Podcast appearances and mentions of Kendall Square

On today's program, we talk with anchor reporter,Ben Simmoneau of channel 5 WCVB TV  about his story about rising natural gas rates. Greg Ryan,  Senior reporter at the Boston  Business Journal looks at the health of the real estate market in Cambridge's Kendall Square. Chef Will Gilson explains why the DINE OUT program is so important to the restaurant industry. David O'Brien CEO of the Massachusetts Cannabis Business Association shares his thoughts on whether or not we will ever see pot cafés. And finally John Capone, managing partner of KPMG Boston takes a look at a new upbeat business survey.

I met Michael Bervell through a mutual acquaintance some two months ago. Since then he and I have talked a few times and found that we have many interests in common.   Michael grew up near Seattle where he stayed through high school. He then went across the country to study at Harvard. He received a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. He then returned to Seattle and began working at Microsoft where he held some pretty intense and interesting jobs he will tell us about.   At a young age and then in college Michael's entrepreneurial spirit was present and flourished. His story about all that he has done as an entrepreneur is quite impressive. Today he is back at Harvard working toward getting his Master's degree in Business.   Michael has developed a keen interest in digital accessibility and inclusion. We spend time discussing internet access, the various options for making inclusive websites and how to help educate more people about the need for complete inclusion.       About the Guest:   Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He is currently the founder of TestParty, an industry-leading and cutting edge digital accessibility platform.   In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations; impacted over 300,000 youth around the world; and expanded operations to 6 countries (Tanzania, Ghana, United States, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone). Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015 (alongside Pope Francis, Dikembe Mutombo, and 7 others).   Bervell is the youngest Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association and was the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle. He has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the WednesdAI Collective (a Harvard & MIT AI incubation lab), Enchiridion Corporation (a marketing consulting company), Sigma Squared (formerly the Kairos Society), and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas (a media and innovation company). He has experience working as a Chief of Staff at Databook, Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, Portfolio Development Manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, Program Manager at Microsoft, and Software Engineer at Twitter.   His various efforts have earned him recognition as a Samvid Scholar (2022), Warnick Fellow (2021), Jonathan Hart Prize Winner (2019), GE-Lloyd Trotter Scholar (2018), World Internet Conference Wuzhen Scholar (2017), Walter C. Klein Scholar (2017), United Health Foundation Scholar (2016), Deutsche Bank Rise Into Success Scholar (2016), Blacks at Microsoft Scholar (2016), Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader (2015), Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar (2015), National Achievement Scholar (2015), Coca-cola Scholar (2015), Elks Scholar (2015), AXA Achievement Community Scholar (2015), Build-a-bear Workshop Huggable Hero (2014), and more.   Ways to connect with Michael:   Personal Website: https://www.michaelbervell.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbervell/ Company Website: https://www.testparty.ai/ Company LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/testparty/     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hinkson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Our guest today is Michael Bervell, who is a Ghanaian American angel investor. He is a published author, and he is also an entrepreneur and a scholar by any standards. And if he wants to brag about all that and all the the different kinds of accolades and awards he's gotten, he's welcome to do that. And I will just take a nap. No, I won't. I won't take a nap. I'll listen to him. I've read it all, but I'll listen to it again. Michael, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Michael Bervell ** 01:58 Thanks so much for having me. It's a great name. You have too, both the podcast and your own name, another Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 You know, I think it's a great name. People have asked me, why I say Michael, and do I prefer Michael to Mike? And as I tell people, it took a master's degree in 10 years, a master's degree in physics in 10 years, to figure this out. But I used to always say Mike Kingston on the phone, and people always said Mr. Kingston. And I couldn't figure out, why are they saying Kingston when it's Kingston, and I introduced myself as Mike Kingston. And finally, one day, it hit me in the head. They're getting the mike the K part with the Kingston, and they're calling it Kingston. If I start saying Michael hingson, will that change it? I started saying Michael hingson, and immediately everybody got it right. They said Mr. Hingson or Michael, or whatever. I don't really care, Mike or Michael is fine, but the last name is hingson, so there.   Michael Bervell ** 02:50 It's so funny. Yeah, I'm glad no one's calling you Mr. Links and or something like, yeah, yell and adding it. They   Michael Hingson ** 02:55 do. They do. Sometimes do Hingston, which isn't right, yeah, which shows you sometimes how well people listen. But you know, what   03:03 do you do? Exactly, exactly? Tell   Michael Hingson ** 03:07 us a little bit, if you would, about the early Michael bervell Growing up in and where, and all that sort of stuff. And you know, then we can get into all sorts of fun stuff, because I know you've been very interested in accessibility and disabilities and all that, we'll get to that. But tell me about you growing up. Yeah. I mean,   Michael Bervell ** 03:24 for me home, home for me was in Seattle, and I actually lived and went to school in a place that was about 30 minutes apart. So my parents would drop me off at school in the morning. I go through the day, meet all my friends, and then come back home. They would pick me up, take me back home in the evening. So I had a lot of time in the day after school, you know, school ends at two, and my parents picked up a five to do all this other stuff. So I used to always be part of every student, student club. I did every sports team, you know, I was in high school, you know, on the captain of all these, all these teams and such. And of course, I would go home and my parents picked me up. And in that in that in between time, I spent a lot of time in the library, so I probably every day in middle and high school, spent three hours a day at the library, just in that in between time, waiting for your parents, waiting for my parents. So that for me, was a lot of time that I just used to incubate projects. I taught myself how to code and took some CS classes when I was, you know, in high school at the library, I became friends with all the librarians and joined the student library advisory board when I was in eighth grade at the library, and did a bunch of other things. But I think probably the most impactful library project that I had was actually a nonprofit that my family and I started, and it was memory of my grandmother, who born in Ghana. She used to always go back there in the winter times, because, you know, it's cold in Seattle, warm in West Africa in the winter   Michael Hingson ** 04:48 as well. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 04:49 yeah, it was super warm there. I mean, it's always, you know, 80 plus degrees, wow. Yeah, it's lovely. And so she would always go home. And whenever she went back to Ghana. She would, you know, come into our bedroom and tip doe at night and go into the bed and take a teddy bear or take some of her old school supplies. And whenever she visited, she would give that to kids in hospitals and schools and North pages. So, you know, when she, when we, when she passed away, we ended up going back to Ghana for her funeral. And, you know, all the burial ceremonies, and there were just so many people from the community there expressing their love for her and what she had done. And we realized that, you know, while it was small for us, you know, as a six year old or sixth grade kid, her taking a teddy bear had such a big impact, and it had these ripple effects that went far beyond her, so that that was, like one of my biggest projects I did at, you know, in sixth grade and beyond. It's an organization, a nonprofit called hugs for Ghana, which we've been running for the last 15 years, 15 plus years, and now is operating in six different countries. And we do the same thing. We get teddy bears and school supplies and all these things, and pick them up and hand deliver them to kids in developing countries. But that, for me, was one of my most fundamental parts of my childhood. When you ask me, you know, was it like as a child? I can't separate my growing up from, you know, those long drives to school, that time at the library and eventually the nonprofit made in honor of my grandmother,   Michael Hingson ** 06:10 and giving back,   Michael Bervell ** 06:13 yeah, and giving back exactly how   Michael Hingson ** 06:16 I talked fairly recently on this podcast to someone who formed. Her name is Wendy Steele. She formed an organization called Impact 100 and impact 100 is really primarily an organization of women, although in Australia, there are men who are part of it. But basically what Wendy realized along the way was that, in fact, people are always looking for, what can they do? And at the same time, they don't have a lot of time. So with impact 100 she said, and the way the organization works, the only thing that she requires that anyone who joins the organization must do is donate a check for $1,000 that's it. If you don't want to do any work, that's great. If you want to be part of it and all that. It's fine. If the organization is primarily composed of volunteers. I think they have now like 73 or 77 chapters in mostly in the United States, but they're also when Australia and a couple of other countries, and they have given out in the 20 years since the organization was formed, all told, close to $148 million what they do is they take the money that comes in, and they for every $100,000 that a Chapter raises, they give a $100,000 grant to someone no administrative costs, unless those are donated on top of the $1,000 so all the money goes back to the community. I think the first grant they ever gave was to a dental clinic to help with low income people and so on. But it's a fascinating organization, as I said, it's called Impact 100 and she started it because as a child, she was very much involved in giving back, and for a while she she didn't. And then it started again when her father passed away, and she realized how many people from the community supported her and the rest of her family because they didn't have the tools or the resources to do it all alone. Yeah, so I'm not surprised that you have the story of giving back and that you continue to do that, which is really pretty cool.   Michael Bervell ** 08:36 Well, I think I actually heard a statistic that I think they tried to track how early childhood development, or just early adulthood, affected later adulthood. I think one of the findings was that people who volunteered when they were in middle and high school or significantly more likely to volunteer later in life than those who never did. And so there is a certain level of kind of you know, how you experience the world in your early ages and your early days affects your potential to want to make a change, especially as it relates to giving back or giving time or money or whatever effort, whatever it might be, I think is a really interesting concept. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 it makes sort of perfect sense, because as you're growing up and you're forming your life, if you see that you're doing things like giving back or being involved in supporting other people, and that is a very positive thing, it makes sense that you would want to continue that in some way.   Michael Bervell ** 09:33 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it reminds me also of just like habits. You know, you build your habits over time, and it starts from super young ages not to say that you can't change habits. There's a bunch of research about the science of habit change and how to break a habit loop, and Charles Duhigg is a great author in that space, but it's also just really interesting just to think through that. But yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:54 and habits can be hard to break, or they can be easy if you're really committed. Into doing it. But I know a lot of people say it, it's fairly challenging to change or break a habit.   Michael Bervell ** 10:06 Exactly, yeah, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 10:09 Unfortunately, sometimes it's all too easy to make a habit. But anyway, there you go. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 10:14 my one of my it's, it's funny, because after you know one of my habits I made when I was in high school that, to my mom's chagrin, was I used to always love just doing work on my bed. The positive thing about the habit was I was always comfortable. The negative thing is I would sometimes fall asleep. So many times I mid paper, you know, mid take home exam, fall asleep. I have to wake up and scramble to finish. But that doesn't show me a faster writer. If anything   Michael Hingson ** 10:41 I remember, when I was in graduate school at UC Irvine, I had an office of my own, and I was in it one day, and I was looking at some material. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the physics texts in Braille, so I was studying one, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and my finger was on the page, and I had just fallen asleep, and my finger for reading braille, was right where I left off. Always thought that was funny,   Michael Bervell ** 11:14 yeah, just a just a quick, just a quick pause. You just pause for a second, even   Michael Hingson ** 11:18 though it was about 45 minutes, but whatever. But my figure didn't move.   Michael Bervell ** 11:24 You really focused, you know, just That's it. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 11:27 The advantage of Braille, exactly. But, you know, I do think that it's great to have those kinds of habits, and I really wish more people would learn the value of giving back and sharing, because it will come back to benefit you so many times over.   Michael Bervell ** 11:48 Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's even what influences me, like now and even throughout, you know, post high school, like when I went into college, I knew I wanted to be in some sort of service and giving back type of industry, but I didn't really know what that was, right, like, I didn't want to do want to do philanthropy full time, because I found it difficult, right? Like, I found it hard to have to go back to investors, and I found it difficult to sometimes sell the vision. And my question was, is there a way to make this more sustainable? And so I spent a lot of my time in school and college just learning about social impact, which, at the time was just coming up, like a lot of those impact investment funds, impact bonds, the idea that you can tie finance to impact, and you can have carbon offsets that people buy and sell, that has some sort of social good, that you can somehow transact. All these kind of new and interesting ideas were coming around, and it started, it just got me interested, right? It's, you know, can I make a habit of creating an impact, but also habits somehow work within, you know, this capitalist system that the world operates in. It's something I've been wrestling with, you know, even in all my my future business and kind of current business, work and practices.   Michael Hingson ** 12:58 What do you do when you propose an idea or have a thought, and you discuss with people and they object to it. How do you handle objections?   Michael Bervell ** 13:05 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for me, I'm always interested in the root cause, right? I think I'm one who tries to understand first before trying to persuade. So I could give you an example, I think very early in my, very early my college career, I realized that my parents would be able to pay for college for me. That was the youngest of three. And, you know, they'd use a lot of their savings on my siblings, about the who ended up going to med school, which is very expensive, yeah, college, which was also very expensive. And being immigrants from Ghana, of course, they hadn't saved up an infinite amount of money. So my mom sat me down and told me, Hey, you have to pay your own tuition. And so, you know, the person I had to convince to kind of help me here was actually funny enough, restaurants are in Harvard Square, and the reason why is I decided to make a business that did restaurant consulting. So I went door to door, and I would ask people and like, hey, you know, do you need 20 Harvard students to come and help you understand how you can get more foot traffic in the door. You know, sell more pizzas or sell more burritos. I think I heard 20 or 30 knows. And finally, one woman said, Well, you know, if, if, if, if you think that you can do it, then, you know, show me. Show me the numbers, right? And that was, that was really interesting. And so I think it realized, you know, when I when she initially said, No, I said, Well, why not? She said, I just don't know if you can do it. And when I said, Oh, we can actually show you the proof, she's like, Okay, well, then if you can run a pilot and show me the proof, then I'll do it. And so understanding the why, I think, is more important than getting the rejection and, you know, getting the setback. But that's try to, that's how I try to deal with it.   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 One of the things that I learned fairly early on, when I was put in a position of starting to sell for a living, actually, in Cambridge, working for Kurzweil Computer Products and taking a Dale Carnegie sales course was stay away from asking closed ended or. Yes, no questions. And so most of the time, I wouldn't say, you know, can we do this? Or would you do this? I would say, I'd like to hear your thoughts about or we've got this idea, tell me what you think, and doing other things to get people to talk. And when I started using that in my career, it was easy to get people to talk because they they want to talk. Or, as I like to say, people love to teach, and most of the time, if you establish a relationship with people and they know you're listening, they're welcome, or they're willing to give you wisdom. And so there are so many examples I have of asking open ended questions like that, or I went into a sales meeting with one of my employees, and there were a bunch of people there, and I said, Tell me to the first person I talked with, tell me why we're here. And it totally caught him off guard. Of course. The other thing is that they didn't realize that the sales manager who was coming, that the the guy who had set up the appointment was was told to bring his manager, and they didn't realize that the sales manager was blind, which also was a great addition to help. But again, I didn't ask, so you want to take backup system, but rather tell me why we're here. Tell me what you're looking for. Why are you looking for that? What do you want it to be? And I actually realized by the time I went around the room that our product wasn't going to work, but we still did the PowerPoint presentation. And then I said, if case you haven't figured it out, our system won't work, and here's why, but here's what will work. And that eventually led to a much larger order, as it turns out, because they called back later and they said, We got another project, and we're not even putting it out for bid. Just tell us what we pay you, and we'll order it. And it's it's all about. The objections are really mostly, I think, from people who maybe have some concerns that you didn't learn about because you didn't ask an open ended up or the right question, which is something that only comes with time.   Michael Bervell ** 17:15 Yeah. I mean, I think it also sounds very similar to like, what journalists are are trained to do, like a great journalist. And I took a journalism class a few years ago, maybe five years ago, with Joe Abramson, who was one of the first female executive, executive editors of the New York Times. And this was kind of her exact lesson. Is that everyone has some story to teach, some wisdom to share, and the difficulty, or really the challenge on you as an interlocutor, as a journalist, as someone whose job it is to uncover the story, is to ask the right questions, yeah, to allow that person the space to teach.   Michael Hingson ** 17:51 And if you and if you don't know the right questions, you ask something open ended, enough that maybe you'll get to it.   Michael Bervell ** 17:57 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the flip side, right, because there's, of course, you can't put all the burden on the person, no, right? You have to be an active listener. You have to listen to know, and then you have to prod and even say something like, Tell me more. Yeah, exactly right. Questions like, Tell me more, her second favorite question was, and then what happened? Yeah, right. Those are two such simple things, you know? And then what? Yeah. And it's just such an opening to really evolve and to grow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:23 And if they really think you're listening and that you want to know and understand, people will talk to you exactly which is, which is really what it's about. Well, so you did all of your so you went to high school in Seattle, correct? Yeah. And, and then what did you do?   Michael Bervell ** 18:43 Yeah. So High School in Seattle Graduated, went off to Boston for college, where, you know, of course, had to figure out a way to pay for school. And that was my first, I guess, for profit business. Was this restaurant consulting company. And of course, like I said, everything I want to do in my in my life, was focused on social impact. So the impacts there was that we only hired students to work for us who needed to pay tuition. There was this program called federal work study where, if you get trade, you have to, you know, work as part of a federal mandate for some amount of hours per week, and that was the book study requirement. And for the most part, students would do on campus jobs that would pay 10, $15 an hour to do this work study. Well, I'd spent up this consulting business as a sophomore that I then ran for all three years, and on an hourly basis, we were making significantly more than that, right? So I was able to go find students who traditionally had been working their whole life, right? Harvard has such a, you know, vast background of individuals. I knew, people who were homeless, people who were billionaires and everyone in between, who ended up coming to the school and so to find people who you know had been working 40 hours a week since they were in middle school, and give them a job where they could work less and actually have more free time to invest in their community or invest back into developing new skills, was, for me, super, super impactful. On the surface, it was a restaurant. A consulting business, but behind the scenes, what we were doing with our staffing and with our culture was was around that social impact. So I stayed out in in Cambridge for for four years, studied philosophy. I got a minor in computer science, and eventually went off to Microsoft back in in Seattle, where I eventually then, you know, was product manager and was a venture capital investor, and met a bunch of really phenomenal and interesting people who were pushing technology forward.   Michael Hingson ** 20:27 Now, why Harvard, which is all the way across the country?   Michael Bervell ** 20:33 Yeah, I mean, well, I think I love traveling. I loved, I loved, you know, being out and about, and I think growing up as the youngest of three, and also as the child of African immigrants, they'd always told me, you know, we moved here for you, like we moved 3000 miles away to a country where you don't speak the language, where you don't know anybody for you. And what they meant for that is, you know, we want you to really thrive. And even you know, now I'm at the age when my parents had first moved right to the US, and I can't imagine moving to a country where I don't know the language, don't know the people, and don't know a soul for my potential future children. And their children, that's what they did, and they invested a lot of time and energy and effort into me. And they always told me, you want you to be really successful. And so I remember when I was when I was in middle school, my sister got into Harvard, which was unheard of, right? No one in our high school had gone to Harvard in the past, especially not for, you know, a black family in a primarily white neighborhood, for one of us to go to Harvard was was a big deal. And so I knew that, you know, at the very least, for my parents, for my sister, for my family, I wanted to kind of match up to that   Michael Hingson ** 21:43 well, and it certainly sounds like you've, you've done a lot of that. Oh, here's a an off the wall question, having been around Cambridge and worked in Cambridge and all that is cheapo records still in Harvard Square.   Michael Bervell ** 21:57 Oh, man. You know what's so funny, I got a record player. I got a record player last semester, and I don't remember if cheaper records, that's the one that's like, I think I've is that the one that's in like, the actual, like, it's by, like, Kendall, take by Kendall, Kendall Square.   Michael Hingson ** 22:15 No, I thought it was in Harvard Square. Okay,   Michael Bervell ** 22:19 I think, I think it still exists. If I'm not mistaken, I think it still exists. I think I got a lot, got a lot of records from cheapo over the years record stores in Cambridge. And because I got a record player as a gift, I've been, I've been collecting a lot more,   Michael Hingson ** 22:31 ah, yeah, um, I've gotten a lot of records from cheapo and over the years. And of course, not so much now, since I'm out here. But next time I get back to mass, I'll have to go check,   Michael Bervell ** 22:43 oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We can do a cheapo records hanging how tactile It is, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:52 There used to be one in New York that I would go to. They were more expensive as New York tends to be colony records, and they're not there anymore, which is sort of sad, but cheapo. Cheap just seemed to be one of those places that people liked. I don't want to say it was like a cult, although it sort of is all the dedicated people to to real vinyl, but I hope it's still   Michael Bervell ** 23:16 there. Is it? It's a chain of record stores, or is it just,   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 no, I think it's a one. Oh, yeah. If there's more than one, I'm not aware of it, I'd   Michael Bervell ** 23:23 probably say I'm 80% certain it still exists. Well there,   Michael Hingson ** 23:27 yeah, so have to come back to mass. And yeah, I'll have to go to cheaper records and Legal Seafood.   Michael Bervell ** 23:32 Oh yeah, Legal Seafood. That was, yeah, I love Legal Seafood musical all the time with my roommates from college. And, yeah, we used to order the crab cakes and eat lobster rolls. It's a great time.   Michael Hingson ** 23:44 Yeah, and then their little chocolate desserts, which are great yeah, and the chowder. Oh, well, yeah, yep, gotta, gotta get back to mass. Okay. Now whoever   Michael Bervell ** 23:53 you're listening is probably getting hungry. Well, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 23:57 as as they should, you know, you know why they call it Legal Seafood. I actually don't know nothing is frozen. It's all fresh. It's legal. Oh, I love that. I love that, at least that's what I was told. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, so you, you went to college and went then back to Seattle and worked for Microsoft and so on. So clearly, you're also interested in the whole idea of investing and the whole life of being an entrepreneur in various ways. And so you brought entrepreneurialism to everything that you did.   