Community in the Time of COVID

01/06/23 • 38 min

Jolie is back on the podcast with her supervisor Josue Moran, who is the co-founder and VP of Research and Development at Angstrom Bio. Angstrom Bio is an Austin-based biotech company that is using Amplicon sequencing to revolutionize diagnostics, which Josue and Jolie explain in detail. Angstrom Bio’s ultimate goal is to develop a diagnostic tool that is more efficient and sensitive, so that one test tube can detect multiple viruses and variants at a faster rate, instead of requiring multiple tests for each virus. They are also able to test more patients at once, so the work that they are doing is incredibly valuable on many levels.

Angstrom Bio is a start-up that was conceived in response to COVID-19, and Josue shares the company’s journey from their initial pivot to work on diagnostics, to moving from St. Louis to Austin, to finding a community of entrepreneurial scientists that helped them scale and grow. Josue and Jolie met through the Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator lab space, and Josue shares how Angstrom Bio found lab space at ABI through a company called Tevido, highlighting the unique community of entrepreneurs in the biosciences here in Austin. Josue and Jolie share the journey that Angstrom Bio has been on over the last 2 years, and explain how crucial ABI and Austin’s community of entrepreneurs and ecosystem of resources and like-minded scientists was to their development.

Jolie explains how she was able to use her experiences at ABI to start her career as a Research and Development Scientist, and Josue and Jolie talk about their shared mindset about what they’re looking for in their team members. They highlight the importance of being fearless and being willing to test and fail and never give up. They close out the episode with advice for people who are interested in a career in the biosciences, vouching for the importance of networking and finding creative ways to “prove” your skills and character to hiring teams, whether it’s through an internship or a volunteer opportunity or in the classroom.

Learn more about Angstrom Bio.

Learn more about ACC Bioscience Incubator.

This is a founding_media podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about Angstrom Bio.

Learn more about ACC Bioscience Incubator.

This is a founding_media podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

A Bioscience Playground

Former interns Jolie Muren and Liz Hampton both joined Austin Community College after deciding that their original educational paths weren’t suited for them. Jolie shares how she started out pursuing nursing, but quickly learned that she loved science and the creative problem-solving it entailed. She was drawn to the ACC Bioscience Incubator because she was able to get hands-on experience and jump into ‘doing science,’ instead of just learning about it. She shares how Nancy encouraged and supported the interns to try new things and how ABI gave her diverse experiences in all types of biotech processes and instruments.

Liz had her own unique trajectory, seeking out ACC after moving to Austin specifically because it was a biotech epicenter and she knew that biotech was the industry she wanted to work in. When she visited ACC she saw signs for the ACC Bioscience Incubator, and decided to pursue the biotech program at ACC because of the internship opportunities at ABI. She shares Jolie’s experience that she was able to try new things and “play” with technology that she would never have encountered in a classroom or anywhere else, and both Jolie and Liz share some of the projects they were able to work on during their time as ABI interns.

Our guests talk about how their ABI internships helped them in job interviews and how the skills and hands-on experience they gained during their internships transferred to their current roles at diagnostic companies. Beyond the knowledge and experience they learned at ABI and ACC, Jolie and Liz also talk about their personality traits that make them a good fit for their current roles. Both agree that perseverance and a desire to get to the bottom of a problem no matter what are helpful traits for aspiring scientists to possess.

They close out the conversation talking about how many COVID tests they’ve had to take as part of their jobs working in labs developing new testing methods, and Jolie and Liz give their advice to folks who are interested in bioscience, stressing that no matter where your interests lie, bioscience and biotech companies have a role for every type of person out there.

Learn more about Angstrom Bio.

Learn more about Nuclein.

Learn more about ACC Bioscience Incubator.

This is a founding_media podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Part 1 - The Journey From Start-Up to Established Company

Previous ABI intern Liz Hampton is back on the show with her colleague Barrett Morrow, who was the first hire at Austin-based diagnostics and testing company Nuclein. Like Angstrom, Nuclein is working on COVID tests, although their goal is to create a cheap, disposable, portable, all-in-one self-test diagnostic device that can help monitor infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Nuclein started out using ABI’s wet lab (which you can learn more about in Season 1), but have since grown out of the space and gone on to work in a larger lab. Barrett talks about his background and how he ended up being Nuclein’s first employee, giving us his first-hand experience in their intensive interview process and sharing what it was like to battle imposter syndrome as a young student trying to break into the bioscience field.

Since their time as a start-up at ABI, Nuclein has grown exponentially, and Barrett is now on the other side of the hiring table, doing the interviewing. He shares some insight into what hiring looks like from the company’s perspective, and Liz talks about her experiences transitioning from ABI to working for Nuclein during the pandemic. They talk about what it was like to work for a diagnostics company during a global pandemic, and how their experience has changed at Nuclein since it has taken off and expanded so much in the past couple years. First Nuclein outgrew the lab space at ABI, and then they outgrew their second space, so the growth is continuing as the company flourishes.

Barrett and Liz talk about the joys and pains of working for a start-up while it expands, and get into the details of how their roles have shifted since they first started at Nuclein, explaining what it’s like to work for a start-up in the bioscience industry. The close out part one with some insight into a day-in-the-life at Nuclein!

Learn more about Nuclein.

Learn more about ACC Bioscience Incubator.

This is a founding_media podcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.