Innovation and Entrepreneurial Spirit Thrive at Cal Poly Pomona College of Science
At Cal Poly Pomona “learn by doing” isn’t just a marketing slogan. What Janam Dave found himself doing turned out to be the source of an idea that could save scientists countless hours, freeing them up to spend more time answering their research questions. Dave conducts research in the lab of Jill Adler-Moore, professor, biological sciences. They’re working on developing an aerosol delivery of AmBisome (which Adler-Moore developed) to treat aspergillosis (a lung disease). Dave’s work, which he presented at the Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities (RSCA) Conference held at Cal Poly Pomona on March 2, was selected to represent Cal Poly Pomona at the CSU Research Competition.
One day Dave was conducting assays in the lab and found that he had spent two to three hours just labeling test tubes. “There’s got to be a better way” he thought, and an idea was born. That idea was to develop a labeler that could label directly onto containers such as test tubes, petri dishes and well plates. Adler-Moore encouraged Dave to apply for a CSU Innovation Corps (I-Corps) grant, administered by CSUPERB which stands for CSU Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology. In 2017 he received a $2,500 grant and began putting together his I-corps team. He confides that it wasn’t easy to find the right people but eventually did and has enjoyed working with his interdisciplinary team that includes Lun Chan, chemical engineering major, and Kathleen Wong, business major. Dave is a double major, biotechnology & chemical engineering, and all members of the team belong to the Kellogg Honors College.
The CSU I-Corps student challenge is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of their I-Corps Sites program. The program requires that one student, such as Dave, have ties to a bio-tech related research lab or project, one member must be from science/engineering and one must be a business student. The program is designed to teach the entrepreneurial skills scientists and engineers need to be able to guide a biotechnology based idea from concept to commercialization.
Dave and his team worked with industry mentor Ned Perkins from Pasadena Bio, a collaborative incubator focused on economic growth and job development. Cal Poly Pomona President Soraya Coley is a Board Member at Pasadena Bio and Dave’s mentor, Professor Adler-Moore, serves on their advisory council. Perkins gave the student team the contacts needed to conduct market research and provided valuable feedback throughout the process. “I learned so much from the experience,” Dave said. “You start out with this initial assumption about customer needs but in this process we interviewed 44 potential customers and discovered many of our initial assumptions were wrong.” The team interviewed a cross section of potential customers that included small academic settings, hospitals, forensic labs and pharma companies. The experience doesn’t just provide important market intelligence, it also allows students to grow their professional network.
Dave says the team learned that in most of those settings containers are discarded. This challenged his initial assumption which was that any labels would need to be removable so a new label could be applied. The team also learned that because scientists are reluctant to throw away their colleague’s work, organization and tracking are important. The team’s device is being designed to address those needs as well.
When the team presented their preliminary work at the 30th Annual CSU Biotechnology Symposium in January 2018 they received a lot of positive feedback from the audience, researchers and scientists who are also eager for a time-saving alternative to current labeling methods. Dave’s team has been asked by the CSU Innovation Corps to apply for a second grant in the amount of $50,000. This is money the team would use to conduct more market research and develop the labeling system further.
If you look up the word “label” one of the frequent definitions is “A small piece of paper, fabric, plastic, or similar material attached to an object and giving information about it.” But innovation doesn’t come by looking at the world the same way or doing things a certain way because that’s the way they’ve always been done. Dave threw out previous assumptions and viewed the problem fresh. “Innovator” may be a label Janam Dave is not comfortable with at the moment but it seems to fit him well.