Michael Bervell ** 24:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my first job at Microsoft. I was, you know, managing what's called Windows IoT. So we were putting software on everything that wasn't a phone or a laptop. So think, you know, smart screens in airports, or screens in Times Square, or, you know, the type of software that your Amazon Echo, you know, maybe not Amazon in particular. But what that would run on that was working on IoT all these. They called it headless devices, yeah, devices with no screens. And that was my team for a little bit. I worked there for about year and a half. It was phenomenal. You know, we were managing multiple billions of dollars in revenue, and there was only, you know, 4050 people on my team. So you do the math, we're all managing hundreds, 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars in our products. And while I loved it, I realized that my my true passion was in was in meeting people, talking to people, and giving them the resources to succeed, versus giving them the actual technology itself. I loved being able to connect an engineer, you know, with the right supplier to work on a hard problem that could then be built for Microsoft to eventually get to a customer. And that sort of connection role, connector role is kind of the role of a venture capitalist. Yeah, right. You're connecting your limited partners who have invested in this fund to entrepreneurs who are trying to build some sort of idea from the ground up. And, you know, once you invest in the entrepreneur, then connecting the entrepreneur to mentors, to advisors, to potential employees, to potential customers. And so there's this value in being someone who's a listener, a journalist, right, like we had been talking about someone who has a habit of trying to make a broader impact. And it kind of all aligned with what I had been building up until that point. So I worked at M 12, it's Microsoft's venture capital fund, and invested in in a bunch of companies from Kahoot, which is like an education startup, to obviously open AI was a Microsoft investment as well, to other things like that. And so it was cool, because, you know, the fund was, was really, we had the mandate of just find cool companies, and because we were Microsoft, we could reach out to any founder and have a conversation. So it was, it really was a few years of just intense and deep learning and thoughtfulness that I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade for anything. What got   Michael Hingson ** 26:58 you started in the whole arena of thinking about and then being involved with digital accessibility, because we've talked about that a lot. I know that's a passion. So how did you get started down that road?   Michael Bervell ** 27:11 Yeah, I mean, it came partially through working at Microsoft, right? I mean, as I was at Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who was the CEO, he was making big, big investments into digital accessibility, primarily because his son, now, his late son, had cerebral palsy, and a lot of the technology at Microsoft, his son couldn't use, and so he had this kind of mission and vision to want to make more accessible technologies. But my first exposure to it even before then, like I said, in college, I had to work all these, all these jobs to pay tuition, and I built my own business, but one of the clients we consulted for was a large search engine. I'm sure you can imagine which one it was, and it wasn't Microsoft, and that were search engine. I helped them devise their ability strategy.   Michael Hingson ** 27:56 You mean the G word, something like that? Yeah.   Michael Bervell ** 28:00 Yeah. Duck, duck, go, yeah. No, that's it. Yeah, exactly. And so it was really cool to work with them and to see like at scale, at 200,000 employee scale, at 1000 product scale, how do you create systems and guardrails such that accessibility, in this case, digital accessibility, will be something that that actually ends up happening. Ends up happening. And so that was my first exposure to it. And then again at Microsoft. And then finally, a third time, while I was in business school, you know, working on various projects with friends. And one friend told me, you know, all I did at work this week was have to fix accessibility bugs because my company got sued. And that was and just all those moments combined with the idea that I wanted to impact the deep empathy that comes through learning and knowing and understanding people's backgrounds and histories, all of it came to a head with what I now work on at test party.   Michael Hingson ** 28:57 So now, how long has test party been around? And we'll get to that up. But, but how long have you had that?   Michael Bervell ** 29:03 Yeah, we started. We started about a year ago. Okay, so it's pretty recent,   Michael Hingson ** 29:07 so yeah, definitely want to get to that. But, so the whole issue of accessibility, of course, is a is a thing that most people don't tend to know a lot about. So so let's start this way. Why should people worry about making products and places like websites accessible? And I know websites, in a lot of ways, are a lot easier than going off and making physical products accessible, especially if they're already out, because redesign is a very expensive thing to do, and is not something that a lot of people are going to do, whereas, when you're dealing with websites, it's all about coding, and it's a lot easier. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 29:48 yeah. I mean, I think, I think fundamentally, it comes down to, you know, a set of core beliefs. And I think we could all agree, and I think we would all believe that, like everyone has the right to. You a decent, fulfilling and enjoyable life. I think regardless of where you fall on, you know, belief spectrums or anything, that's something that we all fundamentally believe. You know, you should live well. You should try to live a good life. It's what people talked about in writing for years. And I think when you think of the good life in today's terms, in the 21st century, it's almost inseparable from a life that also engages with technology, whether it's cell phones or computers or whatever it might be, technology has become so fundamental into how we live that it now has also become part of how we live well and how we live a good life. And I'll give you a clear example, right? Let's suppose you really believe that voting is part of living the good life. There is a time, 100 years ago, you know, you didn't need to really have a car. You could get a rehearsing buggy. Maybe you could even walk to a voting station and cast your vote in today's world, especially, let's suppose a COVID world, and even a post COVID world, computers, technology, websites, are fundamental in living that good life, if that's your belief system. And you can play this game with any belief that you have, and once you extrapolate into what does it take for you to do that thing in the best way possible? It almost inevitably, inevitably, you know, engages with technology. Yeah, so why do I think having accessible websites are important? Well, it's because pretty much 195 people has a disability of some sort, and so to live the good life, they have to engage technology. And if that technology is not working for them for whatever reason, then that needs to be fixed. That needs to be changed. And of course, there's the guardrails of laws, you know, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, EAA European Accessibility Act and others that try to mandate this. And of course, there's the goodwill of companies who try to do this proactively. I think Apple is a really good example, and Microsoft as well. But fundamentally, the question is, you know, what is a good life? How do you enable people to live that? And I think through technology, people should be able to live a better life, and should not have any barriers to access.   Michael Hingson ** 32:02 The thing is, though, take apple, for example. For the longest time, Apple wouldn't do anything about making their products accessible. Steve Jobs, jobs basically told people to pound sand when they said, iTunes, you wasn't even accessible, much less the iPod and the iPhone and the Mac. And it wasn't until two things happened that they changed really. One was target.com target had been sued because they wouldn't make their website accessible, and eventually too many things went against target in the courtroom, where they finally said, Okay, we'll settle and make this work. When they settled, it cost them $8 million to settle, whereas if they had just fixed it up front, the estimate is that it would have been about $40,000 in time and person hours, but because of where the lawsuit was filed and so on, it was $8 million to settle the case. And so that was one thing, and the other was it had been made very clear that Apple was the next company on the target list because they weren't doing anything to make their product successful. Well, Apple suddenly said, Okay, we'll take care of it. We will deal with it. And I think they had already started, but they and so as not to get sued, they said, We will do it. Well, probably the first thing that happened was the iPhone 3g well, maybe it wasn't the three, it was earlier, but the iPhone became accessible. The iPod became accessible. Pretty much all of them, iTunes, you the Mac. So by 2009 last when I got my iPhone 3g Apple was well known for making their products accessible, and they did it in a very clever way. It was accessible right from the outset. You didn't have to buy other stuff to make their products work. No need to buy a new screen reader or any of those kinds of things. So they spread the cost over every product that they sold, whoever bought it, so anyone who buys an iPhone can invoke accessibility today, which, which was cool, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 34:09 yeah. And I think through Apple, I mean, I think the initial argument I made for why is it import to make websites accessible was an ethical argument, right? I think in Apple's case, they, they probably did the business case analysis and understood this actually does make economic sense. And I think what you see today is there is even more economic sense because of the expanding market size. Right? Think the aging population that will develop some sort of disability or impairment, right? That's really growing larger, right? Think about, you know, individuals who may have what people call temporary disabilities that are not permanent, but last for some period of time, whether it's, you know, nine months, 10 months, two years, three years, and those types of things. So I think there is, there's also a business case for it. I think that's what Apple as a case study has shown. What you bring up, though, is, does it matter? Does it really matter? Like, why companies start doing this, right? And I think that's a question, you know, to grapple with. You know, if Apple did it out of the goodness of their heart versus because they didn't want to get sued, but the downstream effects are the same, you know, does that matter? And, you know, question, Do the ends justify the means? In this case, the ends are good, at least just by the start, perhaps, but sure that interesting question so, but I do think that they have done really good work   Michael Hingson ** 35:27 well. And you and you brought up something which, you know we talked about, which is that you talked about one company that dealt with some of because they got sued. And litigation is all around us. Unfortunately, we're a very litigious society and in our world today. So so like with accessibe, that that I work with, and work for that company, and a lot of what I do, some people have said, well, accessibe shouldn't always use the idea that, well, if you don't make your website accessible, you're going to get sued. That's a bad marketing decision, and I think there are limits, but the reality is that there are lawyers who are out there who still haven't been muzzled yet, who will file 5060, 100 complaints just to and they get a blind person to sign off and say, Yeah, we support this, because they'll get paid something for it. But they're not looking to make the companies deal with accessibility. They just want to earn money, 10,015 $20,000 per company. But the reality is, part of the market is educating people that litigation is a possibility because of the fact that the internet is a place of business under the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Michael Bervell ** 36:54 Yeah, exactly. I think when you think of like, you know, what is the purpose of litigation? Again, I, as a philosophy guy, I always think back to first principles, and it really is a deterrent, right? Obviously, no one wants to get sued. And, of course, no one wants to pay damages, punitive or reparative. And so in this case, these are all examples of punitive damages that people are paying for not having done the right thing. Right? In in, in the best case, you do the right thing to begin with. But I think it's, you know, the consequence of not doing the right thing. I think, of course, there's the question of you described, kind of these lawyers, or what people call as kind of the trolls who are just kind of suing and, you know, reaping the benefits from this. And I think it's an unfortunate side effect. I do wish that there was a world where these trolls wouldn't even need to exist, because things are working perfectly, right, well,   Michael Hingson ** 37:45 and the reality is that it goes back far earlier than the internet. I mean, there are places, there are people who would drive around and make people in wheelchairs who might find the smallest by violation wasn't even necessarily a legitimate violation, and they would sue and so and so. It isn't anything new that is just with the internet. Yeah, it's been going on for years. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 38:11 those are the drive by lawsuits. I remember I heard about those, and I think it's, this is the digital equivalent of that,   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 right? Yeah, right. And it is an issue, and it is something that that needs to be dealt with, but you also talk about doing the right thing, and that's really the better reason for doing it. If you do, you really want to exclude up to 20% of your potential business by not making your website accessible. Or better yet, if you make your website inclusive for all, what is going to happen when somebody comes to your website looking for a product and then they buy it because they were able to are they going to come back to that website? Are they going to go looking elsewhere? And there are so many studies like Nielsen did studies, and others have done studies that show absolutely people appreciate brand loyalty, and when they feel that they're they're valued and included, they're going to stick with that company.   Michael Bervell ** 39:12 Yeah? But even with that said, right, there's so this conflict of we all logically know it's the right thing to do, there's business purpose for doing it, and yet people don't do it. Yeah, 97% of the internet is still not accessible, if you look at this correct right? And so our hypothesis release, what we take, and what I take as a business is that sometimes, if it's too hard to do the right thing, people won't do the right thing, but that's what they want to do. And so how do you make it easier to do the right thing? And that's hopefully what, what we're what we're hoping to change in the industry, is just making it easier and also letting people know that this is an issue. One   Michael Hingson ** 39:48 of the one of the criticisms, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. A lot of people   Michael Bervell ** 39:52 don't, don't do the right thing, because just don't know that there is a right thing to do. You know   Michael Hingson ** 39:56 right well. And one of the criticisms I've heard over the. Years, especially dealing with the products like accessibe is, well, the problem is, you just slap this AI thing on their site, you're not teaching them anything, and that's not a good thing. And with manual coders, they're going to teach people. Well, that's not true either, but, but this whole argument of, well, you just put it on there, and then you go away, which isn't true, but again, that's one of the criticisms that I've heard any number of times, and that you're not really educating people about accessibility. You're not really educating them much about it. And the answer is, look, the company that wants to do business came to you in the first place. So they obviously knew they had to do something.   Michael Bervell ** 40:44 Yeah, yeah. And I think when I think through it, it's like, how do you make sure that the downstream effects of whatever you do is just positive and beneficial, right? And the ideal, as we all agree, I think, would be just to build it right the first time. Whether it's physical buildings, build a building right the first time. Or, if it's websites, build the website correctly the first time. Whatever helps people to get to that stage and that level of thinking and habits I think are, are ideal   Michael Hingson ** 41:13 coming from your background and so on. You know now that there are two basic ways that people can work to make websites accessible. One is the traditional way where you have someone who goes in and codes in the access and puts it right on the website. And now, over the past several years, the other way that has come into existence is the whole concept of using as accessibe does AI and although AI won't necessarily do everything that needs to be done, it will do most of what needs to be done, and maybe everything, depending on how complex the website is. But what do you think about the whole fact that now AI has entered into the accessibility world and people are using it?   Michael Bervell ** 42:02 Yeah, I think AI is interesting. And I think AI is a tool. I think it's it's a tool that's been developed, obviously, over a long history, right? Like the first artificial intelligent computers were in the 60s and 70s, being able to predict things, and of course, you heard of AlphaGo and computers that could pay chess and all these different things. So I think we'll definitely be surprised by what AI can do as a tool, right? And the question is, it will be, you know, the panacea, the thing to cure it all. Well, we all love for that to be the case. Who knows? You know, if it'll be AI, maybe functionally, AI could do that. But in terms of compute power, you know, it won't be able to until we have quantum computing or something right, in which case maybe it'll leapfrog this whole type of technology, and maybe web page will be obsolete in a decade, and then this whole idea of even needing to use AI to fix web pages will be replaced something else, like, like Be My Eyes, or something like that. That's even more advanced. But I think, as I see it, it's a tool that can be used to make it easier. And whether it's ease of use in terms of physical effort, ease of cost, in terms of bringing down costs to you know, to make a website compliant or a digital asset compliant, or just ease of understanding, right? Someone can explain to you what these really complicated rules mean, and so you can actually think about it from day one. So I think AI as a tool can lead to ease, which can then furthermore lead to hopefully more accessible products.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 Well, the first time I ran into real AI was working with Ray Kurzweil back in the late 70s. He developed a machine that would read print out loud to blind people. But one of the things that was unique about them, well, vinyl, whether it's totally unique, but certainly was unique for blind people and for most of us, was the fact that the more the machine read, the better the reading got. It actually learned, and it learned how to to understand and analyze its confidence. And so it would get better the more that it read. Chris. The only problem with that is, back in those days, the software was on a cassette that went into a player that was part of a Data General, Nova two. And so it had to learn all over again every time you rebooted the machine and loaded the program. But that's okay. It learned based on on what you were reading, but it really dramatically got better the more you read. And I think that today, the reality is that a lot of people really need to. And I would say this is true of manual coders. And I know a few who have adopted this, they'll use accessibe to do what it can do, and then they, in turn, then go and address the issues that access a B's widget doesn't do. And for me, my. My learning that lesson actually goes back to the mid 1980s when I couldn't get a job, and I started my own company selling computer aided design systems to architects. And a lot of architects would come in and say, well, we can't buy your system. Yeah, great. It works, but if we use it, we'll develop our drawings in a fraction of the time, and we can't charge what we did, because now we're not spending as much time, and I said you're missing the whole point. You change your model. You're not charging for your time. You're charging for your expertise. You don't need to charge less. And what you do is then you go off and you get more projects, but you can also do more for each individual customer that you bring in. We had access to a system that was a one of the early PC based three dimensional solid metal modeling CAD systems, so people could come into our office, or anybody who bought the product could could invite their customers in, and they could do actual walk throughs and fly throughs of buildings. They had light sources or Windows to look out. You could even see what was going on outside. It wasn't renderings. You actually saw everything right on the computer. Those are so many things that revolutionize the industry. Now, of course, CAD is everywhere as it should be, and the reality is that that I think that any manual programmer who is programming a website could use accessibe to do a lot of the work, and then an accessibe also has some tools using a product called Access flow, where they can analyze and even tell you exactly what you need to do with the things that aren't accessible, and then you can do it, but you can use accessibe to do most of the stuff, and it continuously monitors it's a scalability issue, and you don't get any scalability with manual coding at all. So again, it's the whole, as you point out, the whole tool of artificial intelligence really can make a big difference in what we're doing to create accessibility on in the internet and in so many other ways as we go forward.   Michael Bervell ** 47:06 Yeah, and already we're running right up on time with a minute or two left. But I think even fundamentally, what you're what you're describing, back to first principles is, is, if we make it easier, either in time or in effort or in understanding, to make things accessible. Will people do it right? Whether you're using, you know, an access to be or whether you're using another tool, there's this question, How will it help? And will it help? And I think in evaluating any tool, and really I can apply in so many cases, that's the core question task.   Michael Hingson ** 47:37 Since we started late, it's up to you, but time wise, we're fine. It's up to you, but I realize that we want to end fairly soon here, but I think you're right, and that gets back to the whole education issue. People really need to learn and understand the value of accessibility, why it's a good thing, and it's kind of hard to argue with losing 20% of your business because your website's not accessible. And accessible, and the reputation that you gain by not doing it can go beyond that 20% when people tell their own friends about the issues they're facing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it goes the other way. You make it accessible, and you get all sorts of accolades. That's going to help too. But it is a conversation that we need to have, and it's part of the whole big conversation about disabilities. In general, we don't really see disabilities as much in the conversation. When we hear about people talking and discussing diversity, they talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, so on, but they don't talk about disabilities, and disabilities tend to be left out of the conversation for the most part, which is extremely unfortunate. Why do you think that is?   Michael Bervell ** 48:46 Yeah, I think, I think it comes down to, I'm not, I'm not sure why it is. I'm not sure. But I think even though I'm not sure why it is, I do know what I hope. And I think what I hope is for, you know, a world where every, every part of society reflects what it's made up of, right? So you look and it's representative of of all the constituents, people with disabilities, people of different genders and races and and so on and so forth, so, so I think that's what I hope for. I think it's difficult, right? It's difficult based on the systems that have been made people's biases and more to get there, but I do think, I do think that's ultimately the hope. But I   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 think that a lot of it comes down to fear people. Fear people with disabilities. I think that the whole fear factor, and even with race or gender or sexual orientation, so on, some of the comments, if you listen to them, all they're doing is promoting fear which which doesn't help at all. But in the case of disabilities, oh my gosh, I could become blind or paralyzed in a second, and that fear is something that we really don't tend to you. Do nearly as much about as we should. Now I know you and I earlier talked about fear, and the reality is that that we can learn to control fear. I would never tell people don't be afraid. No such thing as not being afraid, but you can certainly learn to control fear so that you can use it again as a very powerful tool to guide you and help you, and that's what the best aspects of fear are all about. I think, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 50:26 I totally agree. I totally agree. Well, speaking of fear, I would be afraid of what might go I'm a president for Section G, which is one of the sections here, HBS, and we have to go select our Class Day speaker. So I'd be afraid if I, if I missed too much of the well, if they,   Michael Hingson ** 50:43 if they want to hire a speaker, I'm just saying I know Mike was, I was like, Man, I wish I had met you, like, back when you're doing our, our, like alumni and friend speakers. On the other hand, we can certainly talk about next year, and I would love to do that. Well, I want to really thank you for being here. I think we'll just have to have another discussion about all of this in the future. But I really appreciate you being here a lot and chatting very, very frequently, and you're going to go off and play drums later too, right? Oh, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:11 it's a busy I'm in my, you know, Shirley retirement era, you know, yeah, right. Go back into, back into the workforce.   Michael Hingson ** 51:19 So, real quick, though, you wrote a book. What's it called?   Michael Bervell ** 51:23 It's called unlocking unicorns. I'll send you a copy of the book, and so you can put in the show notes and everything else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 that would be great. And if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:34 but just my name, Michael purvell, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, B, E, R, V, E, L, l.com, contact my website. Is there? My bio, and this podcast will be there eventually   Michael Hingson ** 51:46 as well it will, and you'll get all the info. Well, thanks very much, and I want to thank you all for listening. Really appreciate you listening to us today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael, h, i, m, I, C, H, A, E, L, C, we spell our names the same. H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, and would love to to hear your thoughts. Love it. If you would give us a five star review wherever you're listening. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please introduce us. We're always looking for it. And I would also say if anybody needs a speaker, it is what I've been doing ever since September 11, and I'm always looking for speaking opportunities. So please reach out and let's see if we can chat and and one of these days, maybe we'll get Michael to bring us up to Harvard we can go visit the coupe. But thanks so much for listening, everyone. Thanks once more for thanks. Once more Michael, for being here. Thanks.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

