You might be surprised to learn that a particle physicist — someone who knows how to work with massive particle accelerators slamming atoms together — is building a company focused on a sticker that sits on your abdomen.

But once you dig a bit deeper, it makes perfect sense.

In this episode of First in Human, I talk with Steve Axelrod, a longtime physicist turned CEO, whose entire career has been built on pulling meaningful signal out of noise. It's a skill set that's taken him from nuclear sensors at Yale all the way to Silicon Valley, ultimately as a medtech CEO working on a deeply personal problem. 

And along the way, what Steve discovered was unsettling: when it comes to gut-related illness, doctors often can’t measure what patients are feeling. Tests look normal. Symptoms come and go. And care is often based on educated guesswork. So Steve did what physicists do: he started measuring. 

We talk about why he’s now building a wearable “EKG for the gut,” how listening to electrical rhythms over days - not minutes - changes what we see, and why this approach could reshape how doctors understand chronic symptoms, recovery after surgery, and what’s really happening inside the body. 

This is a story about physics, family, and what happens when someone trained to study the universe turns their attention inward - and finally starts listening. 


Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd 
Check out G-Tech's website: https://www.gtechmedical.com/  
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveaxelrodphd/