New Matter: Inside the Minds of SLAS Scientists

Did you know that Montreal has the second largest population of PhDs in the world? No? Well this Montreal startup is inspired by the innovations brought forth in the city. CEO of Ananda Devices Margaret Magdesian 's goal is to automate neuronal testing and accelerate the development of new compounds and to reduce use of animals by 90%.    Ananda Devices is a biotech company offering proprieta...

SLAS recently brought Raven Solomon (a global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion thought leader) in to talk to the professional team about unconscious bias. She made such a huge impact on us that we had to bring her in to talk again to our broader New Matter audience.  Raven talks to Marshall and returning guest host Karlton Moore about helping organizations get future ready by understanding generat...

Sebastien Mosser comes to us to tell us how Neurix SA is working to reduce animal and animal tissue use in scientific research. Neurix is creating organoids that simulate brain tissue for compound screening and neuroscience research.  Sebastian describes how they adapted their techniques and their platform to help with COVID-19 related tests.    Neurix SA was a Innovation Ave NEW company at SLAS20...

Stefan Schneider is engaged in the development and application of novel organ-on-a-chip systems, a relatively novel and exciting research focus. He shares with Marshall the enabling advances that allowed him to accomplish this work. What is the most exciting application of organ on a chip? Listen and find out!   Stefan is a Tony B. Awardee and Innovation Award Finalist from SLAS2021 Digital.  Upco...

 What is the difference between ThermoFRET and BRET-Based  techniques?  David Sykes (The University of Nottingham) provides us with a cheat sheet for which problems these techniques are best suited. Listen in as his passion for discovery and solving problems (and his stimulating work with Sir James Black ) steers his career path forward. David is an SLAS2021 Digital Tony B. Award and Student Poste...

Why it is important to be curious for the sake of curiosity? Pouria Rafsanjani Nejad (University of Akron) tells us what he thinks. He  talks to Marshall about the problems with cancer therapeutics, and how to cure patients without causing bigger problems along the way.  Follow him along his path from building model cars to reframing the problem of biology for himself through the study of biomedic...

Claudio Rolli visits today from FLUICS GmbH which is working on sustainable sample tracking for research labs. They have developed an online label maker and its correlating mobile app which turns your mobile device or tablet into a barcode scanner and label maker that are directly connected to an online inventory database. Claudio and his co-founders want to eliminate the traditional personal frus...

Astha Lamichhane is a Tony B. Awardee from SLAS2021 Digital and is researching the underlying reasons for why some drugs work on cancer treatment some don't. What is it about a persons individual genomes that resist some treatments, and how can we solve that at the cellular level? Hear about Astha's most exciting professional accomplishment and where she wants to go once she has finished...

Kilobaser GmbH has developed a microfluidics based and cartridge based DNA synthesizer. It is  designed to let researchers synthesize DNA right in the lab. Think about it like being able to make your favourite espresso right in house instead of running to the barista down the street. So, what is   so special about their synthesizer? Alexander Murer joins us to share exactly what.  Listen in to fin...

LabVoice connects the scientist to the lab through voice assistance. This is not just an Alexa for the lab, it is much more than that! Hear Dan DeAlmeida explain the secret sauce of how LabVoice  integrates with your existing lab infrastructure and helps you execute your tasks.     LabVoice was a Innovation Ave NEW company at SLAS2021 Digital.  Upcoming Events: SLAS Meet-Ups Leiden, Netherlands (1...

Evan Hegarty started out in helping human disease in Alzheimer's and moved his way up to co-found Newormics . Newormics offers toxicology services using their advanced microfluidic devices for high-throughput and high-content screening of small animal models and 3D tissue organoids. Evan talks about their exciting new project in testing a full chemical library of known toxicities from the NIH...

Jens Schwamborn and his company OrganoTherapeutics is using their technology (human-specific mini-brains)  to treat Parkinson's. He walks Marshall through how they grew their young company through the time of a global pandemic and the opportunities they made from it to use their technology to support research in therapies related to SARS COV 2.    OrganoTherapuetics is a SLAS2021 New Product...