The hills outside the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square are much more than just hills. For more, ask Alexa to play WBZ NewsRadio on #iHeartRadio.

When I think of digital biology, I think of Patrick Hsu—he's the prototype, a rarified talent in both life and computer science, who recently led the team that discovered bridge RNAs, what may be considered CRISPR 3.0 for genome editing, and is building new generative A.I. models for life science. You might call them LLLMs-large language of life models. He is Co-Founder and a Core Investigator of the Arc Institute and Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Deb Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.Above is a brief snippet of our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify.Here's the transcript with links to the audio and external links to relevant papers and things we discussed.Eric Topol (00:06):Well hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths and I'm really delighted to have with me today Patrick Hsu. Patrick is a co-founder and core investigator at the Arc Institute and he is also on the faculty at the University of California Berkeley. And he has been lighting things up in the world of genome editing and AI and we have a lot to talk about. So welcome, Patrick.Patrick Hsu (00:29):Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to it. Appreciate you having me on, Eric.The Arc InstituteEric Topol (00:33):Well, the first thing I'd like to get into, because you're into so many important things, but one that stands out of course is this Arc Institute with Patrick Collison who I guess if you can tell us a bit about how you two young guys got to meet and developed something that's really quite unique that I think brings together investigators at Stanford, UCSF, and Berkeley. Is that right? So maybe you can give us the skinny about you and Patrick and how all this got going.Patrick Hsu (01:05):Yeah, sure. That sounds great. So we started Arc with Patrick C and with Silvana Konermann, a longtime colleague and chemistry faculty at Stanford about three years ago now, though we've been physically operational just over two years and we're an independent research institute working at the interface of biomedical science and machine learning. And we have a few different aspects of our model, but our overall mission is to understand and treat complex human diseases. And we have three pillars to our model. We have this PI driven side of the house where we centrally fund our investigators so that they don't have to write grants and work on their very best ideas. We have a technical staff side of the house more like you'd see in a frontier AI lab or in biotech industry where we have professional teams of R&D scientists working cross-functionally on higher level organizational wide goals that we call our institute initiatives.(02:05):One focused on Alzheimer's disease experimentally and one that we call a virtual cell initiative to simulate human biology with AI foundation models. And our third pillar over time is to have things not just end up as academic papers, but really get things out into the real world as products or as medicines that can actually help patients on the translational side. And so, we thought that some really important scientific programs could be unlocked by enabling new organizational models and we are experimenting at the institutional scale with how we can better organize and incentivize and support scientists to reach these long-term capability breakthroughs.Patrick, Patrick and SilvanaEric Topol (02:52):So the two Patrick's. How did you, one Patrick I guess is a multi-billionaire from Stripe and then there's you who I suspect maybe not quite as wealthy as the other Patrick, how did you guys come together to do this extraordinary thing?Patrick Hsu (03:08):Yeah, no, science is certainly expensive. I met Patrick originally through Silvana actually. They actually met, so funny trivia, all three Arc founders did high school science together. Patrick and Silvana originally met in the European version of the European Young Scientist competition in high school. And Silvana and I met during our PhDs in her case at MIT and I was at Harvard, but we met at the Broad Institute sort of also a collaborative Harvard, MIT and Harvard hospitals Institute based in Kendall Square. And so, we sort of in various pairwise combinations known each other for decades and worked together for decades and have all collectively been really excited about science and technology and its potential to accelerate societal progress. Yet we also felt in our own ways that despite a lot of the tremendous progress, the structures in which we do this work, fund it, incentivize it and roll it out into the real world, seems like it's really possible that we'll undershoot that potential. And if you take 15 years ago, we didn't have the modern transformer that launched the current AI revolution, CRISPR technology, single-cell, mRNA technology or broadly addressable LNPs. That's a tremendous amount of technologies have developed in the next 15 years. We think there's a real unique opportunity for new institutes in the 2020s to take advantage of all of these breakthroughs and the new ones that are coming to continue to accelerate biological progress but do so in a way that's fast and flexible and really focused.Eric Topol (04:58):Yeah, I did want to talk with you a bit. First of all before I get to the next related topic, I get a kick out of you saying you've worked or known each other for decades because I think you're only in your early thirties. Is that right?Patrick Hsu (05:14):I was lucky to get an early start. I first started doing research at the local university when I was 14 actually, and I was homeschooled actually until college. And so, one of the funny things that you got to do when you're homeschooled is well, you could do whatever you want. And in my case that was work in the lab. And so, I actually worked basically full time as an intern volunteer, cut my teeth in single cell patch clamp, molecular biology, protein biochemistry, two photon and focal imaging and kind of spiraled from there. I loved the lab, I loved doing bench work. It was much more exciting to me than programming computers, which was what I was doing at the time. And I think these sort of two loves have kind of brought me and us to where we are today.Eric Topol (06:07):Before you got to Berkeley and Arc, I know you were at Broad Institute, but did you also pick up formal training in computer science and AI or is that something that was just part of the flow?Patrick Hsu (06:24):So I grew up coding. I used to work through problems sets before dinner growing up. And so, it's just something that you kind of learn natively just like learning French or Mandarin.New Models of Funding Life ScienceEric Topol (06:42):That's what I figured. Okay. Now this model of Arc Institute came along in a kind of similar timeframe as the Arena BioWorks in Boston, where some of the faculty left to go to Arena like my friend Stuart Schreiber and many others. And then of course Priscilla and Mark formed the Chan Zuckerberg Institute and its biohub and its support. So can you contrast for one, these three different models because they're both very different than of course the traditional NIH pathway, how Arc is similar or different to the others, and obviously the goal here is accelerating things that are going to really make a difference.Patrick Hsu (07:26):Yeah, the first thing I would say is zooming out. There have been lots of efforts to experiment with how we do science, the practice of science itself. And in fact, I've recently been reading this book, the Demon Under the Microscope about the history of infectious disease, and it talks about how in the 1910s through the 1930s, these German industrial dye manufacturing companies like Bayer and BASF actually launched what became essentially an early model for industrial scale science, where they were trying to develop Prontosil, Salvarsan and some of these early anti-infectives that targeted streptococcus. And these were some of the major breakthroughs that led to huge medical advances on tackling infectious disease compared to the more academic university bound model. So these trends of industrial versus academic labs and different structures to optimize breakthroughs and applications has been a through current throughout international science for the last century.(08:38):And so, the way that we do research today, and that's some of our core tenets at Arc is basically it hasn't always been this way. It doesn't need to necessarily be this way. And so, I think organizational experiments should really matter. And so, there's CZI, Altos, Arena, Calico, a variety of other organizational experiments and similarly we had MRC and Bell Labs and Xerox PARCS, NIBRT, GNF, Google Research, and so on. And so, I think there are lots of different ways that you can organize folks. I think at a high level you can think about ways that you can play with for-profit versus nonprofit structures. Whether you want to be a completely independent organization or if you want to be partnered with universities. If you want to be doing application driven science or really blue sky curiosity driven work. And I think also thinking through internally the types of expertise that you bring together.(09:42):You can think of it like a cancer institute maybe as a very vertically integrated model. You have folks working on all kinds of different areas surrounding oncology or immunotherapy and you might call that the Tower of Babel model. The other way that folks have built institutes, you might call the lily pad model where you have coverage of as many areas of biomedical research as possible. Places like the Whitehead or Salk, it will be very broad. You'll have planned epigenetics, folks looking at RNA structural biology, people studying yeast cell cycle, folks doing in vivo melanoma models. It's very broad and I think what we try to do at Arc is think about a model that you might liken more to overlapping Viking shields where there's sort of five core areas that we're deeply investing in, in genetics and genomics, computation, neuroscience, immunology and chemical biology. Now we really think of these as five areas that are maybe the minimal critical mass that you would need to make a dent on something as complicated as complex human diseases. It's certainly not the only thing that you need, but we needed a critical mass of investigators working at least in these areas.Eric Topol (11:05):Well, yeah, and they really converge on where the hottest advances are being made these days. Now can you work at Arc Institute without being one of these three universities or is it really that you maintain your faculty and your part of this other entity?Patrick Hsu (11:24):So we have a few elements to even just the academic side of the house. We have our core investigators. I'm one of them, where we have dually appointed faculty who retain their latter rank or tenured appointment in their home department, but their labs are physically cited at the Arc headquarters where we built out a lab in Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. And so, folks move their labs there. They continue to train graduate students based on whatever graduate programs they're formally affiliated with through their university affiliation. And so, we have nearly 40 PhD students across our labs that are training on site every day.(12:03):So in addition to our core investigators, we also have what we call our innovation investigators, which is more of a grant program to faculty at our partner universities. They receive unrestricted funding from us to seed a new project or accelerate an existing area in their group and their labs stay at their home campus and they just get that funding to augment their work. The third way is our technical staff model where folks basically just come work at Arc and many of them also are establishing their own research groups focusing on technology R&D areas. And so, we have five of those technology centers working in molecular engineering, multi-omics, complex cellular models, in vivo models, and in machine learning.Discovery of Bridge RNAsEric Topol (12:54):Yeah, that's a great structure. In fact, just a few months ago, Patrick Collison, the other Patrick came to Stanford HAI where I'm on the board and you've summarized it really well and it's very different than the other models and other entities, companies included that you mentioned. It's really very impressive. Now speaking of impressive on June 26, this past few months ago, which incidentally is coincident with the draft genome in the year 2000, the human sequence. You and your colleagues, perhaps the most impressive jump in terms of an Arc Institute contribution published two papers back-to-back in Nature about bridge RNA: [Bridge RNAs direct programmable recombination of target and donor DNA] and [Structural mechanism of bridge RNA-guided recombination.] And before I get you to describe this breakthrough in genome editing, some would call it genome editing 3.0 or CRISPR 3.0, whatever. But what we have today in the clinic with the approval of CRISPR 1.0 for sickle cell and thalassemia is actually quite crude. I think most people will know it's just a double stranded DNA cleavage with all sorts of issues about repair and it's not very precise. And so, CRISPR 2.0 is supposed to be represented by David Liu's contributions and his efforts at Broad like prime and base editing and then comes yours. So maybe you can tell us about it and how it is has to be viewed as quite an important advance.Patrick Hsu (14:39):The first thing I would say before CRISPR, is that we had RNA interference. And so, even before this modern genome editing revolution with programmable CRISPRs, we had this technology that had a lot of the core selling points as well. Any target will now become druggable to us. We simply need to reprogram a guide RNA and we can get genetic access to things that are intracellular. And I think both the discovery of RNA interference by Craig Mello and Andy Fire or the invention or discovery of programmable CRISPR technologies, both depend on the same fundamental biological mechanism. These non-coding guide RNAs that are essentially a short RNA search string that you can easily reprogram to retarget a desired enzyme function, and natively both RNAi and CRISPR are molecular scissors. Their RNA or DNA nucleases that can be reprogrammed to different regions of the genome or the transcriptome to make a cut.(15:48):And as bioengineers, we have come up with all kinds of creative ways to leverage the ability to make site specific cuts to do all kinds of incredible things including genome editing or beyond transcriptional up or down regulation, molecular imaging and so on and so forth. And so, the first thing that we started thinking about in our lab was, why would mother nature have stopped only RNAi and CRISPR? There probably are lots of other non-coding RNAs out there that might be able to be programmable and if they did exist, they probably also do more complicated and interesting things than just guide a molecular scissors. So that was sort of the first core kind of intuition that we had. The second intuition that we had on the technology side, I was just wearing my biology hat, I'll put on my technology hat, is the thing that we call genome editing today hardly involves the genome.(16:50):It's really you're making a cut to change an individual base or an individual gene or locus. So really you're doing small scale single locus editing, so you might call it gene level or locus level cuts. And what you really want to be able to do is do things at the genome scale at 100 kb, a megabase at the chromosome scale. And I think that's where I think the field will inevitably go if you follow the technology curves of longer and longer range gene sequencing, longer and longer range gene synthesis, and then longer and longer range gene editing. And so, what would that look like? And we started thinking, could there be essentially recombination technologies that allow you to do cut and paste in a single step. Now, the reason for that is the way that we do gene editing today involves a cut and then a multi-step process of cellular DNA repair that resolves the cut to make the exertion or the error prone deletion or the modification that ends up happening.(17:59):And so, it's very complicated and whether that's nucleases or base or prime editing, you're all generally limited to the small-scale single locus changes. However, there are natural mechanisms that have solved this cut and paste problem, right? There are these viruses or bacterial versions of viruses known as phage that have generally been trying to exert their multi kilobase genomes into bacterial hosts and specialize throughout billions of years. So our core thought was, well, if there are these new non-coding RNAs, what kind of functions would we be excited about? Can we look in these mobile genetic elements, these so-called jumping genes for new mechanisms? They're incredibly widespread. Transposons are thought to be some of the most diverse enzyme mechanisms found in nature. And so, we started computationally by asking ourselves a very simple question. If a mobile element inserts itself into foreign DNA and it's able to somehow be programmable, presumably the inside or something encoded in the inside of the element is predictive of some sequence on the outside of the element.(19:15):And so, that was the core insight we took, and we thought let's look across the boundaries of many different mobile genetic elements and we zoomed in on a particular sub family of these MGE known as insertion sequence (IS) elements which are the most autonomous minimal transposons. Normally transposons have all kinds of genes that they use to hitchhike around the genomic galaxy and endow the bacterial host with some fitness advantage like some ability to metabolize some copper and some host or some metal. And these IS elements have only the enzymes that they need to jump around. And if you identify the boundaries of these using modern computational methods, this is actually a really non-trivial problem. But if you solve that problem to figure out with nucleotide resolution where the element boundaries end and then you look for the open reading frame of the transposases enzyme inside of this element, you'll find that it's not just that coding sequence.(20:19):There are also these non-coding flanks inside of the element boundaries. And when we looked across the non-coding, the entire IS family tree, there are hundreds of these different types of elements. We found that this particular family IS110, had the longest non-coding ends of all IS elements. And we started doing experiments in the lab to try to figure out how these work. And what we found was that these elements are cut and paste elements, so they excise themselves into a circular form and paste themselves back in into a target site linearly. But the circularization of this element brings together two distal ends together, which brings together a -35 and a -10 box that create and reconstitute a canonical bacterial transcriptional promoter. This essentially is like plugging a plug into an electrical socket in the wall and it jacks up transcription. Now you would think this transcription would turn on the transposase enzyme so it can jump around more but it transcribes a non-coding RNA out of this non-coding end.(21:30):We're like, holy crap, are these RNAs actually involved in regulating the transposon? Now the boring answer would be, oh, it regulates the expression. It's like an antisense regulate or something. The exciting answer would be, oh, it's a new type of guide RNA and you found an RNA guided integrase. So we started zooming in bound dramatically on this and we undertook a covariation analysis where we were able to show that this cryptic non-coding RNA has a totally novel guide RNA structure, totally distinct from RNAi or CRISPR guide RNAs. And it had a target site that covaried with the target site of the element. And so we're like, oh wow, this could be a programmable transposase. The second thing that we found was even more surprising, there was a second region of complementarity in that same RNA that recognized the donor sequence, which is the circularized element itself. And so, this was the first example of a bispecific guide RNA, and also the first example of RNA guided self-recognition by a mobile genetic element.Eric Topol (22:39):It's pretty extraordinary because basically you did a systematic assessment of jumping genes or transposons and you found that they contain things that previously were not at all recognized. And then you have a way to program these to edit, change the genome without having to do any cuts or nicks, right?Patrick Hsu (23:05):Yeah. So what we showed in a test tube is when we took this, so-called bridge RNA, which we named because it bridges the target and donor together along with the recombinase enzyme. So the two component system, those are the only two things that you need. They're able to cut and paste DNA and recombine them in a test tube without any DNA repair, meaning that it's independent of cellular DNA repair and it does strand nicking, exchange, junction resolution and religation all in a single mechanism. So that's when we got super excited about its potential applications as bioengineering tool.Eric Topol (23:46):Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. And have you already gone into in vivo assessment?Patrick Hsu (23:54):Yes, in our initial set of papers, what we showed is that these are programmable and functional or recombinases in a test tube and in bacterial cells. And by reprogramming the target and donor the right way, you can use these enzymes not just for insertion, but also for flipping and cutting out DNA. And so, we actually have in a single mechanism the ability to do bridge editing, if you will, for universal DNA recombination, insertion, excision or inversion, similar to what folks have been doing for decades with Cre recombinase, but with fully programmable recognition sequences. The work that we're doing now in the lab as you can imagine is to adapt these into robust tools for mammalian genome editing, including of course, human genomes. We're excited about this, we're making good progress. The CRISPR has had thousands of labs over the last 10, 15 years working on it to make these therapeutic level potency and selectivity. We're going to work and follow that same blueprint for getting bridge systems to get to that level of performance, but we're on the path and we're very optimistic for the future.Exemplar of Digital BiologyEric Topol (25:13):Yeah, I think it's quite extraordinary and it's a whole different look to what we've been seeing in the CRISPR era for over the past decade and how that's been advancing and getting more specific and less need for repair and being able to be more versatile. But this takes it to yet another dimension. Now, this brings me to the field that when I think of this term digital biology, I think of you and now our mutual acquaintance, Jensen Huang, who everybody knows now. Back some months ago, he wrote and said at a conference, “Where do I think the next amazing revolution is going to come? And this is going to be flat out one of the biggest ones ever. There's no question that digital biology is going to be it. For the first time in human history, biology has the opportunity to be engineering, not science.” So can you critique Jensen? Is he right? And tell us how you conceive the field of digital biology.Patrick Hsu (26:20):If you look at gene therapy today, the core concepts are actually remarkably simple. They're elegant. Of course, you're missing a broken gene, you need to put it back. And that can be curative. Very simple, powerful concept. However, for complex diseases where you don't have just a single gene that goes wrong, in many cases we actually have no idea what to do. And in fact, when you're trying to put in DNA, that's over more than a gene scale. We kind of very quickly run out of ideas. Is it a CAR and a cytokine, a CAR and a cytokine and another thing? And then we're kind of out of ideas. And so, we started thinking in the lab, how can we actually design genomes where it's not just let's reduce the genome into individual Lego blocks, iGem style with promoters and different genes that we just sort of shuffle the Lego blocks around, but actually use AI to design genome sequences.(27:29):So to do that, we thought we would have to first of all, train a model that can learn and decode the foreign language of biology and use that in order to design sequences. And so, we sort of have been training DNA foundation models and virtual cell models at Arc, sort of a major effort of ours where the first thing that we tried was to take a variance of transformer architecture that's used to train ChatGPT from OpenAI, but instead apply this to study the next DNA token, right? Now, the interesting thing about next token prediction in English is that you can actually learn a surprising amount of information by just predicting the next word. You can learn world knowledge is the capital of Azerbaijan, is it Baku or is it London, right? Or if you're walking around in the kitchen, then the next text is, I then left the kitchen or the bathroom, right?(28:33):Now you're learning about spatial reasoning, and so you can also learn translation obviously. And so similarly, I think predicting the next token or the next base and DNA can lead you to learn about molecular biochemistry, is the next amino acid residue, hydrophobic or hydrophilic. And it can teach you about the mechanics of some catalytic binding pocket or something. You can learn about a disease mutation. Is the next base, the sick linked base or the wild type base and so on and so forth. And what we found was that at massive scale, DNA foundation models learn about molecular function, not just at the DNA level, but also at the RNA and the protein. And indeed, we could use these to design molecular systems like CRISPR-Cas systems, where you have a protein and the guide RNA. It could also design new DNA transposons, and we could design sequences that look plausibly like real genomes, where we generate a megabase a million bases of continuous genome sequence. And it really looks and feels like it could be a blurry picture of something that you would actually sequence. This has been a wonderful collaboration with Brian Hie, a PI at Stanford and an Arc investigator, and we're really excited about what we've seen in this work because it promises the better performance with even more scale. And so, simply by scaling up these models, by adding in more compute, more training data or more powerful models, they're going to get sharper and sharper.New A.I. Models in Life ScienceEric Topol (30:25):Yeah. Well, this whole use of large language models for the language of life, whether it's the genome proteins and on and on, actually RNA and even cells has really taken root. And of course, this is really one of the foundations of that field of digital biology, which brings together generative AI, AI tools and trying to push forward our understanding in biology. And also, obviously what's been emphasized in drug discovery, perhaps it's been emphasized even too much because we still have a lot to learn about biology, but that gets me to these models. Like today, AlphaProteo was announced by DeepMind, as we all know, AlphaFold 1, 2, now 3. They were kind of precursors of being able to predict proteins from amino acid 3D structure. And that kind of took the field by a little bit like ChatGPT for life science, but now it's a new model all the time. So you've been working on various models and Arc Institute, how do you see this unfolding? Are we just going to have every aspect of the language of life being approached in all the different interactions? And this is going to help us get to a much more deep level of understanding.Patrick Hsu (31:56):I'll say two things. The first is a lot of models that you just described are what I would call task specific models. A model for de novo design of a binder, a model for protein structure prediction. And there are other models for protein fitness or for RNA structure prediction, et cetera, et cetera. And I think what we're going to move towards are more unifying models where there's different classes of models at different levels of scale. So we will have these atomic level models for looking at generative chemistry or ligand docking. We have models that can unify genomes and their molecules, and then we have models that can unify cells and tissues. And so, for example, if you took an H&E stain of some liver, there are folks building models where you can then predict what the single cell spatial transcriptome will look like of that model. And that's obviously operating at a very different level of abstraction than a de novo protein binder. But in the long run, all of these are going to get, I think unified. I think the reason why this is possible is that biology, unlike physics, actually has this unifying theory of evolution that runs across all of its length scales from atomic, molecular, cellular, organismal to entire ecosystem. And the promise of these models is no short then to make biology a predictive discipline.Patrick Hsu (33:37):In physics, the experimentalists win the big prizes for the theorists when they measure gravitational waves or whatever. But in biology, we're very practical people. You do something three times and do a T-test. And I think my prediction is we can actually gauge the success of these LLMs or whatever in biology by how much we respect theory in this field.The A.I. ScientistEric Topol (34:05):Yeah. Well, that's a really interesting perspective, an important perspective because the proliferation of models, which we're going to get into not just doing the things that you described, but also being able to be “pseudo” scientists, the so-called AI scientist. Maybe you could comment about that concept because that's been the idea that everything from the question that could be asked to the hypothesis and the experiment design and the analysis of data and then the feedback. So what is the role of the scientists, that seems to have been overplayed? And maybe you can put that in context.Patrick Hsu (34:48):So yeah, right now there's a lot of excitement that we can use AI agents not just to do software enterprise workflows, but to be a research assistant. And then over time, itself an autonomous research scientist that can read the literature, come up with an idea, maybe run a bunch of robots in the lab or do a bunch of computational analyses and then potentially even analyze data, conclude what is going on and actually write an entire paper. Now, I think the vision of this is compelling in the long term. I think the question is really about timescale. If you break down the scientific method into its constituent parts, like hypothesis generation, doing an experiment, analyzing experiment and iterating, we're clearly going to use AI of some kind at every single step of this cycle. I think different steps will require different levels of maturity. The way that I would liken this is just wet lab automation, folks have dreamed about having pipetting robots that just do their western blots and do their cell culture for them for generations.(36:01):But of course, today they don't actually really feel fundamentally different from the same ones that we had in the 90s, let's say. Right? And so, obviously they're getting better, but it seems to me one of the trends I'm very bullish about is the explosion of humanoid robots and robot foundation models that have a world model and a sense of physics and proportionate space loaded onto them. Within five years, we're going to have home robots that can fold your clothes, that can organize your kitchen and do all of this while you're sleeping, so you wake up to a clean home every day.Eric Topol (36:40):It's not going to be just Roomba anymore. There's going to be a lot more, but it isn't just the hardware, it's also the agents playing in software, right?Patrick Hsu (36:50):It's the integrated loop of the hardware and the software where the ability to make the same machine generally intelligent will make it adaptable to a broad array of tasks. Now, what I'm excited about is those generally intelligent humanoid robots coming into the lab, where instead of creating a centrifuge or a new type of pipetter that's optimized for your Beckman or Hamilton device, instead you just have robot arms that you snap onto the edge of the bench and then they just work alongside you. And I do think that's coming, although it'll take a lot of hardware and software and computer vision engineering to make that possible.A Sense of HumorEric Topol (37:32):Yeah, and I think also going back to originating the question, there still is quite a debate about the creativity and the lack of any simulation of AGI, whatever that means anymore. And so, the human in the loop part of this is obviously I think it's still of critical nature. Now, the other thing I learned about you is you have a great sense of humor, which is really important by the way. And recently, which is great that you're active on X or Twitter because that's one way we get to see what you're thinking on a day-to-day basis. But I think you put out a poll which was really quite provocative , and it was about, here's what it said, “do more people in the world *truly* understand transformers or health insurance?” And interestingly, you got 49% for transformers at 51% for health insurance. Can you tell us what you're thinking when you put that poll together? Because obviously a lot of people don't understand either of these.Patrick Hsu (38:44):I think the core question is, there are different ways of looking at the world, some of which are very bottom up and some of which are very top down. And one of the very surprising things about transformers is they're taking something that is in principle, an incredibly simple task, which is if you have a string of text, what is the next letter? And somehow at massive, massive scale, you can unlock something that looks an awful lot like reasoning, and you've got these emergent behaviors. Now the bottoms up theory of just the linear algebra that's going on in these models couldn't possibly really help us predict that we have these emerging capabilities. And I think similarly in healthcare, there's a literal set of parts that are operating in some complex way that at massive scale becomes this incredibly confusing and dynamic system for how we can actually incentivize how we make medicines, how we actually take care of people, and how we actually pay for any of this from an economic point of view. And so, I think it was, in some sense if transformers can actually be an explainable by just linear algebra equations, maybe there will be a way to decompose the seemingly incredibly confusing world of healthcare in order to actually build a better way forward.Computing Power and the GPU Arms RaceEric Topol (40:12):Yeah. Well that's great. Now the other thing I wanted to ask you about, we open source and the arms race of GPUs and this whole kind of idea is you touched on the need for coalescing a lot of these tools to exploit the synergy. But we have an issue because many academic labs like here at Scripps Research and so many others, including as I learned even at Stanford, have limited access to GPUs. So computing power of large language models is a problem. And then the models that exist today that can be adopted like Llama or others, and they're somewhat limited. And then we also have a movement towards trying to make things more open source, like for example, recently OpenCRISPR with Profluent Bio that is basically trying to use AI for CRISPR guides. And so, how do you deal with this arms race, computing power, open source, proprietary models that are not easily accessible without a lot of resources?Patrick Hsu (41:30):So the first thing I would say is, we are in the academic science sphere really unprepared for the level of resources that are required for doing this type of cutting edge computational work. There are top Stanford computer science professors or computational researchers who have a single GPU in their office, and that's actually what their whole lab runs off of.(41:58):The UC Berkeley campus, the grid runs on something like 12 megawatts of power and how are they going to build an on-premises GPU clusters, like a central question that can scale across the entire needs? And these are two of the top computer science universities in the world. And so, I think one of our kind of core beliefs at Arc is, as science both experimentally and computationally has gotten incredibly complex, not just in terms of conceptually, but also just the actual infrastructure and machines and know-how that you need to do things. We actually need to essentially support this. So we have a private GPU cloud that we use to train our models, and we have access to significantly large clusters for large burst kind of train outs as necessary. And I think infrastructurally for running genomics experiments or doing scalable brain organoid screens, right, we're also building out the infrastructure to support that experimentally.Eric Topol (43:01):Yeah, no, I think this is one of the advantages of the new model like the Arc Institute because not many centers have that type of plasticity with access to computing power when needed. So that's where a brilliant mind you and the Arc Institute together makes for a formidable recipe for future advances and of course building on the ones you've already accomplished.The Primacy of Human TalentPatrick Hsu (43:35):I would just say, my main skill, if I have one, is to recruit really, really smart people. And so, everything that you're seeing and hearing about is the work of unbelievable colleagues who are curious, passionate, and incredible scientists.Eric Topol (43:53):But it also takes the person who can judge those who are in that category set as a role model. And you're certainly doing that. I guess just in closing, I mean, it's just such a delight to get to meet you here and kind of get your thoughts on what is the hottest thing in life science without question, which brings together the fields of AI and what's going on, not just obviously in genome editing, but this digital biology era that we're still in the early phases of, I mean, I think you could say that it's just going to continue to accelerate the exponential curve. We're still kind of on the bottom of that, I would imagine where we're headed. Any other things that you want to bring up that I haven't touched on that will round out this conversation?Patrick Hsu (44:50):I mean, I think it's very early days here at Arc.Patrick Hsu (44:53):When we founded Arc, we asked ourselves, how do we measure success? We don't have customers or revenue in the way that a typical startup does. And we felt sort of three things. The first was research institutes live and die by their talent. Can we actually hire incredible people when we make offers to people we want to come, do they come? The second was, when those folks do come to Arc, do they feel like they're able to work on important research programs that they couldn't do sort of at their prior university or company? And then longer term, the third thing was, and there's just no shortcut around this, you need to do important work. And I think we've been really excited that there are early signs that we're able to do all three of these things, and we're still, again, just following the same scaling laws that we're seeing in natural language and vision, but for the domain of biology. And so, we're excited about what's ahead and think if there are folks who are interested in learning more about Arc, just shoot me an email or DM.Eric Topol (46:07):Yeah, well I would just say, congratulations on what you've already achieved. I know you're going to keep rocking it because you already have in a short time. And for anybody who doesn't know about Arc Institute and your work and your team, I hope this is going to be putting them on notice actually what can be accomplished outside of the usual NIH funded model, which is kind of a risk-free zone where you basically have to have your results nailed down before you send in your proposal frequently, and it doesn't do great things for young people. Really, I think you actually qualify in that demographic where it's hard for them to break in for getting NIH grants and also for this type of work that you're doing. So we'll look for the next bridge beyond bridge RNAs of your just fantastic efforts. So Patrick, thanks so much for joining us today, and we'll be checking back with you and following all the great work that you'll be doing in the times ahead.Patrick Hsu (47:14):Thanks so much, Eric. It was such a pleasure to be here today. Appreciate the opportunity.*******************Thanks for listening, reading or watching!The Ground Truths newsletters and podcasts are all free, open-access, without ads.Please share this post/podcast with your friends and network if you found it informative!Voluntary paid subscriptions all go to support Scripps Research. Many thanks for that—they greatly help fund our summer internship programs.Thanks to my producer Jessica Nguyen and Sinjun Balabanoff for audio and video support at Scripps Research.Note: you can select preferences to receive emails about newsletters, podcasts, or all I don't want to bother you with an email for content that you're not interested in. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Mr. Al Key has been involved in the green industry for 30 years as an owner of DeepRoot Green Infrastructure, LLC. Together with his partners, he co-invented the SilvaCell® and has received several patents for his inventions which address trees and stormwater management in the urban setting. He has written for a wide range of publications, including the Journal of Arboriculture and Civil Engineering News. As Vice President, he established a representative network nationwide, set up major distributorships, and has been instrumental on projects such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center, and the MIT SOMA Center at Kendall Square, Cambridge MA.  Mr. Key is a former Board Member of TreesNY, a Bronze Level Sponsor of the American Chestnut Foundation, a Forestry Committee member of the Wantastiquet Trout Club, and an Affiliate Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantatrilliontrees/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantatrilliontrees/support

In this episode, we're going deep on Cambridge's nerdiest neighborhood, tracing its history from industrial mecca to biotech playground. Scott Kirsner, longtime Boston Globe tech columnist and co-founder of The Innovation Trail, explains the role of MIT in the area's growth, shoots down some JKF-centric conspiracy mongering, and muses on the future of this riverside boomtown (hint: it might depends on how this whole A.I. thing goes). Send us a Text Message.

