The IQT Podcast

The debut of The Intersection: Mission Investing for National Security. Hosted by IQT President Steve Bowsher, the inaugural pod with TJ Rylander from Next47 features insights about sourcing and supporting startups, a company's makeup to work with the government market, and more.

As synthetic biology continues to evolve, the ability to control engineered organisms is more important now than ever. In this episode, B.Next's Dr. Kevin O'Connell is joined by Gabriel Lopez, the Co-founder and CEO of Synvivia, a company focused on building protein switches to control the behavior of genetically engineered organisms. Learn more about these protein switches, their commercial appli...

In the era of COVID-19, how do we create safe environments for people to return to work, school, and their daily lives? B.Next's Dr. Kevin O'Connell is joined by Troy Moore, Chief Scientific Officer and Founder at Kailos Genetics, an In-Q-Tel portfolio company providing cost-effective solutions that make genetic screening accessible to everyone. Listen in as the two explore the importance and impa...

B.Next's Dr. Kevin O'Connell is joined by Jason Kelly, Founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, an In-Q-Tel portfolio company using the most advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow better products. Learn more about their platform that programs cells, and how they leverage this capability to expand biosecurity and pandemic response. Learn more at ginkgobioworks.com. 

With an abundance of information available on COVID-19 testing, where should one even begin? B.Next's Dr. Kevin O'Connell is joined by In-Q-Tel's Tommy Jones and Chenny Zhang to explore diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Now that various COVID-19 tests are available, it's important to determine which tests are compatible with each use case, where these tests may be...

In the final episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers are joined by Mikel Maron, Community Team Lead at Mapbox, a company offering location data platform for mobile and web applications. The rise in ubiquity of mobile devices has enabled the power of location-based tools. This episode explores how these tools can help us better understand...

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Todd Mostak, CEO and Founder of OmniSci, an In-Q-Tel portfolio company focused on massively accelerated analytics and data science, joins Dr. Dylan George as they discuss the power of the company’s platform to understand patterns in movement and the spread of COVID-19, and its use in contact tracing and hot spot analysis.   Ref...

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Dr. Dylan George is joined by Nicolas Kruchten, VP of Product at Plotly, an In-Q-Tel portfolio company helping leading organizations close the gap between data science and the rest of the organization. Learn about the power of good data visualizations and how they can help guide decision-making and aid in COVID-19 response. Ref...

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, B.Next’s Dr. Dylan George and IQT’s Ryan Lewis are joined by Nathan Wolfe of In-Q-Tel portfolio company Metabiota. Tune in as they discuss Nathan’s work as a virus hunter, their hope for the novel coronavirus to be a once in a lifetime event, the need for real-time prediction system for pandemic risk, and more. References: We C...

Marc Lipsitch, Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, and Director of the Center for Communicable Diseases and Dynamics joins hosts Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers as they consider data analytics, public health interventions, disease modeling, and the need for the public health community to be at the fore to help implement, d...

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting Series, Dr. Dylan George sits down with Sean Byrnes, CEO of Outlier. AI, (an In-Q-Tel portfolio company) in a discussion about looking for insights – changes, indicators – from the bottom up rather than asking questions from the top down. Outlier produces a coronavirus tracker, a daily report on Outlier’s findings in the pandemic data....

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers are joined by Nita Madhav, CEO of Metabiota, an In-Q-Tel portfolio company working to make the world more resilient to epidemics. The trio explore Metabiota’s use of data to understand and report epidemic preparedness levels across nearly 200 countries, epidemiological modeling to understand...

Data plus analytics (with human intelligence) will yield better informed decision making. Join Dr. Tom Frieden, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former Commissioner of the New York City Health Department, and now President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, and series hosts Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers as they explore w...

Modeling is vital to understanding disease spread and optimal interventions. In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Dr. Marita Zimmermann, Affiliate Assistant Professor and Research Economist at the Institute for Disease Modeling, discusses with Dr. Dylan George the need for modeling and how it’s used to understand which people are at risk for COVID-19 and determine...

In this episode of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers are joined by Dr. Nick Reich, one of the leading researchers who is building operational forecasting capabilities in collaboration with public health agencies. Listen in as they discuss the need for better quantity and quality data to have more high-resolution, real-time data to enable bette...

Today, weather forecasters can spot the development of a tropical storm and use models to help determine its path and strength, which is incredibly important to protect those in its path. In episode four of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series, Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers explain why the world needs a disease forecasting center now more than ever, and how it could work to in...

Episode three of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series features Dr. Steven Riley from Imperial College of London, with Drs. Dylan George and Caitlin Rivers exploring the importance of the infection mortality rate, the value, and need for the public health community to embrace data and use it better.   References: Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce CO...

Episode two of the B.Next Outbreak Analytics & Forecasting series features Dr. Dylan George discussing simulated forecasting in infectious disease with Dr. Jeff Shaman, professor at Columbia University and director of the Climate and Health program at the Mailman School of Public Health. Analyzing the past to develop models may be able to inform the trajectory of infectious disease activity in the...

In the era of COVID-19, you’ve likely heard the terms outbreak analytics and forecasting being used more frequently. This episode kicks off a special B.Next series that will investigate outbreak analytics and forecasting, how it’s being used to help with pandemic response efforts, and what’s needed to improve these capabilities. Dr. Dylan George, Vice President at IQT’s B.Next, and Dr. Caitlin Riv...

When it comes to good datasets, which is more important: quality or quantity? This episode explores three different IQT Labs projects across different domains, specifically examining quality and quantity considerations. Hear about the parallels between our projects within the geospatial, biotechnology, and synthetic data domains, as well as lessons learned about good training data characteristics....

What are some of the challenges associated with diagnostics and testing surrounding COVID-19? B.Next’s Drs. Kevin O’Connell and Dylan George discuss recent pandemic developments and explore the importance of testing, why it's been challenging, and the exciting technologies that we should look forward to coming soon. Referenced links: • www.covid-local.org • www.covidexitstrategy.org

Hospitals across the world are operating under a contingency standard of care due to COVID-19. Could the strain of resources be alleviated through remote monitoring of patients through their wearable devices? In this episode, B.Next’s Dr. Dan Hanfling and In-Q-Tel’s Kevin Schaeffer explore wearable sensor technology and how it can affect and help in monitoring patient health. Learn more at www.bne...

What goes into the development of vaccines, specifically ones to combat COVID-19? B.Next Drs. Kevin O’Connell and Dylan George are joined by Dr. Luciana Borio to discuss the technology and factors involved in creating safe and effective vaccines. Learn more about the scale and timeline of vaccine manufacturing, the level and duration of protective immunity, different phases of clinical studies, di...

B.Next Drs. Kevin O’Connell, Dylan George, and Dan Hanfling are back to help break down the COVID-19 outbreak and the role of technology in defeating the pandemic. This week the trio answers listener questions about the antibody test and immunity, recommendations for hospitals, potential seasonality of the virus, vaccines, testing, and more. Learn more about B.Next’s initiatives at www.bnext.org.

B.Next’s Drs. Kevin O’Connell and Dylan George are joined by IQT Labs’ visualization expert, Andrea Brennen, to discuss the importance of visualizing data to help better absorb and understand epidemics and pandemics. Hear about the research IQT has done on visualizing uncertainty with their Viziflu project, a collaboration with the CDC to help formulate infectious disease forecasts, and how this w...