2021 SLAS Fellowship Winner David McIntyre , from the Densmore Lab at Boston University, is automating the design of microfluidics through rapid prototyping and machine learning for use in screening synthetic biological systems. Coming from Silicon Valley, David was exposed to science and tech from an early age, and spurred his desire to accelerate biological research. Listen in to hear about his...

How do you enable labs to easily leverage equipment and people so they can automate their experiments? Artificial 's Chief Product Officer Nikhita Singh joins New Matter today to tell us how Artificial's aLab Suite brings together scientists and automation engineers to do just that.  She also shares about their recent win of the SLAS Ignite Award and participation in Innovation Ave NEW ....

Solentim is a SLAS2021 New Product Award Winner for ICON and they loaned us  Duncan Borthwick today to tell us how they are dedicated to listening to scientists to make better tools to improve science. Duncan shares how this quality assurance product company works on improving therapeutics by reducing variability.  Upcoming Events: SLAS Meet-Ups Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026) Tübingen, Ge...

At SLAS2021  Sisi Chen (Caltech) was awarded the SLAS Innovation Award, honoring research that proved to be exceedingly innovative. In this episode of New Matter, Sisi talks more about her research in defining the breadth and specificity of drug response in heterogeneous immune cell populations.  Sisi shares more about her passions, her research, and her primordial early life bioengineering manife...

Julio Martin , a “playmaker scientist” with over 30 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry, shares his vision on better management of scientific organizations and labs. He emphasizes the need to create new patterns of order at the edge of chaos and relationships that are not top down. His blog, Sciengement Lab, is a great space for the exchange of ideas and scientific knowledge...

 Advising. Visiting. Troubleshooting. Those are the keywords that describe Constanza Curotto 's ( Corning) day to day work. She joins Marshall and guest host   Marc Bickle ( Max Planck Dresden ) to discuss her winding road from Chile all the way to Amsterdam. She decided early on that she wanted to shift from hands on science to the business side of things. Since the forced incubation period...

Dhash Shrivathsa drills down into what they do at Radix Labs . In response to the SLAS challenge he came up with Operating systems for biology labs, we cook software drugs . He talks about how Radix started off with a joke that went too far and evolved into making software for not software people. Learn about their new approach to the tools you already have and the philosophy of software.  His phi...

Marshall chats with Mike Tarselli about his birth on a planet far, far away to his rise as Chief Scientific Officer at TetraScience (a SLAS2021 Innovation AveNEW company). Mike discusses his winding journey starting as a pre-med major and eventually careening to his final path - a Ph. D. in Chemistry and the battle scars accumulated from the arduous path to completion. And then hitting the Great R...

Manuela Beil-Peter ( Analytik Jena AG ) didn't choose her career, it kind of evolved from her first love; languages. Hear how this SLAS board member hopes to help the community connect more and emphasize the journey of science and technology moving forward together.  Upcoming Events: SLAS Meet-Ups Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026) Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026) SLAS 2026 Sample Man...

Mel Leveridge ( GSK ) shares her deep passion for biology and biochemistry with guest host Mario Richter ( AbbVie ). Listen to her extraordinary experience leading the establishment of a COVID19 testing center at Cambridge UK last year as part of the collaboration between GSK, AstraZeneca and the University of Cambridge, and her dedication to delivering science and technology to discover new medic...

New SLAS Board Member Jan Lichtenberg join us this week to talk about the importance of communication and more to being successful in science. He walks us through the roller coaster ride that was developing his start up, InSphero , and one of their most exciting movements. What is it like rowing in the same boat as a bigger pharmaceutical company? Listen and find out!  Upcoming Events: SLAS Meet-U...

Rising SLAS Board Member Jonathan O'Connell is passionate about the future of SLAS.  He talks with guest host Karlton Moore (from Artel ) about his career path and how certain choices shaped his future. Hear about his new company, Valo Health , which has just come out of stealth mode and is leveraging compute, AI and data to transform the drug discovery and development process; after all, the...

What are the best ways to apply 3D organoid models and get the answers to what you need in the simplest way possible? Hilary Sherman ( Corning ) can tell you! She and guest host Annika Jenmalm Jensen ( Karolinska Institutet ) dip into different fields of research and the advantages to always getting to learn something new. Hear how she moved from a career in marine biology to cellular biology and...