Radio Boston digs into how the Boston Dynamics AI Institute hopes to use a $400 million investment to turn Kendall Square into a global hub where robotics and AI meet.

Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner joins Radio Boton to talk about the unrealized promise of Kendall Square as a key NASA hub and what it could've meant for the region.

BayHelix's Guo-Liang Yu and McKinsey's Olivier Leclerc join the BioCentury This Week podcast to discuss cross-border innovation and deal flow in the biopharma sector and preview the upcoming BioCentury-BayHelix East-West Summit. Yu discusses the importance of the event for BayHelix, and Leclerc previews McKinsey's second East-West Summit report, which will focus on the impact of AI on the sector. BioCentury co-founder, President and CEO Dave Flores, Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn, and head of BD Josh Berlin also join the podcast to discuss the importance of globalization for biopharma and patients, the growth of cross-border dealmaking, and panel topics and speakers at the East-West Summit, which takes place Oct. 2-4 in Kendall Square.

It is difficult to imagine a not-so-distant past when deadly diseases were a routine part of life. Even more astonishing is the fact that during that time, prevailing medical beliefs attributed these diseases to harmful miasmas, bodily humors, and divine dyspepsia. However, a groundbreaking revelation occurred with the discovery of the world of microorganisms, which led to the understanding that these tiny organisms might be responsible for transmitting and spreading diseases. These pivotal discoveries and understandings paved the way for numerous measures and techniques to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases. The history of epidemics and humanity's progress in combating these diseases is full of captivating stories. In his new book, "Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion," prolific author Richard Conniff outlines how our comprehension and prevention of some of the most devastating infectious diseases have advanced, consequently doubling the average life expectancy. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps, I speak with Richard Conniff, delving into moments of inspiration and innovation, decades marked by unwavering determination, and periods of profound suffering that have spurred individuals, institutions, and governments to take action in the pursuit of public health. Richard Conniff is a prolific author of several non-fiction books and many articles for magazines such as National Geographic, Simthsonian, and Time. He is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and a former commentator on NPR's “All Things Considered”. He has won the National Magazine Award. He has also written and presented nature programmes for National Geographic television, the Discovery channel and the BBC. Our conversation begins with an exploration of how communities in old days grappled with epidemics, given their limited understanding of the causes behind such widespread outbreaks. We delve into the intricate ways in which communities tried to comprehend and interpret illnesses before the pivotal discoveries of microorganisms and germs. An engaging segment follows, chronicling the efforts of early pioneers who harnessed the power of microscopes to identify microorganisms believed to be responsible for various diseases. One captivating narrative we explore revolves around the remarkable utilization of cowpox to foster immunity against smallpox—an extraordinary breakthrough in the history of medicine. However, we also address the resistance encountered by these novel ideas and concepts. We then delve into the emergence of the concept of immunity, the discovery of microorganisms, and the subsequent development of vaccines and antibiotics. Additionally, we discuss the profound realization that improved sanitary conditions are indispensable for safeguarding public health. Naturally, our conversation turns towards the recent Covid-19 epidemic, examining humanity's response to this global crisis. Richard offers a significant insight that despite our enhanced capabilities in dealing with epidemics, these formidable diseases persist and may pose future threats if we fail to remain vigilant to the dangers they present. Complement this discussion with “Cloud Empires: Governing State-like Digital Platforms and Regaining Control with Professor Vili Lehdonvirta” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2023/01/cloud-empires-governing-state-like-digital-platforms-and-regaining-control-with-professor-vili-lehdonvirta/ And then listen to ““Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub” with Robert Buderi” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2023/05/kendall-square-and-the-making-of-a-global-innovation-hub-with-robert-buderi/

During the last several decades Boston has become a biotech Mecca, with its Kendall Square attracting more than 120 biotech companies, both large and small. It is called the most innovative square mile on the planet.  This June BIO will bring over 15,000 biotech leaders to Boston for its 2023 BIO International Convention. Speakers including award-winning journalist and health advocate, Katie Couric, will talk about how they will “Stand up for Science”—the Convention's theme. MassBIO CEO, Kendalle Burlin O'Connell joins host, Rachel King in a wide-ranging discussion about how Boston became the largest biotech hub in the world.

Kendall Square, situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has earned the reputation of being "the most innovative square mile on the planet." It serves as a vibrant epicentre for life sciences, housing renowned companies such as Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and many others. Additionally, it stands as a prominent hub for technology, with giants like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple occupying substantial portions of valuable office space within its bounds. The square is also home to a thriving community of startups, with convenient proximity to leading venture capital firms. Moreover, its proximity to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) further enhances its status as a centre for cutting-edge ideas. In his book "Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub," Robert Buderi shares interesting accounts of visionary innovators and their groundbreaking creations, spanning a remarkable two centuries. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps, I speak with Robert Buderi, exploring the distinctive ecosystem that defines Kendall Square. We discuss various cycles of transformation and reinvention that have propelled its evolution over time. Robert Buderi is an author, journalist, and entrepreneur. He is the author of “Engines of Tomorrow, The Invention That Changed the World”, and other books. He is former Editor-in-Chief of “Technology Review”, and founder of the media company Xconomy. We begin our conversation by talking about Kendall Square's geography, which means where it's located, and its history as a place known for business and innovation. We then take a closer look at the first innovators who chose Kendall Square to start their businesses and create new products and services. We also talk about the advantages of having important academic and research institutions close by and explore the relationship between industry and academia. After that, we shift our focus to the present and talk about what Kendall Square is like today. We explore the different industries, products, and services that are based there. Overall, this is an interesting and informative discussion. Complement this discussion with ““The Technology Trap” and the Future of Work” with Dr Carl Frey” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2019/10/the-technology-trap-and-the-future-of-work-with-dr-carl-frey/ And then listen to “Asking Better Questions for Creative Problem Solving, Innovation and Effective Leadership with Hal Gregersen” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2022/02/asking-better-questions-for-creative-problem-solving-innovation-and-effective-leadership-with-hal-gregersen/

In this episode of Molecule to Market, you'll go inside the outsourcing space of the global drug development sector with Will Patrick, CEO at Culture Biosciences. Your host, Raman Sehgal, discusses the pharmaceutical and biotechnology supply chain with Will, covering: How time at Google, MIT and Kendall Square led him to build disruptive tools and hardware for the bioprocessing sector Creating a cloud-based, real-time data alternative for companies wanting access to bioreactors... without the need for large-scale investment Why biotech and biopharma firms are embracing digitization, virtualization, and simulation... but less so at CDMOs Raising funds from VCs that understand the need for technological disruption How biotechs, biopharma companies, and CDMOs alike can leverage Culture's proprietary, integrated, and cloud-based single-use reactor platform How enhanced data-driven modeling and simulation can save a lot of time and costs in upstream bioprocess development going forward Will is an entrepreneurial engineer with a background in mechanical engineering, product design, and bioengineering. He develops hardware products at the interface of biology and digital fabrication. He holds 17 patents and has published 4 peer-reviewed journal articles. He currently runs Culture Biosciences, a company building and operating automated bioreactor infrastructure for the biotech industry. Will graduated from the MIT Media Lab in 2015 where he was a researcher in the Mediated Matter group. His research focuses on 3D printing fluidic systems and their applications in biotechnology and product design. Previously, he worked at Google[x] as a Rapid Evaluator where he developed and prototyped new projects for the organization. Will was a founding member of the Google[x] UAV delivery project, Project Wing, was an early team member of Project Loon, and also led the launch communications for Project Glass. Please subscribe, tell your industry colleagues, and join us in celebrating and promoting the value and importance of the global life science outsourcing space. We'd also appreciate a positive rating! Molecule to Market is sponsored and funded by ramarketing, an international marketing, design, digital and content agency helping companies differentiate, get noticed and grow in life sciences.

In episode 22 of ReBootHealth, I speak with Zain Kassam. Zain was a co-founder and former CMO of Finch Therapeutics, a publicly listed, therapeutic microbiome company in Boston. I've known Zain for a little over a year now and he's probably the closest I'll ever get to a ‘Kendall Square cluster founder'. I wanted to explore Zain's thoughts from his unique lens of building ventures and how to do it better in Canada. I certainly could have spent a lot more time with Zain but we did manage to tackle a number of topics including the need to solve a problem, building teams to move life sciences forward, the importance of storytelling when raising capital, cultural challenges to innovation in Canada and where we might want to focus our efforts and ways to move forward. This is a great pod with clear articulate thinking and lots of food for thought for innovators, policymakers, and most of all builders of life science ventures. A great way to start out the show for 2023. As always, I hope you find the episode valuable. Please write a review on Apple Podcast. For other episodes or to learn more you can visit us at ReBootHealth or follow us on Twitter: @Reboothealth1 Episode recorded on March 10, 2023. 08:20—Moving from academics to venture building. 14:12—Building the right venture team. 22:50—Choosing the right ‘science'. 26:00—Storytelling for capital raises. 34:40—Overcoming operator and cultural challenges. 46:07—Re-re-visiting IP and commercialization. 56:01—Start at the beginning for cultural change. 1:04:00—Where should Canada focus in life sciences?

Today on Boston Public Radio: We opened the show by hearing from listeners about a Mass. exodus, based on a Boston Globe report that more than 100,000 residents have left the state since the start of the pandemic. Medical ethicist Art Caplan discusses the “pure blood” movement, grown out of anti-vaccine groups who say receiving blood transfusions from people who have had the COVID vaccine contaminates their body. He's the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson joined for a transit panel to discuss slowdowns and service disruptions on the MBTA. Jim Aloisi is former transportation secretary, a member of the Transit Matters Board, and contributor to Commonwealth Magazine. Stacy Thompson is executive director of the Livable Streets. Nadia Alawa and Onur Altindag joined to discuss relief efforts for people affected by the earthquakes along the Syria/Turkey border. Nadia Alawa is the founder of NuDay Syria, which focuses on Syrian women and children. Onur Altindag is a Turkish-American economics professor who's raising money through the Turkish Philanthropic Funds and has conducted research in Gaziantep. Jenna Schlags, director of finance and operations for Kendall Square's new makerspace The Foundry, joined with Georgia Lyman, executive director of Liars and Believers, a theatre company performing at the Foundry this week. We ended the show by hearing from listeners about the T's dysfunction.

Today on Boston Public Radio: We began the show by asking our listener's if they've continued to follow the news from Ukraine as Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy prepared to meet U.S. President Joe Biden. Arthur Caplan came on to discuss a study which found that residents living in conservative parts of the country were more likely to experience higher levels of illness and death related to COVID-19. He also discussed how conservative policies on immigration is affecting staffing levels at nursing homes. Arthur Caplan is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. Juliete Kayyem discussed how the Supreme Court has temporarily upheld a Trump-era policy known as Title 42. The immigration policy allows the federal governemnt to deport undocumented immigrants based on public health grounds. Kayyem is former assistant secretary for homeland security under President Barack Obama, and the faculty chair of the Homeland Security program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Chris Muther came on to rank airlines based on the customer experience. He also explained why he believes Arizona is the premier Christmas destination. Muther is a travel writer for the Boston Globe. Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson discussed Gov.-elect Maura Healey's approach to replacing the general manager of the MBTA, and how food delivery drivers are clogging Boston streets. Aloisi is a former transportation secretary, a member of the Transit Matters Board and contributor to Commonwealth Magazine. Thompson is executive director of Livable Streets Alliance. Rachel Miller Munzer and Rachel Sundet joined to talk about Jewish cuisine on the fourth night of Hanukkah. Munzer is an owner and the CRO of Mamaleh's, a local delicatessen with three locations in the Boston area: in Cambridge's Kendall Square, Brookline's Washington Square and downtown Boston. Sundet is an owner and the pastry chef at Mameleh's. We ended the show by taking our listener's calls to hear about what holiday traditions they are embracing ahead of this weekend.

In September, Rodrigo Romero and Tanya Gonzalez of New York were visiting friends in the Kendall Square area when their dog, Luna, ran out the door. WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe reports:

Listen to ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology essay “Mudras in Medicine: A Role for Dance in Appreciating Non-Verbal Communication in the Clinical Encounter,” by Drs. Maheetha Bharadwaj, Nagda Dipal, et al. Essay authors Dr. Bharadwaj, a urology resident at the University of Washington, and co-author Dr. Dipal, a medical student at Harvard Medical School, are interviewed by host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Drs. Bharadwai and Dipal provide insight on how they use non-verbal communication in the form of Bharatanatyam, an Indian narrative art form, as a way to reflect oncology patient care. TRANSCRIPT   “Mudras in Medicine: A role for dance in appreciating non-verbal communication in the clinical encounter,” by Maheetha Bharadwaj, MD, MS, Mphil; Dipal Nagda, MPH1; and Lipika Goyal, MD, MPhil  (10.1200/JCO.22.00657) Narrator: We present a classical Indian dance piece that depicts a patient and their partner receiving a cancer diagnosis from their oncologist. The primary purpose of this piece was to provide a vehicle for patients, physicians, and caregivers to process a life-altering cancer diagnosis. The piece was choreographed and performed by two of the authors (M.B. and D..), who are medical students and classically trained Bharatanatyam dancers, and the project was guided under the mentorship of the senior author (L.G.) who is a medical oncologist. Through the process of designing this project during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors also reflect on the role of visual arts in providing a space for contemplation and in promoting nonverbal communication in the era of virtual medicine.   Mudras, or hand gestures, embody one of ancient India's most visual forms of storytelling and are the threadwork of the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam. Historically performed as a temple dance, Bharatanatyam serves as a vehicle for communicating and preserving narratives from Hinduism's greatest epics.1-3 Every mudra is intricately crafted and distinctly designed, with each bend of a finger and curve of the wrist representing an object, an emotion, or a state of being. Mudras are interlaced with rhythmic footwork and facial expressions in Bharatanatyam, producing a language that connects the performer to themselves, to the audience, and to the story being told. The style of Bharatanatyam specifically has been previously adapted for therapeutic relief and healing among survivors of natural disasters and victims of trauma. Although some artists have explored the use of Bharatanatyam to convey medical narratives, none to our knowledge have directly covered the nuances of clinical relationships in the context of a cancer diagnosis.   A few weeks after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found ourselves in an exchange of mudras over coffee on the patio. As both medical students and trained Bharatanatyam dancers, we were lamenting the difficulties of communicating to patients with masks. “He couldn't hearme,” one of us expressed. After some pause, the other extended her right hand in Katakamukham toward her chest, whereas her left hand also in katakamukham drifted toward her ear, together signifying a stethoscope. “Is this how you asked your patient if you could listen to their heart?” she asked. We both smiled. With her hands in place, she leaned her torso to the left and extended both hands in chaturam. She painted a rectangular frame in mid-air, signifying a chest x-ray. In silent melody, we played call and response, gliding our hands across the table and delicately placing our fingers into mudras.   As case counts ticked upward, distressing news filled our personal and professional lives and we both found ourselves turning to mudras to express our states of emotion and responses to the pandemic. It dawned on us that dance may play a critical role in reflecting on and processing difficult medical situations, especially in the isolating environment of the pandemic. We thus embarked on a project to explore the relationship between a patient and an oncologist through Bharatanatyam. Over the course of our clinical years in medical school, we collaborated with patients, clinicians, caregivers, and artists to choreograph this Bharatanatyam narrative medicine project. Mudras were combined with facial expressions, eye movements, and footwork to craft a narrative between a patient, a doctor, and a caregiver in the setting of a cancer diagnosis. In what follows, we describe our choreographic process, the resulting narrative, and key takeaways from this artistic exploration. We propose a role for Bharatanatyam and other visual arts in enabling both the performer and the viewer to process narratives of cancer, suffering, healing, and hope. We further use this piece as a call to reclaim the importance of nonverbal communication in the therapeutic relationship.   Developing and Choreographing the Narrative We first reached out to several physicians to help develop a medically accurate narrative. Our clinician collaborators included an oncologist who specializes in cholangiocarcinoma, a hematology-oncology fellow, two head and neck surgeons, and a palliative care physician. Our patient and caregiver collaborators included three patients undergoing treatment for metastatic cancer and two parents. Through multiple conversations with these partners, we developed our narrative. For musical and artistic input, we partnered with Indian Raga, an organization dedicated to the celebration of South Asian art and music. Indian Raga developed a musical score for the piece, provided a dance collaborator, and offered creative feedback on our choreography.   Our choreographic process was iterative, as we moved from the dance studio to conversations and back again to the dance studio. We incorporated the feedback from our collaborators into our storyboard and our final choreography. We recorded the performance on March 1 31, 2021, at the Cambridge Community Center for the Arts, in Kendall Square.   The Dance Narrative A video of the performance can be accessed at https://youtu.be/Nru_nWiiDXk.   Our narrative details the journey of receiving and processing a cancer diagnosis and features three members of the therapeutic triangle: the patient, the caregiver, and the physician.   Part 1: The diagnosis (0:00-2:05). The first part opens with a couple that, amid a jubilant celebration, receives an urgent phone call to present to their doctor's office. At their appointment, the physician performs a history and physical examination and subsequently prepares to disclose the patient's diagnosis of a worrisome mass visualized on a chest x-ray. We drew from mudras in the existing Bharatanatyam repertoire to depict clinical objects. For instance, a stethoscope was depicted using katakamukham as the earpiece and the bell, whereas an x-ray was depicted by drawing a square in the air using chaturam.   Part 2: The malignancy (2:05-3:20). The second section represents an interpretation of the physiologic growth and uncontrolled spread of malignancy. Our change into redcolored garb signifies a switch in character from representing three individuals to three cells. At the beginning of this section, the three cells are depicted as physiologically normal, dancing in unison with each other. Their uniform vitality is demonstrated with the suchi and alapadma mudras. One cell undergoes a somatic mutation and becomes malignant, gaining ruthless vigor in her dance form. We demonstrate rapid replication of the malignant cell with the mudra kartarimukham. As the malignant cells continue to replicate, they pull resources and grow in their harsh dynamism, portraying the unchecked growth potential of cancer cells.   Although the choreographic intention of this section was to represent a growing malignancy, many of our reviewers provided varying interpretations, including a depiction of the patient's inner anxieties, the therapeutic fight against the cancer, and the turmoil of treatment resistance.   Part 3: The emotion (3:20-5:05). The third and final section returns to the patient, doctor, and caregiver. Here, we explore the nuanced emotional journeys of the three characters as they come to terms with the gravity of a cancer diagnosis. Each has their own moments of grief, fear, recognition, and solidarity. The caregiver expresses concerns of the patient passing, and the doctor struggles with her ability to offer hope. The patient is overwhelmed with denial, anger, and grief. The piece ends in a message of unity, as the patient, doctor, and caregiver embrace their role in this shared journey.   Reflections What began as an exchange of mudras over coffee blossomed into a reflective process to understand the role of Bharatanatyam within the therapeutic triangle of the patient, doctor, and caregiver. Witnessing how reviewers who were unfamiliar with Bharatanatyam responded to our narrative dance piece shed light on common themes that emerged from engaging with this piece. Here, we describe two key takeaways that surfaced through our own reflections and discussions with members of the medical community. First, we were reminded of the role that visual art holds in promoting self-reflection and empathy for all members of the therapeutic relationship. Second, facial expressions and body language from the dance narrative resonated with the experience of oncologists and patients in the clinic. The repeating motif of body language served as a critical reminder of the role of nonverbal communication in the therapeutic relationship. In the era of virtual training and medicine, we use performative arts as a reminder to deliberately preserve nonverbal communication when interacting with patients.   Visual arts as a space to process, reflect, and empathize. Our dance narrative received a range of interpretations, only some of which matched our original intention. These similarities and differences in choreographic intention and audience interpretation demonstrated the power of visual arts in both representing universal emotions and reflecting one's personal experiences. For us as choreographers, the dance studio became a space of contemplation and healing. We dissected the impact of illness on the human body, adjusting our limbs and contorting our faces to embody raw human emotions of pain, anguish, and resilience. As viewers, patients and physicians also expressed moments of reflection while processing our piece. For example, many physicians discussed how the piece reminded them of the personal toll that repeated delivery of bad news can take on them as a clinician. Although one clinician thought that this difficulty in delivering bad news was best represented by the emotional end of the piece, another felt that this internal turmoil was better portrayed through the middle section that consisted of more intense footwork. Engaging with our dance piece encouraged viewers to recognize certain universal clinical themes while also providing room to reflect on nuanced personal experiences.   As a broader entity, visual arts have often been underrepresented within the field of medical humanities. Searching the literature for examples of visual arts curricula across medical schools across the United States yielded a plethora of prose and painting-based visual arts curricula yet very scarce incorporation of movement-based art.7-10 We propose that dance plays an important role within medical humanities curricula in understanding illness, emotions, and empathy. Movement-based arts promote a sensory experience of illness and an expression of physical and emotional states that cannot be conveyed through words alone.11 With more medical training programs embracing humanities in clinical training, we attest that the visual arts, particularly movement-based art, should also be considered.   Recognizing the value of nonverbal communication. As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, virtual medicine replaced in-person encounters and masks grew to be a necessary component of the hospital environment. Like many, we encountered muffled words and frozen facial expressions on Zoom. Faced with the dramatic change in verbal communication as medical trainees, our choreography unfolded into an exploration of the ways in which physical space, facial expression, and hand gestures enhance the clinical relationship.   Early in our choreography, we shared a rehearsal video with our collaborators. Although all immediately recognized the role of the patient and the doctor, several felt that something critical was missing. One patient felt that the physical distance between the doctor and the patient was too great, and one physician pointed out the lack of compassionate physical contact by the oncologist. Inspired by these conversations, we re-entered the dance studio and experimented with the physical space our bodies occupied. We explored nonverbal ways to convey care and concern. In our choreographic revision, we had the doctor place a hand on the patient's shoulder when she was coughing, and we incorporated a stool to allow the provider to be eye level with the patient and increase the portrayal of open communication. Intentionally incorporating the empathetic touch into our choreography increased the perception of care between the doctor and the patient.   In a time where we are forced to embrace virtual care and communication, our choreographic process reminded us of the critical role of nonverbal communication in the therapeutic relationship. We found that physical space, facial expressions, and eye contact are just as integral to the clinical encounter as they are to Bharatanatyam. What we have lost through the screen is the unspoken care held in the extra moment of eye contact, the supportive forward lean of the torso, and the comfort of a hand on the shoulder. These wordless extensions of care are a cornerstone of patient satisfaction and the therapeutic alliance. With masks and virtual visits becoming potentially permanent fixtures in medicine, we highlight the importance of trainees and clinicians being deliberate in using nonverbal communicative techniques in caring for patients.   In our exploration of Bharatanatyam within Western medicine, we found that, ultimately, the qualities most coveted in a dancer and a physician are one and the same: a broad understanding of the human body, a deep sense of empathy and humility, and a profound commitment to using body language to support the journeys of themselves and those around them.   Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello, and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, brought to you by ASCO podcasts, which cover a range of educational and scientific content, and offer enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all ASCO shows, including this one at: podcasts.asco.org. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Associate Editor for Art of Oncology and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today, we are joined by Dr. Dipal Nagda, medical student at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj, urology resident at the University of Washington. In this episode, we will be discussing their Art of Oncology article ‘Mudras in Medicine: A Role for Dance in Appreciating Non-verbal Communication in the Clinical Encounter.' At the time of this recording, our guests have no disclosures. Dipal, Maheetha, welcome to our podcast, and thank you for joining us. Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Thank you for having me, Dr. Schapira. Dr. Dipal Nagda: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Dr. Lidia Schapira: So, tell us a little bit about the origin for your narrative. You've told us about your collaboration in dance, and your appreciation for what movement and dance can bring to self-expression and to the clinical encounter. But let's start by hearing what brought the two of you also to collaborate on a narrative, a written piece. Dr. Dipal Nagda: I'm happy to get started on this one. So, Maheetha and I met our first year of medical school and we hit it off right away for a variety of reasons, one of which was that we both shared a training in Bharatnatyam. And so, we had actually performed early in our first year of medical school, a piece for a local performance at Harvard, and then, around the start of the COVID pandemic, which was about two years into our second year of medical school, right in the middle of our clinical rotations, we both found ourselves pulled from the clinical environment, with a lot of time on our hands. And as dancers do, we both turned to dance in our own ways, and collaboratively, to try to find a way in which to channel some of the feelings and emotions that we were having into a creative performative piece. Maheetha, I don't know if you have anything else to add to that. Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Yeah. No, I think that sums it up pretty well. Just one thing to add is that both of us remember kind of talking to each other about how, when we came back from COVID, right around June of 2020, our clinical experience had changed dramatically, in that, masks were now mandatory. And I distinctly remember thinking about how it was hard for me to hear this one patient who was this 90-year-old woman, and she was a little bit hard of hearing. I just remember feeling that that encounter was just so much more difficult, and Dipal and I have been talking about encounters like these ever since we came back after the first surge of the COVID pandemic. And I think just all of that also kind of led to this idea for this project. Dr. Lidia Schapira: And so, the project starts with the two of you who are dancers and very aware of the power of movement, again, just for yourselves, right? And you're now thinking about exploring that as a narrative, or as a story, and you chose cancer as your example. What path led you to cancer? Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: I think cancer is a disease that can affect everyone. And I think, I, personally, have had family members affected by cancer. My mom is a palliative care physician. So, talking about cancer and cancer-related illnesses is not new for me and my family. And on top of that, I think the emotional impact of having such a life-altering illness is something that I think was deeply affected by COVID. We saw that patients weren't coming into the hospital, from a surgical perspective, patients weren't getting the treatment that they needed, and those treatments were being put off. And I think that adds a wealth of anxiety to an already very stressful situation. So, I think for both of us, I know that Dipal is really interested in Oncology at the moment, and me, as a Urologist interested in Urol Onc as well, I think that topic really hit home for both of us. And I think it was a great way to kind of also explore the different types of emotions that someone might feel with a life-altering illness. Dr. Lidia Schapira: So, did you co-create the scenario, the narrative? Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Yes, we did. Dr. Dipal Nagda: Yeah. So, I would agree with everything that Maheetha said. And in addition, I think when we were originally thinking about this, we were thinking about dance in the setting of a patient-doctor relationship. And so, when trying to map out the numerous patient-doctor relationships that exist within the field of Medicine, I think both of us felt that within Oncology, specifically, there is that longitudinal component, and there is that, as Maheetha mentioned, that deeply emotional piece, not only for the patient, but for the physician as well, and caregivers. And while that definitely exists in other fields, I think within Oncology was one that we felt would really come alive in a dance narrative, to both explore that collective journey of the patient, doctor, and caregiver and the individual journey of each of those three individuals. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Well, I can speak for the readers of Art of Oncology and say that we don't disagree with you, we totally agree that there are very strong bonds and that there's an emotional resonance to being a professional caregiver, and of course, of the patient and family members and family caregivers. So, kudos to you for recognizing that. How does movement affect communication? And how did the experience of that additional layer of isolation, and perhaps masking, and distancing during COVID affect your entry into this world of Medicine and Cancer Medicine? Dr. Dipal Nagda: That's a great question. First, I think for my specific clinical rotations, I was in an ambulatory predominant clinical rotation site. And so, a lot of the interactions that I was having in my early clinical years were via virtual patient interviews. And I think that is a place where movement really came out, and I found turning to hand gestures. And I also found that there was a certain distance via zoom that the clinician and the patient were trying to overcome, that isn't totally, from what we found through this piece, able to be overcome through zoom. And I think that was really perspective-changing, in terms of realizing the value of movement, and the value of proximity and the distance, and the ways in which eye level, and body gestures, and physical contact really impact that relationship. Dr. Lidia Schapira: I read in your narrative and in watching your video, sort of the lament for not having the ability to move and touch. And I'm very happy that you're able to express that, and I hope that now that things are more normal, that you have gone back to feeling that you are freer to connect with patients, and with your colleagues, even, through facial expressions and touch. And so, tell me a little bit about how you view movement as a potential tool in your therapeutic connections with patients going forward at this early stage of your careers. Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: I think that's a fantastic question, and a question that's really important because, in Medical Education, we often talk about the Art of Medicine, which I think, cannot be emphasized more in this time of wearing masks in hospitals. And just as Dipal had said, I also found myself with patients compensating for wearing masks. Patients often ask, "Are you smiling under that mask? Are you frowning under that mask? I can't tell." And the ways in which we compensate, which is, coming down to the level of the patient. So, sitting down in a chair, or sitting down at the edge of the bed with the patient's permission. You know, in pre-op sometimes, I actually remember distinctly doing this the other day, I was on the colorectal service, and oftentimes, colorectal cancer is diagnosed in one day, in one week, and then you have the surgery two weeks later. And patients are just kind of taken for this whirlwind of emotions while they're contemplating chemotherapy versus surgery, and before and after surgery. And so, almost everything happens so quickly, and in pre-op, during the pre-op time, before they go into the procedure, it's amazing how much as medical students having been working in these environments with masks, we have adapted to be able to recognize when someone is anxious, nervous, crying, not crying, sad, happy. And I distinctly remember this one patient who was very clearly nervous, and I just took a little bit of time before signing her in, checking her consent forms, I just said, "Hey, how are you? Are you okay?" And the gesture was, going to her bedside, just laying an arm next to her hand, in between her hand and her blanket, and saying, "Are you okay?" And immediately, this patient burst into tears. And she said, "I'm not. I was just diagnosed last week, and next thing you know is, surgery is this week." And it's just because the masks are there, it kind of makes me be more aware of what the patient is feeling because I can't immediately tell. So now I'm thinking about it a lot more and I'm trying to understand it a lot more. I'm paying more attention to it. The ways that we compensate is, trying to bring our physical bodies a little bit closer to the patient in order to compensate for the distance brought into that rapport by the masks. And I think that's like really, really crucial. Dr. Lidia Schapira: It warms my heart to hear you talk like that because instead of viewing this as an impediment, you work extra hard to try to understand the emotion that your patient is feeling, to connect with her or him in that circumstance, and to show some humanity. And it's amazing how much comfort that can bring to a person who is feeling extremely vulnerable and anxious. Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Yeah. And I just want to add that, I had been taking care of this patient after her surgery for the entire week. I was rounding on the weekend as well, and we discharged her on a weekend. And as I was giving her discharge papers, she burst into tears again. And she said, "It was lovely seeing your face every day. I look forward to seeing your face every morning. It's nice to have that continuity of care." And I did feel that that pre-op interaction made a difference. It 100% made a difference in how she viewed us, our care, and the hospital system itself. Dr. Lidia Schapira: So, bottle that feeling, and on a bad day, bring it out, and it'll carry you through some of those more difficult moments in medicine. So, tell our listeners a little bit how the two of you took your dance to a written narrative. Dr. Dipal Nagda: Absolutely. So, actually originally, when we came up with this idea of a dance, we did not think about sort of the next steps from that original dance narrative. And when we started to show our piece and our choreography to different physicians, but more importantly, I think the patients and the caregivers who watched our piece, who had so, so much, not only input and feedback for us, but their own reflections, and their own takeaways. And what was incredible, was their own interpretations. That really took us for a surprise is, people find different pieces of the visual arc of our dance piece to relate to, to comment on, to help us improve. And I think Maheetha and I both realized that the benefit of visual arts, specifically, this dance piece, wasn't just from doing the dance itself, but from interacting with the wider community of people who are either watching our piece, or providing feedback. And that sort of bridged, for both of us, this idea of, "Let's try to put all of these things that we're feeling into words, into concrete ways in which we can use visual arts broadly in medical education." Dr. Lidia Schapira: And what was your relationship to the third and senior author in your paper, Dr. Goyal? Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Dr. Goyal has been incredibly supportive throughout this entire process. I think early on that Dipal and I were looking for mentors who are familiar with Indian classical dance, familiar with Indian culture, but also had a strong passion for Narrative Medicine, for understanding and improving upon empathetic care for patients. We searched and emailed many, many mentors, all whom gave us valuable feedback, and we've acknowledged in our acknowledgement section, but Dr. Goyal for us, really took our vision under her wing and said, "You know, I think what would be great is, if you could show the beginnings of your narrative, whatever rough choreography you have, to patients." And she helped us connect with some of her own patients, and to be able to give feedback on the narrative, and improve the narrative to be perhaps more all-encapsulating, more relatable to a wider group of individuals, to tweak the narrative itself a little bit. I think she's been incredibly instrumental in helping with that, but also shaping our narrative as well, and kind of pinpointing, "What exactly do we want to convey? And what do we want to tell people? What do we want to tell the world?" Dr. Lidia Schapira: So, what is the take-home message from your narrative? Dr. Dipal Nagda: I think for me, beyond the scope of what we've written, this project for me, really served as a reminder of the things that matter to me outside of the clinic, and how all of those passions that we have for, Maheetha and I specifically, dance, really not only provide us a reflective outlet outside of the clinical environment, but I would argue it enhanced our performance as doctors, our relationships with our patients, and I think truly contribute to the clinical environment as well. So, I think that's a personal takeaway for me, and a really important reminder as I think about applying to residency in the next step of my life, but then I think broadly, as we are starting to recover from the COVID 19 pandemic, and we're thinking about how to deliver care in both measurable and non-measurable ways, I think there's parts of the clinical environment that matter so deeply that we don't always think about. And for us, it was really non-verbal communication, and body language, and how to keep that authenticity alive. And if we know, you know, as Medicine turns more and more to virtual care, how do we train the next generation of medical providers to really keep some of those aspects of body language, and eye contact, and non-verbal communication really alive in virtual delivery of care. And so, for me, that was sort of the broader call to action. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Any plans to do more pieces? Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj: Absolutely. I think this is just the beginning, and Dipal and I have already talked about different topics that we could do, particularly because, Bharatanatyam, which is the style of Indian classical dance that we have used to choreograph this narrative, has always been heavily tied to religion. And now in the modern days, we're seeing the secularization of this art form, or in other words, the use of this art form and other Indian classical art forms to depict and portray more secular pieces. Pieces that convey aspects of human lives that aren't necessarily connected to religion. And I think that's incredibly important, and you know, Narrative Medicine is a field of its own that I think is very important in order to, as people said, kind of craft the Art of Medicine within you, and within each clinician. And so, we've definitely talked about, for example, having stories about COVID, potentially having stories about erectile dysfunction - topics that aren't necessarily talked about on a day-to-day basis, but are relatable to each of our fields in different ways. And I think the goal of that is to be able to reach people, to be able to talk about topics that are important to people, but people don't have awareness of. To increase awareness, education, and I think there's many avenues we can take. This is just the beginning. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Well, it's been a pleasure to work with both of you. I'm very impressed by what you have already accomplished. I love hearing your humanistic visions for what good Medicine is, and your contributions to the Art of Medicine. So, thank you so much. Until next time, thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review, wherever you listen. Be sure to subscribe, so you'll never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all of the shows at: podcasts.asco.org.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes: Like, share, and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.  Bios Dr. Dipal Nagda is a medical student at Harvard Medical School Dr Maheetha Bharadwaj is a urology resident at the University of Washington. In this episode we will be discussing their Art of Oncology article Video Performance: https://youtu.be/Nru_nWiiDXk

Kendall Square is considered by many to be the world's most innovative square kilometer. Places like MIT, NASA, Google and Biogen among many others have called the square home.

Plus, Kendall Square is considered to be the world's most innovative square kilometer. The history of the square and the companies that call it home are subject of a new book called "Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the making of a global innovation hub."

Guest Zach Servideo is an entrepreneur and the founder of Value Creation Labs® (VCL), a brand studio-growth accelerator. The 15-year consulting veteran has spent time in Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Known for his boundless energy and storytelling prowess, Servideo is a sought out chief brand officer of sorts for companies looking to elevate their public presence and stoke growth. In 2021, he created VCL as a means to one day realize his vision to own and operate a venture studio. He's currently building toward that goal helping provide flexible consulting services to a range of companies. He also has an investor network betting on those same companies. Servideo nurtures a dynamic VCL talent consortium ranging from artists and writers to patent attorneys and bankers. He's currently working with a group of Boston-based tech journalists on a series of custom analyst reports for Silicon Valley Bank, New England Venture Capital Association, Glasswing Ventures and Accomplice. With Servideo serving as publisher, the reports shed light on innovations from Boston that are hiding in plain sight and yet driving global economic growth. VCL recently released its latest report on cybersecurity. Of course, he's also the founder and host of Boston Speaks Up (BSU), an innovation podcast visiting with inspiring people from all walks of life that is sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank. Founded in 2018, BSU helped catapult Servideo back into the Boston innovation community he spent much of the 2000s and early 2010s in, before a five year stint in Los Angeles. He began his career at Schwartz Communications in the mid 2000s before transitioning to a role at fama PR in 2009 which found him embedded in the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) community at One Broadway, Kendall Square. It was at fama/CIC where Servideo began honing the craft of developing brands and taking startups to market – Opower (acquired by Oracle in 2016), Suniva, TweetMyJobs, CloudLock, to name a few. By 2012, he took the entrepreneurial plunge, created his first LLC and developed a business plan to bring his abilities to Los Angeles at a time when ‘Silicon Beach' was just taking off. He spent 5 years between LA and San Francisco bringing companies to market and helping them reach successful exits – Klutch to eBay (2015), Epoxy to Vemba (2016), Watchwith to Comcast (2017), Beachfront Media to PSP Capital (2017), Whosay to Viacom (2018), Downstream to Jungle Scout/Summit Partners (2021) along with several more. For those listeners less familiar with Servideo's work behind the scenes, he's an active business development specialist working on an array of initiatives to support first time founders. For example, he serves as entrepreneur-in-residence at Endicott College's Angle Center for Entrepreneurship where he's a major catalyst behind the school's startup incubator and annual Spark Tank startup competition. He somehow manages to play soccer a couple times a week, coach his daughter's youth soccer team and train/compete in triathlons (with one 70.3 Ironman under his belt).

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a major tech center, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all occupying big chunks of pricey office space. Kendall Square also boasts a dense concentration of startups, with leading venture capital firms conveniently located nearby. And of course, MIT is just down the block. In Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Buderi offers the first detailed account of the unique ecosystem that is Kendall Square, chronicling the endless cycles of change and reinvention that have driven its evolution. Buderi, who himself has worked in Kendall Square for the past twenty years, tells fascinating stories of great innovators and their innovations that stretch back two centuries. Before biotech and artificial intelligence, there was railroad car innovation, the first long-distance telephone call, the Polaroid camera, MIT's once secret, now famous Radiation Laboratory, and much more. Buderi takes readers on a walking tour of the square and talks to dozens of innovators, entrepreneurs, urban planners, historians, and others. He considers Kendall Square's limitations—it's “gentrification gone rogue,” by one description, with little affordable housing, no pharmacy, and a scarce middle class—and its strengths: the “human collisions” that spur innovation. What's next for Kendall Square? Buderi speculates about the next big innovative enterprises and outlines lessons for aspiring innovation districts. More important, he asks how Kendall Square can be both an innovation hub and a diversity, equity, and inclusion hub. There's a lot of work still to do. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

How do big companies stay innovative across many decades, and in different industries? That's been the driving question of our Persistent Innovators miniseries. In the fourth and final episode we turn to company in a very different kind of business: discovering and developing new drugs. And we focus on the global pharmaceutical giant Novartis, formed in 1996 from the merger of the venerable Swiss companies Sandoz and CIBA-Geigy. At its Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, opened in 2002, Novartis invented a new style of biology-centric drug discovery that has changed practices across the industry—and sparked a local biopharma boom that has utterly transformed the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge. Compared to the other industries we've covered in the miniseries, namely digital devices (Apple), entertainment (Disney), and toys (LEGO), the pharmaceutical business is downright cutthroat. Product development is risky, time-consuming, and expensive; competition is incredibly fierce; and even a blockbuster drug can become a flop once the patent expires and a generic drug makers jumps in. On top of all that, drug makers have to operate outside the traditional world of consumer marketing: You take a Novartis medicine not out of any brand loyalty to Novartis, but because your doctor tells you to. The net effect is that to stay successful, a big drug company must keep their product pipelines full and churn out hit after hit—which, when you think about it, is the very definition of a persistent innovator. In this episode, former Novartis executive and drug hunter Tom Hughes explains how Novartis's first CEO decided to rebuild the company's drug discovery effort around a genomic and molecular understanding of disease. And current NIBR president Jay Bradner talks about the structures Novartis has set up to protect and promote high-output innovation. Finally, we speak with Sam Wiley, head of thought leadership and customer advocacy at PatSnap—our sponsor throughout the miniseries—about a few more companies he sees as persistent innovators. Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this miniseries.

Dr.SHIVA ANNOUNCEMENT: MARCH on Pfizer & Moderna in Cambridge, MA! Jan 6th, 12 Noon. Meet in Kendall Square, at Galaxy Park, 12 Noon.  March on Pfizer and Moderna, who make $65,000 per minute. Dr. SHIVA discusses why we must focus on the...

https://entrearchitect.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ScreenShot2021-12-16at1.48.13PM.png ()RODE Architects Kevin Deabler began studying design at North Carolina State University's College of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina where he graduated with Bachelor degrees in Environmental Design in 1995 and Architecture in 1996. While enrolled at NCSU, Kevin also managed an internship with the sculptor Thomas Sayre and the architectural studio at Clearscapes PA. After arriving in Boston in 1996, Kevin held positions at Benjamin Thompson Associates, Perry Dean Rogers, and CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares. His project work included a theater complex in New York's Times Square, the master planning of a new campus for Olin College, and several mixed-use urban developments in Greater Boston such as Russia Wharf and Kendall Square. At CBT, Kevin also worked as a project manager on high-profile museums with renowned architects such as Renzo Piano for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Norman Foster for the Museum of Fine Arts- Boston, and Daly Genik for the Harvard University Art Museums. In 2004, Kevin completed an MBA at Northeastern University. Eric J. Robinson began studying design at North Carolina State University's College of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina where he graduated with a Bachelor degree in Environmental Design in 1994. Eric then participated in a two-year internship with BCW+H Architects in Richmond, VA. Following this internship Eric attended the University of Virginia, successfully finishing his Master of Architecture in 1999. Upon completion of his Masters, Eric was offered a position at Charles Rose Architects (formerly Thompson and Rose) where he worked as a Senior Designer/Architect for 9 years. His diverse body of work includes projects at the University of South Dakota, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the Florida Gulf Coast Museum of Art, the Federal Port of Entry in Del Rio, TX, residences on Martha's Vineyard, and a summer camp in Wyoming. Eric's projects at Charles Rose Architects have received multiple professional awards. Eric and Kevin Deabler founded RODE Architects in 2005. Since 2006, Eric also serves as a visiting lecturer at Northeastern University. Eric is a LEED Accredited Professional and brings to the firm an integrated, design-oriented approach to the profession. Kevin is also LEED accredited and brings to the firm a professional and organized approach to problem solving. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, RODE Architects with Eric Robinson & Kevin Deabler.  Connect with Kevin & Eric online at https://www.rodearchitects.com (RODE Architects), or find them on https://www.linkedin.com/company/rodearchitects (LinkedIn), https://www.facebook.com/RODEArchitects/ (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/samrichter/ (Instagram), and https://www.instagram.com/rodearchitects/ (Twitter). Please visit Our Platform Sponsors https://arcat.com (ARCAT) is the online resource delivering quality building material information, CAD details, BIM, Specs, and more… all for free. Visit ARCAT now and subscribe to http://arcat.com (ARCATECT Weekly and ARCATAlert). http://EntreArchitect.com/Freshbooks (Freshbooks) is the all in one bookkeeping software that can save your small architecture firm both time and money by simplifying the hard parts of running your own business. Try Freshbooks for 30 days for FREE at http://EntreArchitect.com/Freshbooks (EntreArchitect.com/Freshbooks). Visit our Platform Sponsors today and thank them for supporting YOU… The EntreArchitect Community of small firm architects. Mentioned in this Episode https://yougotthenews.com (YouGotTheNews.com) The post https://entrearchitect.com/podcast/entrearch/rode-architects/ (EA434: Eric Robinson & Kevin Deabler – RODE Architects) appeared first on https://entrearchitect.com (EntreArchitect // Small Firm Entrepreneur Architects).

Immigrants innovate. Kendall Square in Cambridge or Silicon Valley wouldn't be what they are today without the innovation and ingenuity of immigrants. But the dense and convoluted immigration system doesn't always allow for that retention of skill and talent. This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with Jeff Goldman, immigration attorney and Chair of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker's Advisory Council on Immigrants and Refugees, about how best to ensure that highly skilled and innovative immigrants can remain in the U.S., start companies, and create jobs for Americans. Jeff co-founded the Massachusetts Global Entrepreneur in Residence program for immigrant university students to continue learning, teaching, and innovating. Jeff sees how much skilled immigrants add to our economic vibrancy and innovative edge, and he's also keenly aware of the tremendous impact on our daily lives of undocumented immigrant workers and what Massachusetts has done to enable them to thrive.Guest:Jeff Goldman practices exclusively in the areas of business and family immigration law. He has more than two decades of extensive experience representing startup to Fortune 1000 technology, life science and medical device companies, as well as families, in all visa and permanent residency matters. Jeff is passionate about entrepreneurship, families and the innovation economy. After over a decade leading the immigration law sections at Mintz Levin and Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, Jeff opened his own practice in Salem and Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Mateo, California.

Immigrants innovate. Kendall Square in Cambridge or Silicon Valley wouldn’t be what they are today without the innovation and ingenuity of immigrants. But the dense and convoluted immigration system doesn’t always allow for that retention of skill and talent. This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with Jeff Goldman, immigration attorney and Chair of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’... Source

Immigrants innovate. Kendall Square in Cambridge or Silicon Valley wouldn't be what they are today without the innovation and ingenuity of immigrants. But the dense and convoluted immigration system doesn't always allow for that retention of skill and talent. This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with Jeff Goldman, immigration attorney and Chair of […]

Fresh off her first MBTA ride since last March, C.A. Webb, President of the Kendall Square Association, joins us on this week's episode of The Graffito Podcast. We covered a lot of territory, discussing topics like Cambridge's reduced permitting and licensing fees, the Life Sciences real estate boom in Boston and beyond (looking at you Middlesex, New Jersey), and what makes Kendall Square so unique. Also on this episode, Drew can't read, Jesse loses his train of thought, and C.A. calls Drew a capitalist. All of this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to send along questions to podcast@graffito.com or tweet @graffitopodcast. Thanks for listening! Host: Drew Katz Co-Host: Jesse Baerkahn Music: Beach Time by FSM Team

Feature GRIT storyteller: Don Picard Seans & Kurt's Q: Does hope matter in storytelling? Don Picard has worked in the Boston area for 30 years doing software development, and is employed at JobCase, Inc in Kendall Square. Don was a double major in Theatre Arts and Computer Science at Cornell, and chose to work as an engineer in order to be able to live in Cambridge and feed his family. Don enjoys telling live stories about his kids, husband, and extended family as it is fun, therapeutic, and allows him to exercise the other half of his college degree so he doesn't become bitter. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/grit/donations

Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and Vice Mayor Alanna Mallon discuss the ELECTION RESULTS!!! Season 457 of Grey's Anatomy, the City's last free Flu Shot Clinic on Saturday, the MBTA's “Forging Ahead” plan, the School Committee Metrics vote, an Arts & Culture center in Kendall Square, the City reopens the search for 19th Amendment Public Art.

On this quick and spontaneous 5th episode of The Graffito Podcast, Chef Nookie joins Drew and Dave to discuss why his Kendall Square restaurant, Commonwealth, is now in hibernation mode. This growing trend, which is usually prevalent in seasonal locations, might just be the only way for his restaurant to survive the winter. Well, that and more government funding. Also on this episode, Nookie refuses to reveal the origin of his nickname, Drew hints at a pulled pork challenge, and Dave admits to watching Disney's Frozen by himself, before he had children. Please send along questions to podcast@graffito.com or tweet @graffitopodcast. Thanks for listening! Host: Drew Katz Co-Host: Dave Downing Music: A Country Romance by Ahjay Stelino

Drew sits with Pagu's Tracy Chang to discuss her COVID pivots and her plans for indoor dining this winter. Nolan DeCoster joins the podcast to talk about Toast's efforts to link businesses with restaurants in Kendall Square. Kate and Trevor Smith explain their inspiration for their new restaurant, Thistle & Leek, and why they didn't let the pandemic get in the way of their dreams. Segments: Tracy Chang – 4:23 Nolan DeCoster – 25:24 Kate and Trevor Smith – 45:10 Host: Drew Katz Co-Hosts: Dave Downing and Jesse Baerkahn Music: Left for Deadish by Junior 85 For more information, visit Gaffito.com/podcast!

