak. What’s the next step for the Cade Museum, assuming that, uh, you know, we’ve sort of maxed out our possibilities in Gainesville. What, what comes next?

Stephanie Bales: 15:31

So the vision of the Cade is that we would have branded Cade experiences worldwide. And it’s kind of audacious to say something like that, but I believe that is what we will accomplish. Um, we are developing an educational framework that uses invention as inspired by Dr. Cade as the center point of both our visitor experience and our educational outreach. And I believe the goal of that is to eventually take that education and license it and bring it out into other communities. And we’ll choose communities based upon need. So we really believe at the Cade that there are whole swathes of the population that aren’t getting access to technology and science education simply because of their circumstance and their situation. And so our focus is on being that bridge to the innovation economy, if you will, and bringing this educational framework and the experiences that will be associated with it to these populations. So I often say we’re a museum with a mission. We’re not just for things, we’re a museum of ideas and we’re a museum to help build a bridge to the innovation economy.

Richard Miles: 16:46

One of the things I like about the Cade Museum, it’s uh, this paradigm, this origin story of Gatorade, which started out as a small little research project in Gainesville that was smaller then than it certainly is now. And it eventually became a, you know, world famous product that you can get anywhere in the world. So if that’s sort of the model, I think that’s a great model to follow, right? Start a small educational mission here, relatively small, and eventually branch out to the end of the world, the edge of the world. There are a few other connections that the Cade has with entrepreneurship, runs a prize. What is the prize about? Um, you know, I know, but I’m going to ask you to explain what is the prize trying to do and there’s an educational tie in to the prize. If you could explain a little bit about that.

Stephanie Bales: 17:38

So the Cade prize is there to recognize and celebrate innovative ideas that are within the state of Florida. And I believe we’ll see that also expanding and its scope over time, geographic scope. Um, but it’s really a vehicle for us to inspire and encourage those with innovative ideas that have a viable potential to bring them forth and to celebrate and recognize them.

Richard Miles: 18:04

And the thing that is exciting to me is the fact how using those adventures to come back to the museum and teach classes… I think it’s every weekend, right? That we have in there, inventors who sort of explain their technologies. Um, and what’s really neat is to see some of those kids or even adults, right? Interact with inventors who by definition are the experts on the technology. And it really ties, I think that image of inventors and opportunities together cause you’d sort of see in the flesh.

Stephanie Bales: 18:40

Well everything is inventor centered. And, I think what you’re illustrating, and you can say it so much better than I Richard, because you had been living it for about 13 years, you know, um.

Richard Miles: 18:51

Seems like 26 years.

Stephanie Bales: 18:53

If not 260. But, um, the thing that I love most about what we’re trying to do is we’re not just putting things or ideas in front of our guests and students. We’re bringing people in front of them as well. And that’s the connection of not just the head and the hands, but also the heart. I think we learn so much better when we’re able to look at someone in the eye and respond to them. And these inventors that we bring to us from the Cade prize and through university research facilities and such, it’s incredible to watch them come in and share their passion for their life’s work with an eight year old girl or a 70 year old man. Um, they all get to come in and have these conversations and learn more and understand more about either the invention or the inventor.

Richard Miles: 19:52

What has struck me in being involved in the museum and probably you as well, is, you know, we’re living in this transition time of just communication itself, right? How people get their information is changing so rapidly. This podcast is evidence of that, right? That the explosive growth in podcasts now and it’s definitely affected museums, right? And the way that people want to get information in, the most effective way to communicate it with them and museums have been affected by that same trend, right? That the way we do our exhibits, the way we do our programming, um, you have to, you want to retain some of the old ways, right? There are still things to look at, but as you said, you’ve got to go several levels now deeper in terms of an experience, it’s really interactive and remember interactive used to mean just pushing a button on a video. And now, you know, one thing I found very interesting is we did some of the research on the design of the museum. Is it, uh, all the things that 10, 15 years ago were considered really hot. You know, “Oh, look at this AV technology.” No one’s really interested cause we all, everyone has it on our iPod at home. So why would you go to a museum if it’s just an experience that you could have on your couch.

Stephanie Bales: 21:07

Exactly.

Richard Miles: 21:07

Uh, and so that has created real challenges for museums, right? It’s not that easy anymore. You can’t just put up a screen.

Stephanie Bales: 21:13

No, you can’t. And I think you have to, you have to offer authentic interactions. And I think you have to build a facility that allows you to change rapidly with technological changes. And I think that that is one of the most important elements of running the museum that we have, is making it adaptable. And we change. I mean, we change every week. We change the theme every time we change our inventor. That’s not something that you see very often. And, um, well ever. I don’t think you can see that anywhere in the country. But, um, for those of you who’ve never been to the Cade, um, the experience we offer is every Saturday we have a different inventor that’s featured in our rotunda and the education that surrounds the inventor, it reflects their work and, and it changes at least monthly, sometimes weekly. And so every time you walk into the Cade Museum, you will have a different experience. There isn’t any other place like that in the United States yet, but I think you have to be that adaptable to be able to survive, to stay fresh and to provide innovative content to, um, this vast population that can get there, get anything they want on their iPad or their phones.

Richard Miles: 22:47

And it’s why quite intentionally, right? We didn’t become a museum of technology.

Stephanie Bales: 22:51

Right.

Richard Miles: 22:51

Cause unless you want to be the museum of the Palm Pilot or the iPhone 4. You’d be swapping out exhibits every week. And you can’t do that. Nobody can afford to do that. Um, and plus it’s not a great experience. Yeah. Um, Stephanie, it’s been a great conversation. I think we’re probably going to have you back on again to talk about what the Cade is doing, where it’s going. Um, but it sounds like an exciting mission. It sounds like you’re excited to be here.

Stephanie Bales: 23:17

Oh, it’s an honor. I love every day, so thank you.

Richard Miles: 23:21

Well, thanks for coming onto Radio Cade. I’m Richard Miles. Thanks for listening.

Outro: 23:27

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support. Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and inventor 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.