Trinity College Dublin has a €1.1bn plan to build a new high-end innovation district' plan that would see the cream of academic and industrial talent come together. The government is to consider putting €150m into the 10 year plan. The resulting five-acre space near Dublin's Silicon Docks hopes to create a new super-hub for engineering, scientific and tech research, mixing academic stars with multinationals and venture capitalists. Dublin, the college says, should have its own equivalent to Boston's Kendall Square or London's Crick Institute. But is the plan a bold new template for the next stage of Ireland's industrial ascension? Or is it another symbol of a two-tier city where the super-successful push ordinary citizens out? Could it be both? Adrian sits down with TCD's chief innovation and enterprise officer, Dr Diarmuid O'Brien to find out.

In our latest episode of the Get Science Podcast, Seng Cheng, Chief Scientific Officer of the Rare Disease Research Unit at Pfizer, discusses his urgent mission to help find breakthrough treatments for rare genetic conditions, such a hemophilia, sickle cell anemia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. “There are many thousands of rare diseases,” says Cheng, who is based at Pfizer’s Kendall Square, Cambridge, Mass. research site. “For me, the challenge is to make sure we can develop medicines for as many different conditions as we can bring to bear, so we can provide not just hope, but true relief for these individuals.”

The following feature interview was recorded with Liz Stubbs and Charlie Marquart of Cambridge Spirits. During the interview, Charlie talks about the challenges of running a traditional brick and mortar retail store and the current trends in beer, wine, and spirits. Cambridge Spirits has been Venture Café’s retail partner for years, so make sure to visit them in Kendall Square on Broad Canal Way or follow them on Instagram @cambridgespirits.

Jesse Baerkahn is an expert in urban planning and placemaking. He's been called a "city maker" by one publication for his company's work which focuses on meaningful ground-floor programming. Most notably, he was one of the visionaries behind the revitalization of the Kendall Square area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgUJQtQUrEs IDEA Pharma: A Conversation with Dr. Menelas Pangalos of AstraZeneca Mike Rea:                          Just a quick note this is Menelas Pangalos, can I have your official title? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I am EVP of Innovative Medicines and early development. I’m at Biotech Unit and also Global Business Development. Mike Rea:                          Okay, we’ll get on to innovative medicines. This is obviously one of the series of Idea collider interviews with people with actually very interesting thoughts on innovations. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Hopefully. Hopefully interesting. Mike Rea:                          Definitely interesting and hopefully very useful for the viewers. So, actually let’s starts with our first question, what does AstraZeneca means by innovative medicine? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yes that's probably the most difficult question because innovation is different things to many people, & I’m sure - I remember when first joined the company & was walking around the site’s; looking at project’s & people were telling me about their innovative programs & they actually - you know, if you think about this as a competitive sport, I think our view of innovation when I first joined was personal best versus world records, And when I think of innovation, I think of world records. You know, you’re cutting edge, the cold face of innovation in terms of whatever area you’re in, whether it’s a technology or whether it’s a therapy area. Disease understanding is actually - you’re making the discoveries rather than following discoveries. Mike Rea:                          So, that was an almost an internally referenced versus external referenced. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, so exactly they were very inwardly as an organization we were incredibly inwardly focused & we were getting better internally but when your benchmark is very low, you’re getting better on a very low benchmark actually it’s isn’t getting you anywhere near where you need to be. So, one of the big shifts in our culture which I think is helpful in our innovation is being much more outwardly focused. Seeing what’s happening as a consequence, understanding where we should be pushing ourselves to be even better & who we should be working with to enable us to build on whatever it is that we choose to do. Mike Rea:                          That’s interesting & the innovative medicines group is focused on forward looking pipeline -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, So I run everything from the first target ideation all the way to proof of concept. So, we have to hand over to our latest [inaudible 02:28] organization programs that are ready for phrase III. So, everything from - you know the basic disease understanding – to therefore give you the new targets so you identify & optimizing those programs to generate molecules that are ultimately suitable for phrase III investment. So, there’s therapy area-based research, then we also have our technology platform group to support the therapy areas  Mike Rea:                          And you’re essentially then combining ways of doing that with choices that you’ve made along the way of which areas to focus on itself. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Choices all the way & one of the things - the big shifts that we made, which actually we made when Pascal joined the company at the end of 2012 is really focus down on the areas where we thought we could be globally competitive or we could be setting world records not personal bests, & so, we really focused organization down on to sort of oncology, cardiovascular, metabolic & renal disease. Which there’s a lot of overlap & than respiratory disease & there’s couple of areas that we not dabbled in but we have small – relatively small investments, less than 5% of our budget goes on there in neuroscience & infections where we tend to pawn all those program with other companies where that’s their core area of competence & where they want to be leading from an innovation perspective. Mike Rea:                          ok, that’s interesting. So, it’s more like the British Olympic teams approach the winning gold medals. where we can win gold and…  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Go deep & yes, it’s been very interesting because, as we’ve gone deep and as we’ve got more & more focused in those areas. You see that actually you’re starting to build a depth of knowledge & a depth of pipeline that really does make you quite competitive in that space, & the quality of the partnership – you can create the quality of the people who you recruit – the quality of the decision making it all gets better because the commercial organizations also lined up the same way. For me it was like the organization was never all - but I always thought of us as iron filings all going in different directions. When we focus organization on those three core areas, everyone’s thoughts then point in the same direction & they understood, well good looking [inaudible 04:44]  Mike Rea:                          Yeah, & it’s been interesting. you mentioned when Pascal took over but it seems to be in a purposeful shift at AstraZeneca, because for a long time it wasn’t my favorite company. But this certainly - your publications & the kind of pursuit of a kind of directed improvement Has been clear from the outside. Do you have the room to do that? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, look I mean - I was hired by the CEO before Pascal joined, a guy called David Brennan who was a super smart guy, very commercially driven. They’ve built a great company with an amazing brand Seroquel, Nexium, Crestor. And what’s interesting is most of those were me too or me better drugs, but nevertheless, very successful in their time & what David realized when he hired me was that the R&D organization wasn’t where it needed to be & they had to try & re-invent themselves & I was the one of the first recruits to try & help with that reinvention.  Mike Rea:                          What was the first thing that you had to do under that new regime? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, it was a challenging [blank] - activity wasn’t particularly high so one of the things that I tried to really get the organization bought into reasons why we need to change, to learn from what we’ve done before. So, we looked at all of the projects that were run from 2005 - 2010. We were spending about 5 million dollars a year on R&D. And really trying to look at what differentiated a successful project from a non-successful project. obviously, we had a lot more unsuccessful projects. Mike Rea:                          What was your definition of successful? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Launch.   your medicine launching or moving into late stage of development at least. But actually, launching is the most important one & looking at what data – what information we have & how programs actually progressed from candidate nomination all the way through to phase III. And what we saw was – actually when we did the analysis, if you measured us by the number of things that we were doing, the numbers of candidates that we’re putting into the clinic or the number of R&D's that we were filing. We were one of the most productive companies in the industry. Secondly only to Pfizer after it had acquired Wyeth. But if you measured us by the number of launches that we had – we were the second least productive company in industry. So clearly there was a disconnect. Our science was getting rewarded, but there were no medicines coming out at the other end & that’s what we had to fix it.                                          The take-way message from all of this work was quality over quantity. It’s the quality of what you work on not the quantity of what you do. And then as we dug further there were five things or we call a five R framework that we thought, based on the data that we analyzed would improve your probability of running a successful program and they’re pretty obvious I have to say, pretty intuitive & yet actually quite difficult I think to execute on consistently.                                          So, the first of the five R's is around the right target. How well do you understand the biology of the target that you work on? how well do you understand the disease pathophysiology? How it connects – relates to path whether you’re trying to modulate? What genetic validation do you have either in pre-clinical animal models or in human genetics & how do your scientists consequently try to prove or importantly disapprove Your hypothesis. are they asking those killer questions to try and invalidate, not just validate there’s something for hypothesis? Mike Rea:                          Yeah. So how important is that almost adversarial nature? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s really important actually rewarding your scientists for disapproving things as much as approving things & making good decisions – good kills is actually something that we’re very passionate about and very proud about & we celebrate as well.  As I’ll say in a moment the reason why we’re failing now the most is actually because of lack of efficacy in phase II, which means we still don’t understand the targets and the pathways well enough. But we’re getting better, so that’s perhaps the most important of all of the 5 R's. Mike Rea:                          Okay. I think we talked about this a little bit before that we’ve reframed this role and we're calling it failure; we call the process of early phase – development asymmetric learning. Can you learn faster & better than the other guys? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Exactly. Mike Rea:                          And if you call it learning it’s not trying to failing anymore. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s exactly right & making sure that you fail, you haven’t spent too much money & you don’t just keep on - cause what we were very good at what we saw as we had – our science was very creative. Finding ways of getting to the next hurdle & just for the sake of getting the next hurdle, cause that’s where we're being measured on. So right target, second one right issue. When you have a molecule whether it’s a monoclonal antibody or small molecule or the drug modality, demonstrate first of all in the preclinical models that you can engage the target & understand what your PK / PD relationships are. So, understand you’ve got to inhibit a kinase in a tumor? Do you have to inhibit that kinase for 24 hours? Do you have to inhibit it at 50%, 80%, 100%? Really understand what the relationship is in order to generate the efficacy you are after & then even more importantly you have to have a way of measuring that in the clinic. If you can’t demonstrate target engagement in a clinic, we have a big problem, because then if you fail you have no idea if it’s your molecule is cramp or lousy - excuse my French - or if your hypothesis is wrong. So, a good failure is for me is ones who I know have demonstrated target engagement but the molecule didn't work so biology is wrong. Right. And we hardly had any ways of demonstrating proof medicines – so a number of phase II that we were running. where the molecules failed and you asked the question – I remember these first six months in project meeting, so it didn't work – did we engage the target? Did the receptor antagonist get into the brain? If it’s a schizophrenia program and quizzical blank stares from everybody saying - we have no idea.  Mike Rea:                          Oh, so you weren't learning well.  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, you weren't learning anything, not well, you weren't learning anything actually because you had no idea why you are failing, so that doesn't happen anymore. The third one is right safety, so again because our scientists were being rewarded for number of candidates, they were remarkably good - working how to lower the doses to the minimum amount, where they now – because they're not measuring target engagement, engaging the target but they still get the candidate through. And what we saw was that when you had early safety signals, they invariably came back to bite you somewhere during early development or even worse later stage development. So, waiting out your safety signals early, making sure you are working on the right series, on the right scaffolds, that you understand both your target-based toxicity and your molecule-based toxicity, really, really important. So, we spent a lot of time developing our safety models. Fourth of the five R's right patient. To find the patient population in which your medicine is most likely to work. Because if It doesn't work in that patient population, it's not going to work on a broader patient population, and we were again very good at going into broad patient populations. What we saw actually was that as the programme moved through the clinic, the commercial organization got into full steam ahead and wanted to go into broader bigger. Of course AstraZeneca was very much a primary cadre of an organization and so what we saw actually in the data was that the scientists were becoming less confident about their projects and the commercial folks were becoming more confident because the big yourselves the number is getting bigger, but you know a 100% of nothing is not a very big number. So that was the other pieces - to find the patient population and do that experiment first and develop it there and then other things will happen. This is not different, advanced for example we have been doing for quite some time, and then finally the last of the 5R’s is right commercial. By right commercial, I don’t mean is it going to be a billion dollar pick yourselves - what I mean is why would anyone want to take or prescribe the medicine and why would anyone want to reimburse it. So, understanding what your comparators need to be, understanding what the standard of care will be in the time frame that you are going to be launching. It’s a very difficult thing to do, often 10 - 15 years ahead but really challenging the teams to think about where that puck will be when the programmes moves through the clinic or when it launches to make sure they are being ruthless about the comparisons they do. This now goes back to the conversation around being outward looking versus inward looking. And then it was interesting, when we submitted the paper for review, one of the comments that came back from one of the reviewer's was - well if you do all of this you need to add a 6th R which is the right culture. Because what you are actually doing is changing the culture of the company and so you need to talk about how it back ships and he was actually, he or she was actually right because as we start to implement  the 5 R's to every governance meeting we have, through  every project review that we do, what you start to see is is the culturing shifting from one where science is being rewarded for just numbers of candidates, to they are being rewarded for proof of mechanism, for proof of concept, for launches, for diagnostic strategies and for publishing great research papers and it has shifted the culture from one that's being very inwardly focused, personal best to one that's outwardly focused, more collaborative and hopefully setting a few world records. Mike Rea:                          Which is interesting. So, we, did you use incentive structure as a lever or was that a kind of after effect of getting people to focus in the right place? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So the incentives changed and our global incentives in the company actually changed when Pascal joined where we didn't just have R&D incentives, we had incentives around R&D - which were phase 3 investment decisions, launches, phase II starts, and there's assessing of commercial goals which are around the growth drivers of the company which you can land everybody up in oncology, cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory etc. and then  some financial goals and we were thrust to meet our objectives, we have to get all of these things - not just the R and D ones. So, the whole organizations actually got very well lined up. But for us the things that we rewarded scientists on were:- the quality of the work they were doing, so these good kills, or good moving forward in a CD package, coming forward you know a lot less candidates coming forward every year than we ever had, we were no longer the most prolific, but the quality was much higher and the teams had to be able to cover every aspect of the programme including what the developing plan looks like going forward to proof of concept. And then the successes, their rewards came and they demonstrated proof of mechanism, demonstrated proof of concept, when they get the phase III investment decision because I don't get to decide what goes into phase III, someone else has to put that through and so that you can’t game the system in that way. Mike Rea:                          Yes. Interesting. We have always quoted the Brazil Germany World Cup final, cause as you look at the goals, clearly very big divide, but actually Brazil won the game on all of the surrogate metrics. They shot some goals, shot some targets, possession Brazil won.   Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       But the goals count. Launching drugs count. So, the launching drugs counts and of course the challenges is, when you are in a research team launching a drug somewhere away. We were lucky that we had a few drugs that moved quite fast through the whole process. So, people got a sense that we could actually do this and then the other piece that was a very important measure actually for us is actually just the quality of the publications coming out of the organization. And if you look at where we were, I had an organization of about 5000 people when I joined and we were publishing about 200 papers and one nature or science paper. Today we are half that size, we are about 2500 people, we are publishing between 40 - 50 nature science sell papers a year. So even those, and of course when I first joined it was impossible, you couldn’t do drug discovery and good science, now it’s part of our DNA. Mike Rea:                          It’s all the same thing. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah and people don't even question that, and of course what happens as a consequence of doing it is, people want to come and work with you, whether it is an academic collaborator, whether it is Biotech or whether it’s someone who actually wants to be a part of AstraZeneca.  Mike Rea:                          Of course  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So it’s made a huge shift to us and of course our move down to Cambridge is all part of that shift, it’s part of being close to an academic hotbed where there is amazing science because we have become much more open than we ever were, which for me again it’s part of my DNA in terms of being collaborative. Being collaborative in Cambridge is really, really easy because there is so many people you can collaborate with. And of course we have Oxford, London in our doorstep and the rest of the UK and the rest of the world, we have tried to join UK and Sweden together to try and create a European hub and the partnerships we have now which when we have many and some quite unusual, we actually have AstraZeneca scientists work in the same lab as an academic scientist, shared goals and they are working on basic research as well as drug discovery programs. It’s made us much, much more porous than we have ever been. Mike Rea:                          The thing I mentioned to you before was, we have been doing the pharmaceutical innovation index for 9 years now. And if you look where AstraZeneca started to where Astra Zeneca came number 1 this year. It’s been a rapid turnaround. I think because all the things that you recognize and our index measures, did you launch and did you launch successfully? Did you get reimbursement?  So clearly you have gone from that period when you were doing a lot of internal R&D anywhere to suddenly getting somewhere. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And it’s been - the wins are important. Celebrating the wins when you get them is actually one of the things that galvanized the organization. But you know, I think that are the three key things, being really focused on high quality science, being really collaborative and open, and then executing flawlessly when it comes to moving through the pipeline and launching. Mike Rea:                          When you said, you came up with the five R’s. Was that a process to come up with or were those the five things that mattered the most or did you go in with -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       No actually look, you know Pfizer had published their three pillars,  these things are very intuitive and most interesting is people ask me about - because these are you know, they're bleeding obvious, you’d think everybody would do it, people ask me - why do you publish this, because it’s like a trade secret. They're not! Everybody should be doing this and I think many companies do, but Actually many companies don’t and when I ask people that join us from other companies about what's different about the way that we do it versus others, it’s that we really do practice this. I don't let well not I; we don't let programs come forward if the odds don't look good, and if they do come forward with a gap, let’s say we’re not sure about right safety, we have a question mark about whether we’re going to have the right dose versus safety liability. It’s the first question we ask in the clinic. So, do you really understand the proof of mechanism, the PKPD and workout the margins, so it really focuses the attention is you understand where your liabilities are in a program to go there first and workout whether you can flip a red to an amber or green –  Mike Rea:                          So, it’s okay to go at risk as long as you –  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       As long as you know what the risk is and you're very clear about what the killer experiment is. Mike Rea:                          Hoping it’s not there. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah and then of course the first few years projects will come and you say no once, you say no twice, you take teams through it and teams change their behavior. Mike Rea:                          Oh, you do mean it? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t make a difference. It’s kind of important, right. There's got to be some tease to it. Mike Rea:                          So, is there a definition of innovation at AstraZeneca? Because one of the things we always find is that everyone has a different approach to what it is and what it means. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       As I said earlier, it means so many things to different groups. So, for my precision medicine group, innovation would be developing the first plug-based DNA test for EGFO - it’s very different to my oncology therapy, it should be looking to identify a new target or pathway and get the first molecules or the first crystal structure that target with the molecule. So I think innovation really is different things to different groups, I think as I said earlier the most important thing is that whatever we choose to do and whichever areas we’re focusing, whether its Crispr or whether its Protacs or whether it’s a new – some other drug modanity or something around new safety models that improve our prediction, that we are aware of what's out there, so we’re not re-inventing the wheel. We’re working with the very best people and we’re pushing the boundaries of science so that when hopefully we’ve cracked something, when we publish it, people aren't saying ‘so what’. I’d really like us to be viewed as driving science forwards and not just helping ourselves but actually helping the fields that we work in also get better at what they do, and that culture piece is really important because it’s one of the things that I think can make us a little bit different. When we moved to Cambridge, our new building in Cambridge is right in the Addenbrookes campus, the Addenbrookes hospital, its next to the Papworth hospital and then on the other side we’re opposite the laboratory for microbiology, the MRC microbiology. More Nobel laureates than any other institution in the world and an incredibly, if you want high powered science that's one of the places to go in the world and I was talking to John Savalo at the time, he was the CEO of the MR center, ‘wouldn’t it be great, given that we’re going to be in Cambridge to see if we can start working with the MRC, with the LMB’ and so we put a small pot of money together that we co funded and I went and saw Hugh Pelham who was the director at the time and I said, let’s try and do something and of course his natural first inclination was well you know, we’re all very, very smart and you're from industry and we don't want you to suck our brains dry and us get nothing back. Which I think is – I think pharma has moved on a long way over the past few years but I think still in some circles the [inaudible 23:55] of what we do and how we work – and so we worked really, really hard to build a strong relationship with the LMB and to actually make it a very easy way to get – we created this pot of money that basically PI’s from AZ and the LMB, to come and apply for, and they can get a post doc and it’s a two pager and it would be very, very quick and easy and not bureaucratic and Hugh and myself would review this and we’d say yes or no. Based on the quality of the science. Mike Rea:                          Together? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Together, we did it together. And it was – of course the first round was not particularly well subscribed but today we work with more than half the PI’s in the LMB, collaboratively, and they get back as much as – because they can see that we can do things, we can create molecules for them, we have certain capabilities and technologies that they don't have access to, but more importantly there's actually a lot of overlap in terms of our common interest. And so, when you put us both together, we actually get more powerful because we’re obviously quite plad in our thinking, they're quite basic in their thinking, we put it together and actually magic happens, and we've got some amazing stuff that's going on working with them.  Mike Rea:                          Which is an interesting – I think your comfort with ‘open’ is an interesting differentiator for you in that way that you described this long-term approach, proof of concept if you like of going in. Have you found it easy to have your scientists behave the right way in the collaboration? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s been an evolution right, because initially we were incredibly closed. We didn't want to share anything. Everything was proprietary and you just do it in baby chunks and you chip away, you chip away and eventually people get comfortable and there's many examples, of course we had to do it – because if you think of where we were and having to try and change the culture quickly, one of the best ways of changing the culture is actually bringing external scientists in that can show you what world records they'd make. So for example, we did another collaboration with the MRC, we made lots of our molecules, clinical molecules available to MRC scientists to try and find new indications for which then spurred the - NCATs was happening as well, and we’re one of the companies that has the most molecules, both clinical and preclinical in those types of things, you know when we set up the bio park in [inaudible 26:17], park, we had this huge site that was half empty and I used to wander through the corridors going from one group to the other and there would be those empty laboratories, they used to call it tumbleweed labs where you could hear the winds rushing through and it was a demoralizer and from the era when everyone was investing in bricks and infrastructure, bricks and mortar and infrastructure, because they thought they could just industrialize R&D and find out the very hard way that you couldn't, so then the organization shrank and we had these huge buildings. And so, what we did was we said – lets collapse our footprint on the building and let’s bring biotech’s in. So that was actually our first bio park and in contrast to other bio park cities, let’s not have the biotech’s that come in partitioned and walled off. Let’s have them using our cafeteria, our coffee shops, our shared spaces, let’s have them potentially using our equipment if they want to, so they have to buy capital, and we can really try and share our infrastructure, make ourselves good partners, help give them advice when they need it, if they need some regulatory advice some clinical advice, without asking for anything in return, it does start to encourage biotech’s to come in, it makes us again start to forge relationships with other companies and probably most importantly it starts to fill the space up and make you feel vibrant and energetic and full. Mike Rea:                          Which is an interestingly human approach – there's this great book called Obliquity which talks about getting what you want but approaching it in an oblique way and you're described a lot of internal and external signals about your readiness to embrace the future instead of the past. How important is that -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And treat people like grown-ups, the other thing is treating people like grown-ups, because again when we first set this up they were like – what do you mean they're going to be wandering around – everyone signs a CDA, if they don't follow what they should be doing they’ll get kicked off the side, so I think if we go in with the assumption that everybody is going to behave themselves and actually follow the appropriate principles, then actually you're pretty safe. You don’t have to have barriers and passes and everything else, and actually we’ve done it in Boston, in Wharton and actually created – we had a half empty building in Boston which is now packed and actually has a waiting list for biotech’s to come in and in Gothenburg as well. Now in Cambridge it’s a little bit different because we’re already in the middle of the biotech cluster so it’s a little bit less important, but for those sites it’s a little bit more isolated and not right in the midst in Kendall square or not in England for example, in Sweden. It makes quite a big difference having this sort of vibrant environment.  Mike Rea:                          Kendall Square has almost become a hiring hub rather than an innovation spreading hub, because people aren’t necessarily collaborating there, just hiring the folks from –  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Well the nice thing about this – what I find about us being in Cambridge is you know–  you go to a coffee shop or you drop your kids off into school, and you bump into someone, happens to be a hematologist who has just come over, is working and you can start to talk about things that we couldn’t talk about when we were in Cheshire, because the environment is just different. So, it’s actually amazing, how many collaborations and relationships have been initiated through these informal connections. So one of the things that I've been trying to do over the years is try and generate as many opportunities for our scientists to have informal connections, whether it’s with people in the bio houses where the collaborators were, you're just making it easier for the serendipitous to happen and then again innovation can happen. Mike Rea:                          Yeah planning for serendipity. Absolutely. So, one of the things that's been apparent from the outside is the way that you've approached innovation as an active process and five hours is a very good illustration of that. Do you measure it year on year?  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, we measure lots of things. I have got a great portfolio management group. I measure it but don’t necessarily incentivize on it. So, I think we measure how many proof of mechanisms we have done, we measure our proof of concepts, so obviously we get rewarded for things like phase III investment decisions and launches. We measure how many publications are coming out, from which groups. But I try not to get to, we tend to do - first full three-year holding averages, so no one is ever pressured into doing something in one year and getting a number. And actually, the focus really is on the quality of what people are doing, and how innovative is it, how inventive is it. Is it going to lead to hopefully to break through in the therapy area in terms of capability? Mike Rea:                          So, you have got trendlines rather than timelines. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah so, we are quite careful about that because I just think it drives the wrong behavior if you are not careful. Mike Rea:                          Right, People start gaming whatever they are given as a target. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Sounds so brilliant doing that. You know you give whatever target you give them they are good at hitting them. Again, the CD one, it’s amazing what behave - in 2005 - 2010 period, because there were [inaudible 31:30] the number of backups we had in the pipeline. Backup number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, then of course all the backups had exactly the same probability as the lead molecule. So, we don’t do backups anymore. Mike Rea:                          Right, I remember sitting in Sweden once, listening to the team saying that it doesn’t matter if this one doesn’t work because you have got a backup - how does that not matter? Just because you are in a job for another couple of years, but -  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Exactly right. Now unless it’s a really, really important program they know they are going to get one shot so they've got the time, they have got to work out the quality of the molecules versus taking a bit more time to get rid of a few more of the work. So, it’s a real balancing acta and for some plans we will have backups, but they are unusual. Less than 5% of our pipeline now has backups.   Mike Rea:                          Interesting times, and what’s been the biggest learning for you as a director of all of this activity over the period? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       You know I've worked in different companies now, there's not a lot I would have done differently. I have seen Wyeth go through - before it was acquired by Pfizer, go through relatively similar transformations of what [inaudible 32:45] said of R&D, time was much more focused on a number of things. But he had a leadership team that was very passionate about science. And so, we were all very much focused on the quality of the science. I think the biggest piece is celebrating the wins, but also celebrating the good failures and then exemplifying them - constantly exemplifying the individuals, teams, projects. You know we were lucky that we had to grow in [inaudible 33:15] in particular, which came from our teams in Orderly Park actually which went from – you know we put the resources behind it and there was a new generation when I arrived and we moved it in the CD and then it went from CD to launch and in about three years, now that was a brilliant thing to have coming along because it was an example of what you can do.  And of course having a quick win, that also made the organization feel better about itself, Limpasa which was written off, we resurrected and brought back to line, even though we’ve never really stopped working on it and the Imed, when Pascal joined me asking me why is this not in phase III, suddenly pumped everyone's chest up and then everything we’ve been doing at Astra has been about rebuilding and then [inaudible 34:04] really well your artistic molecule. So, there's lot of really cool stuff in every area that we’re working in, of course that makes it easier to walk on and keep going.  Mike Rea:                          So, with what you described sounds like the early stage of an exponential growth rather than just seeing the results -  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I hope so. So, the other piece I love about our company is I think we are a humble company, starting with Pascal and his leadership team all the way through our leaders and our scientist. You know once we got better, I think - I have said this to you previously, we are still failing 80% of the time. Right so we have got lots of room for improvement and very few companies that have been able to continuously in 5 years cycles continue to be at the top end of the productivity chart. So, we have had a good 5 years. That is one set of 5 years so for me the huge chance is making sure we continue to do this. So, the pipeline continues to fuel new launches and new medicines, that No one in the organization gets complaced in any way- shape or form. They remain humble collaborative, open and porous to ideas whether they are from inside or outside. Mike Rea:                          Which has been an interesting characterization of the change I think and having that humility seems – adds more to AstraZeneca, in my external perception to where it is today. So, what drives you personally in this space? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I have always been - it’s difficult now not to think of myself as a leader, but I always used to get really upset when people called me a line manager or a leader versus scientist. I'm a scientist first and foremost. I get excited about seeing people’s data. Not the bullet points from the power points, the actual data. The graphs the –  Mike Rea:                          And a scientist in your approach to the day job as well, I guess. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       There's a keenness, so I still have a couple of students and I don't spend anywhere near enough time with them but I’ve tried to keep my academic links, but more importantly it’s just to encouraging science, constantly encouraging science, constantly speaking to our scientists. Going and seeing their projects, seeing them present their posters, seeing and encouraging the next generation of science and scientist just to come through. To me that's the first driver is just the quality of the science and being an organization that you can say and be really proud is doing good science. Second one is about being collaborative. I’ve always been quite collaborative by nature and I get irritated actually by people that hoard data or think that they can't share things and so –  Mike Rea:                          Yeah, I’ve noticed cause you're active on twitter too that that's – how do you feel about that as a collaborative exchange. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s good so we’ve got this new thing called Workplace which is a spinoff from Facebook and its actually working really well, where you can start to post – so someone will post a bit of scientific data and then you can ask questions and you can generate – Twitter is a great place for – I see it more for news and getting people’s opinions on things that are coming out., particularly if they're from outside of AZ. But this being open to ideas wherever they come from and being porous and you can talk about being collaborative and then you can be collaborative and I really want it to be collaborative. So, I am probably being too open rather than less open. If I ever have to choose if it works for us, I think the risks are relatively small and the upside is huge. And then – there is two things, and then the other piece that I'm incredibly passionate about which – actually Katherine in the room here, was an example is developing our talent. So really I’ve seen it happen all through my career actually as I’ve grown through the industry, but surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you are, but also pulling people up more rapidly, and I kind of think about my career journey and I’ve been lucky to have some managers that were quite – leaders that were prepared to take risks on me and sort of propelled me up the line, probably more quickly than I was ever expecting, not probably, a lot more than I was ever expecting, but some people getting there – you're sure about that? And I kind of have this same conversation with my leaders and their leaders about take risks on people. If you haven't got people in places that are a little bit uncomfortable and really pushing themselves and finding out they can really swim versus sign, you'll never accelerate people’s careers. So that's something that we spend quite a little time, with my team and their team. So, I spend a little time doing talent development and really trying to pull out the bright sparks faster than they would otherwise have moved Mike Rea:                          That's interesting. I’m going to ask Katherine; do we have two more minutes? I'm going do the 2-minute timeline. Okay so, within a spurt of a 2-minute rule, so what – you clearly read a lot, what books do you go back to as your core – which books do you recommend? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, the one that's probably closest to my heart from a heartstring’s perspective is probably Roy Vagelos’s autobiography around Science, Medicine and Merck. Mike Rea:                          That was a great period. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And for me he was – apart from [inaudible 40:04] obviously a Greek heritage like I am, I’ve never had a scientist in my family, so reading his – I just read his book and it was just amazing what he did and Merck for me, as you know I was doing my PhD, that was the prototypical, what a great R&D organization looks like and I actually did a PhD that was sponsored by them and Roy was like a hero. He was one of the first science led CEO’s and he took a company and really to me he epitomized the science at organizations and so – that's probably one of my favorite discovery books that I read in kind of a – I’ve never actually met him, but I would love to meet him and I just think he did an amazing job and actually it so happened when Merck lost that science focus – they got it back now and I think it made a huge difference, that for me has been one of my guiding lights. All through my career. And then when I was at Wyeth actually I met Bill George for the first time and we’ve met him – I’ve been at AstraZeneca a few times, he’s written a book called Discover your True North and that's about what are your guiding principles, what are your true norths and sticking to them, well actually not sticking to them, knowing what they are so you can stick to them and that has been something that again I have used, when I first joined the company I wrote down my list of four or five things that were the most important things for me, but I never should have talked about over the past few minutes and sticking to those principles and not ever letting them go, because they're what define you, and have been really important. Mike Rea:                          Fantastic. And what are your ambitions for the next five years? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       To do this. I think we have the best jobs in the world honestly. Scientists in the organization, we’re able to turn science into medicine and really see the impact of what we do and for me, I’ve completed part one of my journey at AstraZeneca, we now need to show that we can do it again, and that we can hopefully improve even further. It was something that we can continue through, I want to just keep doing that, I love doing what I'm doing. Mike Rea:                          Fantastic, and one thing that you wished that I’d ask you that I haven't asked you. That's the last question. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       How do you relax? As I'm sure you know, you know from speaking to – these are pretty intense jobs, and so my family probably are the thing that brings me down to earth and you're talking about your kid being a guitarist, my kids they're young, they're nine and ten, my wife’s a scientist but they're all very good at when I come home to making me silly daddy and just bringing me completely down to earth and I find that the most relaxing thing out there, being with my family. Mike Rea:                          Excellent, well thank you so much and I know there's a thousand questions I could have continued to ask you. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again. Thanks.  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Thank you very much. 

Take a walk through Kendall Square, Cambridge, this hour. It’s the Emerald City of biotechnology—as magical/mysterious as the Land of Oz, but it’s real, too. The new tech of genomic medicine, re-engineering life in wet ... The post Tech-Master Disaster: Part Three appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Take a walk through Kendall Square, Cambridge, this hour. It’s the Emerald City of biotechnology—as magical/mysterious as the Land of Oz, but it’s real, too. The new tech of genomic medicine, re-engineering life in wet ... The post Tech-Master Disaster: Part Three appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Episode 59. So... the mayor of Cambridge came up to the show. That was wicked dope. Shouts Out to Mayor McGovern for coming up onto the show and keeping his political agenda at bay to simplify the role of local politics for people in their twenties. Mayor McGovern was elected to Cambridge City Council in 2014, and was further elected to Mayor in 2017. For those who don't know: Cambridge is a chaotic city, it's one of the most densely populated cities in the country and harbors an eclectic mix of people. We had the chance to talk about: the role of the massive biotech boom in Kendall Square and the role it's played in the rapid gentrification of Cambridge. The long term homelessness problem in Cambridge (specifically in Central Square and Alewife). The actual leverage the mayor has in executing on political decisions, weed in Cambridge (his experience with it...), affordable housing in Cambridge, and opportunity for the arts in Cambridge. It was a really dope episode, and I hope everyone can make it through the 2 hours! Shouts out to Cambridge, and shouts out to Mayor McGovern and shouts out to Luis for getting it done. ----------------- WATCH THIS Podcast HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txl9DLY9pWA ------------------ The Official Score of the "Derek the Last Air Bender" was composed by Josh Schuback (@josh_schuback) & Designed by Jack Bigelow, (@jack.bigelow). Voiceover: Tim Blouin, @timblou8 The "GDP Jingle" heard in every podcast (Spotify, Podcasts, Soundcloud) was created by MyCompiledThoughts. https://soundcloud.com/mycompiledthou... ----------- Follow Mayor McGovern! Twitter: @Cambridge_Mayor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcMcGovern... Website: http://www.marcmcgovern.com/ Instagram: @marcgov Luis' Twitter: @LuisVasquez617 ---------- Follow GDP! Instagram: @goldendeerproductions YouTube: YouTube.com/GoldenDeerProductions Facebook: Facebook.com/GoldenDeerProductions Website: goldendeer.productions -------- Follow Conor Holway: Instagram: @godholway LinkedIn: linkedin.com/conorholway Twitter: @boachbonnie -------- Listen to Our Podcasts Here! iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-g…d1437829342?mt=2 Soundcloud: @goldendeerproductions Spotify: Search: "Golden Deer Productions" --------- This Episode was Recorded LIVE from the Best Studio in Boston, Phoenix Down Recording. IG: @phxdownstudios, @johnscottengineer Book Ya Session Right Here: phxdown.simplybook.me/sheduler/manage ----------- The Golden Hours Podcast is the biggest Podcast in Boston and the official podcast of Golden Deer Productions. The podcast is run by Conor Holway (a great guy), and we try to show love to anyone making moves in the city. Season 4 is the season of Derek the Airbender... only Derek can save the world from the Fire Deer, do you think he has the W or na??

When you hear the word “incubator,” it may not bring to mind images of innovative food businesses developing tasty treats in a Dorchester warehouse. But that's exactly what CommonWealth Kitchen is – headquarters for local culinary start-ups. Since we first aired this segment in August of 2017, CommonWealth Kitchen opened The Dining Car, a brick and mortar takeout window in Kendall Square. The Dining Car features members of the incubation community on a rotating basis to give aspiring food business professionals a chance to test their menus and experience running a physical business. Guests: Jen Faigel - Executive director of CommonWealth Kitchen in Dorchester Cassandria Campbell - Owner of Fresh Food Generation Celeste Croxton-Tate - Owner of Lyndigo Spice Later in the show… This month state public safety officials launched an informational campaign focused on the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol, weed or other drugs. It's the first driving safety campaign since recreational marijuana became legal in Massachusetts. It's accompanied by an increased police effort to enforce impaired driving rules on the road this holiday season. But substance abuse isn't the only danger to keep in mind while traveling to and from home during the holidays. About 1 in 4 car accidents in the US is caused by texting and driving. And currently there is no law in Massachusetts requiring the use of hands-free cell phone technology while driving. In July we spoke with Alyson Lowell, who lost her 20-year-old daughter Gabriella in June when a driver took his eyes off the road to glance at his phone. But in the midst of her grief she chose to speak before the state's lawmakers, in favor of legislation which would require drivers to use hands free technology for their cell phones. Similar laws are already in place in 16 other states. But as it stands, a bill requiring hands-free devices while driving is stuck in the House Ways and Means committee. Guests: Emily Stein - President of Safe Roads Alliance Alyson Lowell - Mother of Gabriella Lowell, who was killed by a driver looking at his cell phone

The full broadcast of Boston Public Radio from Wednesday, September 12th, 2018. We opened up the lines to hear what listeners thought of yesterday’s tense meeting between President Trump, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Vice President Mike Pence. Washington Post reporter Maria Sacchetti discussed what happens to asylum seekers after they have been deported by the U.S. government. We discussed the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation with national security expert Juliette Kayyem. Historian Nancy Koehn discussed a new study that found Americans value gender equality in the workplace more than they do in the home. Journalist Anthony Flint joined us to give us a glimpse into several urban design projects throughout the Greater Boston area that never came to fruition, including an effort by President John F. Kennedy to put NASA’s headquarters in Kendall Square. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam joined us to provide his legendary weekly explainer.

In this special episode, Jeff sits down with five guest speakers at TedxBeaconStreet Salon EmTech at Kendall Square to explore a wide range of technology shaping our future, both in and out of the tax sector. From using virtual reality to improve surgical accuracy to an artificial intelligence bot that can predict court decisions, this unique panel of innovators gives us a glimpse of a not-too-distant tomorrow. Featuring Daniel Hashimoto, Benjamin Alarie, Francisco Aguilar, Sharon Goldberg, and Danny Bigel.

One of my goals for Barefoot Innovation is to amplify the voice of America’s community banks about the future of financial innovation and regulation. Today’s guest is perfect for this. He is Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank in Boston. At age 200, Eastern is the oldest and largest mutually-owned bank in the United States. At the same time, it is one of the most “young” and nimble community banks in adopting new technology. Mutual savings banks were once common, especially in New England. Most have converted to stock ownership, but Bob points to Eastern’s mutual structure as a key advantage in its strategy, which includes a strong focus on social mission. He explains the bank’s roots in Salem, Massachusetts, serving people who had no bank, and describes how it evolved to emphasize empowering marginalized customers, including women. He also tells the story of his own rise to leading Eastern, from a start 36 years ago that included cleaning bank branches at night. It’s a classic community banking story, for both Eastern and its leader. What mainly drew me to Eastern’s offices, though, on a cold day in Boston last February, was its reputation for innovation. When people talk about community banks and the technology change that’s transforming banking, Eastern’s name always comes up. In this episode, Bob describes how their innovation strategy began six years ago, when he invited Eastern’s Chief Technology Officer, Don Westermann, out for “walkabouts” in Kendall Square, a Boston neighborhood noted for innovation. Bob and Don just introduced themselves, cold, to tech firms, hoping “to understand the mindset of the disruptive innovator” -- their goals and approaches, and also how to reach their networks. Two years into that process, they met PerkStreet Financial, which Bob describes as similar to Simple (we’ve done two shows with Simple CEO Josh Reich, who just stepped down this month -- they are here and here, still great listening.)  In Boston, PerkStreet was giving up (actually as a result of regulatory changes), when Bob met its CEO Dan O’Malley, and they went into business together. The resulting Eastern Labs set out to digitize the lending application process for small businesses, including on SBA loans. Three years later, Eastern spun off that enterprise as Numerated Growth Technologies -- whose website describes it as “Built For Banks, Incubated Inside A Bank.” Now Eastern has opened a new Lab 2.0 with plans for additional tech solutions. In our conversation, Bob gives a road map for how a community bank can undertake this kind of innovation -- how to position it, structure it, staff it, fund it, and run it; how much capital it needs; how to price the services; how much to integrate the innovation team with the bank versus leave it independent; and how to use tech-world concepts like agile design and minimum viable products, or MVP’s. He also explains how an initiative like this can radically transform a small bank’s ability to attract tech talent, and how it can remake the bank’s culture, itself. Bob also has views on how regulation factors into innovation. Notably, Eastern recruited Steve Antonakes, former Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks, to lead its enterprise risk function. Bob has a range of insights into what regulators are doing right, along with suggestions. This bank has cracked the code on one of the most critical challenges facing community institutions, namely how to partner with innovators to leverage the respective strengths and weaknesses of each. As he says, fintech startups used to see themselves as replacing lumbering old banks, but most now hope instead to work with them, because these two groups need each other. Few banks of any size can innovate the way startups can. Yes, banks have always innovated, but today’s changes, coming so fast, driven by trends erupting in the wider tech world, are simply not in basic banking DNA. Few banks can build a world-class, digitally-native user experience. Few can afford and attract the data scientists for new-generation risk analytics.  Conversely, though, very few fintechs can readily get the building blocks needed to scale up, like rapid, affordable customer acquisition, or accessing stable, low-cost funding, or deeply understanding financial products, markets and regulations -- all of which are strengths every bank can bring to the table. And the good news for community banks, specifically, is that they also have natural advantages over large banks, despite having less sophisticated technology, precisely because they’re small. They can be nimble. They don’t have to turn the proverbial battleship. They can chart and follow a new course, as Eastern is doing. Smaller banks see this logic, but most struggle to know where to start. Bob Rivers has the answer. It’s simply, start where you are and just move forward. You don’t need to figure it all out first. Really, you can’t. Instead, start small. Try things. Immerse in rapid learning. Talk to people. I’ll add, go to tech conferences and read tech publications. Do the walkabout! I recently spoke at a state bankers association conference. On the hotel elevator, coming down to the event before my talk, I chatted with a former bank CEO, now a director. When he learned my speech was on technology, he laughed and said, “I’m too old to learn it!” I told him I was going to try to change his mind about that, because, here’s the reality: banks’ CEO’s must lead this. They don’t have to be techies -- Bob Rivers isn’t. He says he still balances his checkbook with a calculator. But he’s leading his bank into a new digitized financial world, by knowing it needs to change and embracing innovation with boldness and imagination. More about today’s show Link to Full Transcript of This Episode Our podcast episode with John Ryan, CEO of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, on banks and communities. My cover story in Texas Banker, with tips for community banks on digital transformation. More about Bob Rivers Bob Rivers is Chairman and CEO of Eastern Bank, America’s oldest and largest mutual bank with two centuries of service to the communities it serves. During Bob’s tenure, Eastern has built on its long legacy of community service and philanthropy by developing a robust advocacy platform in support of various social justice and sustainability issues. In 2014, Bob co-founded Eastern’s innovation venture, Eastern Labs, which earlier this year spun out Numerated Growth Technologies, a new fintech company offering a state-of-the-art small business lending platform. Bob has also been personally recognized for his work in championing social justice and sustainability issues by organizations and outlets like The Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, The Partnership, Get Konnected!, Color Magazine, the Massachusetts Immigration & Refugee Advocacy (MIRA), Asian American Civic Association (AACA), Association for Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA), El Planeta, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, The Theater Offensive and The Ad Club. Since the podcast was recorded, Eastern Bank has opened a new branch in Roxbury Crossing, the first bank in that community to open in 20 years, reflecting the bank’s work in underserved communities. More for our listeners We have many more great shows in the queue. We’ll talk with the CEO of another community institution, Mike Butler of Radius Bank, which is much smaller than Eastern and is pursuing a fascinating innovation strategy.  We’ll have two more episodes recorded this year at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research undertaken jointly by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID.  We also recorded two episodes at this month’s Comply 2018 conference in New York, with two regtech firms -- Compliance.ai, which offers machine-readable regulatory compliance, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. Speaking of LendIt, I’m also going to be a guest on Peter Renton’s Lend Academy podcast, and he’ll be on our show as well, so watch for those. I’m also pleased to say we’ll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. In addition, we’ll record a very special show at the upcoming, global AML tech sprint being run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority in London this week -- which will be, in my view, the most important regtech development in memory...for reasons we’ll talk about. So, stay tuned! I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Financial Conduct Authority AML TechSprint this week -- May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only) American Bankers Association Payments Forum, June 1, Washington, DC CFSI’s Emerge, June 6, Los Angeles, CA North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 11-12, Fargo. ND American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I’ll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the revolution in...what else?  Regulation! Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well. As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook.   Support the Podcast And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Mark Ethier is a musician and entrepreneur who co-founded innovative company called iZotope. As a matter of fact this was recorded in their amazing space in Kendall Square in Cambridge Massachusetts.  Izotope is an audio technology company that's obsessed with great sound. Their award-winning software products are used by musicians, music producers, and audio post engineers to enhance the sound of everything from today's top music tracks to major motion pictures and TV shows. iZotope's audio repair suite, RX, even won an Emmy for engineering developments so significant that they fundamentally changed the way television is produced.

There are no shortage of startup accelerators, innovation spaces and startup community hubs, and sometimes it can be difficult to put your finger on what makes one a success and another a failure. Today, Tim Rowe the CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center walks us through what he believes will make or break a startup community. The CIC started as a small co-working space for a handful of startups, and now is the biggest facility of its kind on the world. They’ve expanded to several locations and are now int he process of setting up their Tokyo facility. Tim lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990’s and he understands that Japan is different, and that’s a good thing. It’s an interesting interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups What makes one startup space succeed and others fail When you need to turn down the money to support the  mission How NGOs and governments can sponsor innovation A blueprint for a successful innovation space What approaches to innovation might be particularly effective in Japan What three things all innovation communities need to succeed What Japanese universities can do to foster innovation Links from the Founder The Cambridge Innovation Center Follow Tim on twitter @rowe WCVB-TV's video on Kendall Square and CIC [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Welcome to Disrupting Japan- straight talk from the CEO’s breaking into Japan. You know, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about co-working spaces, innovation centers, and startup community hubs. Some of them are well intended, but too often, the organizations that put these facilities together have a bit of a field of dreams mindset, where, if they just build the office space, the innovative entrepreneurs will come, and then the organizers will find themselves at the center of a thriving ecosystem. Sometimes that actually happens, but usually not. But when it works, when all the pieces really do come together, amazing things happen. And a community develops that is far greater than the sum of its parts. So what’s the real difference between the innovation spaces that flourish compared to those that stagnate? Well, today we get a chance to sit down and talk to Tim Rowe, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center, or CIC, the largest innovation center in the world. And we have a conversation about what’s really involved in building an entrepreneurial community, and the CIC's progress on building a very large-scale innovation center right here in Tokyo. It’s a truly insightful conversation, so let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to our interview.     [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Romero: So I’m sitting here with Tim Rowe, CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center. This is a pretty incredible space that you have been running for 15 years now. So rather than having me explain it, can you tell us a bit about what CIC is and how it came to be? Rowe: Sure. CIC is the world’s largest space for startups, that is our Cambridge Space, specifically. We’re also in Boston, Miami, St. Louis, Rotterdam Netherlands, at the moment and we’ve got some more in the works. We call ourselves a community of startups. So we’re not an accelerator where we’re telling people how to build their business or investing in them. We have brought 15 venture capital funds into our location in Cambridge and some of our other locations, so there is access to money, but it’s more of an open platform. Romero: So the VCs actually have offices there? Rowe: Their entire firm is there. Romero: In terms of business, though, it’s a real estate business. You’re renting office space. You don’t make money by making investments or… Rowe: Yea. So we don’t think about it that way. You could argue that a university is mostly made up of real estate, but that’s not its purpose.

This week my guest is Steve Kraus, the general Partner who leads healthcare investing activities as Bessemer Venture Partners a storied century-old VC firm headquartered right here in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Steve has been recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top healthcare investors in the industry, having led or actively participated in investments in Ovascience, Sirtis Pharmaceuticals, Affymax, Aveo, Transave, Verastem, Acceleron, Restore Medical and Flex Pharma… and those are just the ones who made it onto the NASDAQ. Today he serves on the boards of Welltok, Bright Health, Health Essentials, Docent Health, Allena Pharmaceuticals, Alcresta, and Docutap. Steve graduated summa cum laude from Yale was a Baker Scholar at the Harvard Business School. Before joining Bessemer he worked in private-equity and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. He worked on a couple of big political campaigns throughout his career, and serves with me on the board of the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA,) and on that of the Achievement Network, on the investment committees of BCBS Massachusetts and Rock Health, and as an innovation advisor to Boston Children’s Hospital. ​ In today’s second segment we’ll talk about how healthcare is changing in the shadow of our new President-Elect, where it is and where it’s headed for us as Americans, New Englanders and plain old patients of a system in a pretty dramatic state of flux.

Moderna is the Kendall Square startup developing a variety of drugs made of messenger RNA, leaving your cells to translate them into proteins. Forging a new ecosystem doesn’t come cheap: in only 5 years, Moderna has raised nearly $2B and is valued around $5B. Its financial position may be the envy of its biotech neighbors, but it is also polarizing. It has generated intrigue and invited scrutiny, including in a recent article that questioned both the science and culture under its CEO, Stéphane Bancel. Quite the juxtaposition since it was just announced that Moderna is - again - one of Science’s Top Employers, and has even moved up in the ranks. What is going on over there? In this episode, Stéphane is the messenger. He takes us inside the how and why of Moderna.  

Notice the bike paths these days? There is bike traffic at stoplights and they seem ubiquitous in any big city allowing tourists and local alike to hop on and off whenever they need, today. Paris and Montreal were early to the game of community bikes where you buy a card or membership and now more and more American cities and campuses are adopting what has long been the norm in Beijing and Amsterdam. Is this the Millennialization of the way we live and work? Tim Ericson, Co-Founder and CEO of Zagster, one of the largest bike sharing companies in the country, based near Kendall Square in East Cambridge, says the Millennials are a driving force. Zagster and their team of mechanics are supplying and servicing many of these new biking cultures across the country. Ericson, a millennial who believes in bikes, climate and neighborly sharing, talks to us from his startup office in Kendall Square.

Heidi talks with David Edwards, founder of Le Laboratoire Paris, Le Lab & Café, and ArtScience Cambridge. David now teaches at Harvard University and practices inside his labs in Paris and Cambridge. Today he is quickly becoming a leading thinker on scent integration into the digital experience, and his ArtScience Prize has been applied in schools and labs across the country. When one walks into his Café ArtScience in Kendall Square, it's hard not to think you are tinkering in a Willy Wonka Factory.

By Rob Hochschild | July 10, 2012 Raised in the United Kingdom and Canada, Wilsen (formerly known as Tamsin) describes her music as influenced by the "warm folk sounds of Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake, with a dash of Feist." The Brooklyn-based songwriter is preparing to release her first album, Sirens. Wilsen performs as part of Berklee Summer in the City at Passim on July 12 and at Kendall Square and the ICA on August 9.

May 21, 2010 Versatile student vocalist, pianist, and guitarist Julia Easterlin released two albums at the age of 17, one a jazz disc and the other folk-rock. While a member of the Grammy Jazz Ensemble, she performed with Allen Toussaint, the Neville Brothers, and others. She's developing a buzz for her concerts, during which she'll often use a looping station to create and build backing tracks as she performs live. She'll play at Kendall Square and the Liberty Hotel this May and June as part of Berklee's Summer Concert Series. The latest podcast features her track "A Mild Response."

By Rob Hochschild May 23, 2014 Founded in 2012 by Berklee student vocalist and composer Raquel Rivera, Amethyst is a septet that puts forth music influenced by contemporary jazz, acoustic pop, and various Latin genres. Rivera's bright and smooth vocal style is an ear-catching vehicle for her wide-ranging originals and the band's collaborative cover arrangements. Rivera, who is focusing on honing her performing and arranging skills at Berklee, will lead Amethyst in a free outdoor performance on June 5, 2014 at Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Designing new drugs would be easier if scientists understood the biology of the diseases they are trying to treat -- but for most common diseases, which are caused by many different genes and environmental factors acting in concert, gaining that understanding has been a challenge. In recent years, however, by studying the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people, scientists have uncovered hundreds of genetic factors that influence disease risk, including some 70 genomic regions containing variants that either make people more prone to type 2 diabetes or protect them from it. Many of the findings are upending what scientists thought they knew about the disease. David Altshuler will discuss how these discoveries can be translated into biological insights and inspiration for new treatments. About Midsummer Nights' Science: Midsummer Nights' Science is an annual lecture series that explores key advances in genomics and medicine. This lecture series is held each summer, and is free and open to the general public. Midsummer Nights' Science at the Broad Institute takes place at 7 Cambridge Center, in Kendall Square in Cambridge. About David Altshuler: David is a founding core member of the Broad Institute and has directed the Broad’s Program in Medical and Population Genetics since 2003.

To find genes that underlie traits or diseases, scientists often conduct genome-wide association studies (GWAS). GWAS scan the entire genome for common variants to highlight areas likely to harbor influential genes. While researchers long debated whether this was a useful approach to studying psychiatric disease, recent GWAS have revealed vital information about genetic variations that may be associated with these disorders. Benjamin Neale will describe what he and his colleagues have learned from their genome-wide association and next generation sequencing efforts, with a particular focus on schizophrenia and autism. About Midsummer Nights' Science: Midsummer Nights' Science is an annual lecture series that explores key advances in genomics and medicine. This lecture series is held each summer, and is free and open to the general public. Midsummer Nights' Science at the Broad Institute takes place at 7 Cambridge Center, in Kendall Square in Cambridge. About Benjamin Neale: Benjamin is an assistant professor in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an associate member of the Broad Institute.

How do you unravel the cause of a new human disease? For Ami Bhatt, the answer involved solving a DNA puzzle. Faced with a human disease of unknown bacterial origin, Ami used a combination of DNA fragments from diseased tissue and several computational methods to piece together an explanation. What she discovered was the genome of a new species of bacteria believed to have caused the disease. Ami Bhatt will talk about her discovery and its possible implications for the future of infectious disease. About Midsummer Nights' Science: Midsummer Nights' Science is an annual lecture series that explores key advances in genomics and medicine. This lecture series is held each summer, and is free and open to the general public. Midsummer Nights' Science at the Broad Institute takes place at 7 Cambridge Center, in Kendall Square in Cambridge. About Ami Bhatt: Ami is a postdoctoral fellow in the Broad Institute’s Cancer Program and a hematology/oncology fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: Terry Morreale:  Hi, this is Terry Morreale, from the National Center for Women in Information Technology or, NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs. Women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fantastic stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hello Larry, how are you? Larry Nelson:  Hello, I can't wait to get into this interview. We love what NCWIT is doing and we have everything posted on our w3w3.com website. It's all business and of course here we're focused on women IT entrepreneurs. Terry:  Today we are interviewing an industrial designer turned entrepreneur, who was named one of "Fortune Magazine's" most powerful women entrepreneurs in 2013. Jules Pieri is the CEO and co‑founder of The Grommet. The Grommet is a company that launches undiscovered products or "grommets" and helps them succeed. The Grommet is Jules' third start‑up. She's also an entrepreneur in residence at the Harvard Business School. Before we start, Jules, tell us a little bit about the latest at The Grommet. Jules Pieri:  The thing I'm working hard on right now is we have an annual competition called the Product Pitch on March 20th. Believe it or not, we're in Boston and we have all of Fenway Park for that. The point that people that listening to the podcast would care about is that we're taking submissions for that. So, if people have an ordinary problem solver or hack that they think the world should know about and if it's in one of two categories, ready for crowd‑funding or ready for market. We're looking at all those submissions starting last night and for the next 12 days. Terry:  Thank you for that information. How did you first get into technology, Jules? Jules:  I guess through the back door. In high school, I simply had that girl disease of not necessarily thinking it was for me but I did keep succeeding whenever I tried. There was a programming course in the high school. It was new to the school. I just kept acing it and I would get 100s. I would never get 100s on the tests. The teacher decided girls couldn't have 100s so he would actually always find something wrong on my page to make it 99. It was bizarre. However, I was always top of the class. So, I guess, I knew I had some capability but it still felt back door even through college because I ended up becoming an industrial designer, which is kind of a different flavor of technology. It's not as hardcore as if I'd studied computer science but you do have to have a really solid base of understanding, particularly in mechanical engineering and ergonomics and human factors and now a lot of new words that people use to describe the things that I had to master. And so, it felt like a blend of business and technology as a profession to me. Terry:  What are some of the technologies you think are cool today? Jules:  Actually, we're just barely scratching the surface of 3D printing. One of the reasons I founded The Grommet was its existence. I was blown away when I went to a prototype lab at Savannah College of Art and Design several years ago and I saw three 3D printers for rent for $15 an hour. I saw that and said, "That changes everything," because for me it was something I could directly relate to because I had been an industrial design student. I knew what it was like to conceive of ideas and then execute them, prototype them. I knew how hard it was without 3D printing and that your ideas could even be limited by your ability to actually build the model or draw something. When I saw that for such a cheap access point, $15 an hour, I was already working on The Grommet but it just sort of made me double down on the idea to see that. I was reading "Food and Wine" magazine last night and they were giving a big overview to 3D printing and showing some spun sugar creations that were being done by 3D printing. And so, it's infiltrating but it's far from mainstream. It's far from the future of when we'll be able to print products at home, but it's so important to the maker movement, which is where I spend my days thinking. It's the one I'm probably most excited about. Larry:  I couldn't agree more. Very exciting area. Taking your background and everything that you've been involved with why are you an entrepreneur? And then, also, what is it that makes you tick as an entrepreneur? Jules:  That's interesting. I think there are genetic entrepreneurs who have to be them. They're born that way. And then there are people who almost become it by necessity. They trip on an idea they have to do. I'm a little of both, more necessity. The both part, genetic part, is that I've always been very comfortable creating things. It's my preference. I've never had a job that any one had before me where I was just repeating something or making it better. As an industrial designer you're trained to attack the white space, to find the opportunity, to not be intimidated about having to create something from your own observations and insights. It's a really important discipline in being an entrepreneur that most people wouldn't have. I didn't know I was being taught to be an entrepreneur but I effectively was when I was learning and practicing as a designer. Having said all that, I wasn't one of those people who walked around saying, "I can't work for someone else." They have to do their own thing. Frankly, I like working for other people because it's way easier than working for myself. I'm a tougher boss. But the necessity part kicked in over the course of my career. "Why do the best products don't win?" That's almost anti‑American or anti‑capitalism to say that because we think that the market decides and the best products win but it's far from true. Today and for a long time it's been the case that people have a chance of making the products you see one of two ways. They either are part of a large organization and then they can muscle their way through. It's still not guaranteed but you have better odds. Or there's kind of a lucky break scenario where Oprah calls or something big happens that's outside of your control. That's a really crummy business plan and it means that a lot of really good products don't see the light of day. That was a business opportunity that I saw that somebody had to attack. It just had to get done. It wouldn't have been possible without technology. Social media, broadband, the ubiquity of video. A lot of things were happening that enabled the business. Honestly, if I think about it, I saw the problem as far back as the '90s, that the best products aren't winning. But earlier I was just throwing up my hands until just before this company. I was president of a social network called Ziggs.com. I saw what social media meant. That was one component of the bigger picture that cracked the puzzle of putting the access to these kind of products and the power into the hands of people, the power to decide which companies we wanted to support by sharing them or buying their products. Social media changed everything. This is really an idea that was enabled by technology and also I have to acknowledge the change of behavior that those technologies enabled. That's the business side. Me, as an entrepreneur, what makes me tick? I went to a really rigorous high school. I kicked myself out of Detroit. Actually I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Detroit and I went to tough public schools until I was 14. And then I was thinking about applying to an exam school. Public school, my teacher that I loved told me to apply to boarding school so I did. I snuck, actually, behind my parents' back and did it. Not because they didn't support it ultimately but I didn't want anyone to tell me, "No." I applied. They had to fill out financial aid forms so they found out. I got a scholarship. Even though I was in this really rigorous academic school it happened to have really wonderful art facilities. And so, I would spend a lot of time making things when I was in school. When I had time at night I would go and weave. I liked wood shop. I liked working in the ceramics studio, jewelry, anything I could make something. It was really important to me and now I'm making a business. I extend that creativity to a whole business model but around me I'm enabling makers as well. I get a lot of kicks out just watching their creativity and then when I need to actually make something I'll do it at home on the weekend. It's really the creation of a business model that's very exciting to me. Terry:  I'm guessing that you had some mentors or role models along the way. Did you have folks that influenced you that way? Jules:  I mentioned that one teacher in terms of he gave me a sense of possibility outside of where I could to on my bike, basically, as a young person. And also when I was in elementary school I read every biography and autobiography in my little school library. Those lessons were really important to me. I really did get the sense an ordinary person could do something extraordinary. It sounds trite, reading books, but I didn't have access to a lot of role models. Nobody in my neighborhood went to college. People went to jail. It was not like I could personally know people who could be my mentors in that environment. My parents were solid and I knew a lot of really solid people in the neighborhood but there were bad things going on around us in Detroit that were going the wrong way. We were part of it. But then I got lucky. Let's fast forward a little bit to later in my career, in '91, '92. I had a boss land on my head in a consumer products company. I've gone back and forth between technology companies and big consumer product companies. I was working at Keds, the show company. Meg Whitman, who ended up running eBay, running for governor of California and now she's CEO of Hewlett Packard. She landed on my head as my boss. I ended up following her and working for her directly in three different companies. I wouldn't call her an entrepreneurial role model. She's not an entrepreneur but I would call her a leadership role model. It mattered that she was a woman, I'm sure, on some level but I had the chance to work so closely with her for so long that I definitely absorbed a lot of her learnings and things that she succeeded. Her techniques and ways she worked with people. Larry:  Boy, that's for sure. I can relate to that a great deal. We interviewed Meg Whitman a number of years ago now. Also, I was born in Detroit so I can relate to what you were talking about. I know you've been through so many different things and I would say you probably have faced a number of challenges along the way but if you had to pick out. what is the single most toughest thing you had to do in your career? Jules:  It was definitely this business and raising money for this business. I literally walked my shoes off to do that. I have a funny picture. I was near MIT and Kendall Square and Cambridge walking from one venture capital office to another in these Stuart Weitzman platform shoes I had on ‑‑ just those basic black shoes ‑‑ started disintegrating. I'm not kidding. They just literally started falling apart and this platform was about three or four inches high so that platform going down to one inch high was a big difference. They were a mess and it was kind of symbolic of what I did. We started the business in 2008 when the sky was falling and we were working on the maker movement before it had words. Nobody had a name for what we were working on and Kickstarter didn't exist yet and 3D printing didn't hit the mainstream press. A lot of things we knew about were just invisible to the average investor and then the average investor was scared to death. Raising money was definitely the hardest but there was one ...We almost died three times. We almost went bankrupt three times. That's no fun to come up with that plan and just unwinding the business. You just have to do what you have to do. There was one dramatic moment which crystallizes it. My shoes were a symbol but there was a moment where it all came together in a positive way but it was coupled with a sad event, although ultimately we raised a wonderful investment from a Japanese company called Rakuten, the third largest eCommerce company in the world and the CEO is kind of the Japanese Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. Very, very well known. It's a happy day but at the time I was negotiating that deal my mother was dying. She had colon cancer. This really mystical thing happened. At the moment that she died I got a phone call. I was staying at my childhood best friend's house near the hospital and my aunt called me to say my mother had passed. It was 3:00 in the morning. I was already awake because there was this tremendous lightning and thunderstorm that only Detroit can serve up. I was awake, looking at that. I got the phone call which is the phone call you might expect but never want and then, since I was awake and had my phone in my hand I hung up, looked at my phone, and there was the letter of intent from Rakuten. All three things happened at once. It was amazing. I think my mother went up to heaven and kicked up some dust. Said, "Get this deal done. My daughter deserves a break," and it happened. Terry:  Wow, what a story. Jules, if you were sitting here with a young person today giving them advice about entrepreneurship what advice would you give them? Jules:  I think entrepreneurs, kind of nicely, are almost like modern day rock stars or Olympic athletes but there's a lot that goes with being an Olympic athlete. There's a lot of hard work and defying the odds and being the crazy person. I'd try to help them understand what that looks likes or what that feels like in reality without discouraging them. I'd try to help them find what in their own life symbolizes the ability to be an entrepreneur because it's about taking yourself into some really uncomfortable zones at times. There's not a lot of certainty. There's a lot of anxiety and ambiguity about being an entrepreneur. Even when you're young you might have to deal with that. If you've made choices or you had a choice and you chose something difficult. It's really hard to go away for college. It's against the norm, against the grain and more expensive or you're going where you don't know anybody. Those kind of choices where somebody else took something more comfortable or if you pick an athletic event or a sport that's really hard for you or you try out for a play. If you take challenges that you don't have to take and you get through it you realize you're left standing on the other side. You're still alive and all that. You understand you can do it. I think somebody just thinking they might want to be an entrepreneur wants to look for a bit of a pattern of that in their life, of creating firsts around them. Doing something the first time. I was the first girl in the Detroit Public Schools to wear pants to school. I was really young and I was just mad that it was freezing cold there and I had to wear a dress. I went home at lunch one day and changed. The policy changed the next day. It was bizarre. It was just like somebody standing up to it. I don't know. Something collided but even pretty young people have those kind of opportunities to do something different than the norm and claim it as their own achievement. I'd look for a pattern of that. I think that there has to be a bias for action as an entrepreneur. You have to be able to defer gratification, have good impulse control because you're not going to get a lot of feedback in the near term every day that you're doing the right thing. If you're doing something really big, really different you're automatically going to get the opposite feedback because there's nothing like it out there and people can't make easy comparisons to match patterns about your idea. If you're working on something pretty big the world provides a lot of friction for a while. If you're somebody who does not need that immediate feedback, has some inner strength and confidence about your ideas, that helps a lot, too. Larry:  With all the different things that you've been through and the things you've started and faced all different types of challenges what would you say is the single most personal characteristic that's given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Jules:  Definitely tenacity because it never was easy for me to do anything I did. To leave home, go to boarding school. To go to school in a tough school where I was worried about chairs flying over my head instead of studying. Everything I did as a young person required tenacity, sticktoitiveness. There's a lot of truth to that kind affirmism about 90 percent of success is just showing up. That somewhat defined another quality of being an entrepreneur is tenacity. Terry:  What do you do to bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Jules:  What is that? Larry:  It starts with a B. Jules:  I'm a little unusual. I have done two other start ups but this was the first one I started. It's a really higher level of commitment when you start the company and the buck stops with you. I started this company when I was 47. That's pretty meaningful because I have three sons and the youngest was in middle school at that time. I had one in college. Basically my boys were somewhat autonomous at that time. That made a big difference because, for me, it would have been really hard to do this at the level of commitment I made and the tough economic times where the wind was definitely in our face if I'd done it at an early stage in my life. I was also more efficient and effective. I had a better network than I did when I was younger. I'm very confident in my decisions. I never do something twice or take longer than I need to. My co‑founder, similar vintage. We practice divide and conquer. It's an excuse. We never do the same thing together if one of us can do it. That helps, too, to have a strong co‑founder. But I will say, having said all of that, that it helped having oldere family be more effective myself, being older. I did let the physical side of balance go in 2011. It's 2014 now. It's been a couple years since I had time when I said, "Look, I'm going to re‑calibrate here." It was a pretty traumatic time. It was hard. My brother had just died and my mother was sick. The economic times were horrible. We had a lot of financial stress from me not getting paid and my husband's work was a little bit dried up for the time. Here's the kids in college. Huge demands. I even had a little battle with cancer so a lot of really hard things. I just named a grocery list but it didn't seem like a grocery list in those years. I was getting worn out, basically. No better way to describe it. That was an unusual feeling for me. I did have to re‑calibrate. I did have to focus more on sleep. Really basic things that you could read in any health magazine but basic things. Diet, sleep, exercise. I had to make sure I was covering those really well and I still do. I'm really disciplined about exercise and sleep now. Sleep's a weapon that I didn't really recognize it as a weapon before but I do now. Larry:  You have really been through a great deal personally and professionally. You're on an exciting road right now with Grommet. Jules:  We grew 450 percent last year. We've launched products now that you would know but when we launched them were unknown. Things like Fitbit. Wearable technology is such the rage. We saw the potential of that way before the average person or investor or retailer would see it. We launched an ordinary kitchen device, the SodaStream. It makes soda. It's a kind of eco‑friendly product for your home. We launched something that you see in every start‑up office on the planet now, IdeaPaint. I'm sitting at the Harvard Business School at their Innovation Lab, the wall is painted like whiteboard. You can write on the walls thanks to these debts and college entrepreneurs. We are moving from where we used to be which was recognizing what could make a market to now we actually move markets. Our community's big enough that when we launch a product the sales and social entity trait is meaningful but because we're trusted and respected by bigger companies, like media companies and retail companies our Grommet makers get those phone calls and press coverage and the things that they dream of because The Grommet has lent their reputation to them. A new product every day at noon with a video story that's been thoroughly researched. We see about 200 ideas a week and we're only working with five. Only five of them are Grommet worthy. We've created a global community of people to submit ideas to us. This year we have a goal that 30 percent of the Grommets we launch will be totally new to market. Nobody's seen them before. We pick up where crowd‑funding platforms leave off, ready to become a company. We have a goal that eventually, I think it's going to take a couple more years, we'll be a household name so that when somebody has a great idea they think of us first. It's their first choice for, "How am I going to take this from first production run to a business? How am I going to gain the trust and get my story out there in a way that has enduring impact, that will help my business be sustainable." I want the next thought to be, "The Grommet." This year we'll grow to have about three and a half million people in our community to see The Grommet every day. One in 150 Americans, something like that, will be part of our community. That's on the supporters side. They're not necessarily makers but those supporters send us ideas. They use a product they love or they've heard of one and they send it to us because it would be really old fashioned for us to have a giant team of scouts when social media, anybody can be a scout for our business and they are. They can submit publicly to something called our Citizens Gallery. Anyone can see the ideas that we're seeing that come through that particular vehicle. Others come in through Pinterest and Twitter and Instagram. There are lots of social media vehicles for getting ideas our way but the Gallery on our own site is the one where it's easiest to see some of the ideas coming through. Clearly so. I want to be associated with that. I want to be heroic to makers. I want our business and our community to be heroic to them, to change the game. It sounds so basic. Changing how products get discovered and sold. It's so generic. The way I describe our business is a product launch platform. Those words don't really mean anything but neither did crowd‑funding or online auctions or Internet radio. If you do something really new you have to invent words for it and then eventually the words mean something to other people. That's the goal. Larry:  That's super. Obviously there's a lot coming up for you in the next number of years. We'll have everything posted on the w3w3.com website, our blog, our podcast directory, and most importantly the NCWIT.org site. I want to thank you for joining us today, Jules. Terry:  Yes. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it and we know our listeners are going to be thrilled to hear what's been going on with The Grommet. Larry:  That's a fact. Jules:  Great. Thank you so much. It's fun to take the minute to think about these things and share them. It actually energizes me. I thank you. Larry:  That's great. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jules PieriInterview Summary: Jules Pieri is the founder and CEO of The Grommet. The Grommet is a company that launches undiscovered products or "grommets" and helps them succeed. "Meg Whitman, who ended up running eBay, running for governor of California and now she's CEO of Hewlett Packard," Jules said of one of her leadership role models. "She landed on my head as my boss. I ended up following her and working for her directly in three different companies. I wouldn't call her an entrepreneurial role model. She's not an entrepreneur but I would call her a leadership role model. It mattered that she was a woman, I'm sure, on some level but I had the chance to work so closely with her for so long that I definitely absorbed a lot of her learnings and things that she succeeded." Release Date: April 3, 2014Interview Subject: Jules Pieri, Founder and CEO of The GrommetInterviewer(s): Terry Morreale and Larry NelsonDuration: 25:12