BioBuilder Career Conversation: Carlos Vera Transcript

Natalie Kuldell Speaker 1 (00:06):

Welcome to this really special career conversation that I recorded with my friend colleague, uh, bio builder, master teacher, Carlos Vera. He, uh, is a remarkable faculty member who works both in California, as well as in Mexico. And in this conversation, we spend time talking about how his work has changed as a result of COVID and the amazing work that he is doing to make things better in his, uh, uh, world, his town, his local community. I hope you enjoy the conversation very much. Uh, I certainly did. Hi, Carlos. Thank you for joining.

Carlos Vera Speaker 2 (00:43):

Hi, my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (00:46):

It’s, it’s a joy to see you and, uh, thank you for coming into to share your story. And maybe we can just start by having you introduce yourself. I see you have a couple of slides and that’s great. Um, but maybe can you just introduce yourself where you work and who you are and what you do?

Speaker 2 (01:03):

Yeah, sure. So I have a long time to get to my loved field, which is synthetic biology. So at the beginning I studied electronic engineering because I love circuits. I love computers. Then I realized that I need more mathematics. So I get into a specialization in computers, in math, a degree, so trying to do know how to code. And then I get in love with biology and medicine. So I study medicine, general practice medicine in Mexico, and then I get my PhD and master’s in science in at UCSD. And because I received a fellowship from Mexico, I need to come back to Mexico and give, uh, give back wherever I have learned to my students. So I come back to Mexico and then teach different topics. Say another course in Tijuana, in general they are related to molecular biology and synthetic biology.

Speaker 2 (02:00):

And then I become an instructor out at COSMOS. COSMOS is the California Summer School for Mathematics and Science, which is a class that in which teach synthetic biology. Everything was possible because I, I meet with Natalie and she teach me how to start to teach synthetic biology without any resources because we will have few resources in Mexico. And right now I am working as a sub director of the school of medicine at Tijuana. So the thing is that we have a lot of resources in the university, and we have a big challenge in, in Mexico, which is COVID impact or, or, or country. So we need to do something that as you know, the, the health system is really collapsed. And today we don’t have any vaccination available to the country. So we need to do something to help people.

Speaker 2 (02:48):

So let me give you some, uh, some overview where, what kind of city is Tijuana, which is the end of the migration. So everybody comes from central America, South America, trying to cross the United States. They cannot cross. So they get trapped in Tijuana. So we had a many very close to 2 million population. Nobody knows, which is the exact, uh, uh, number, because we’ve got so many immigration there and we have a emergency dispatch center to, to attend the emergencies. And the interesting thing is we only have 13 ambulance. So you can imagine what kind of problems we have with only 13 ambulance for 2 million people. So, and we only have six ambulance bases. And before COVID we only had one public hospital and after COVID, this hospital has been converted into COVID only hospital. So we lose our trauma hospital. So we have a real disaster in Mexico due to the collapse of the big health system and the lack of resources from hospitals and ambulance.

Speaker 2 (03:51):

So we say, okay, what we can do is we can help. We can help, uh, trying to distribute better, the fewer resources we have. So we got the word with University of California, trying to produce a software platform in which we can manage the cost. And we can dispatch the ambulance in an intelligent manner. So we have our mobile app that the EMT is they have in the ambulance, and the dispatcher has a web app in which we can know where they are, and we can optimize the, the ambulance regarding to the, to the cause of emergency. So this is good because then we can manage the time and reduce the response times. We know this is getting good because the students that did this, uh, uh, application, they won the first prize thing in the global health, Big Ideas competition in Berkeley. And they won the audience award in the Border Innovation Challenge.

Speaker 2 (04:47):

And they applied for the Audacious. They don’t win, but they were in the last 10 finalists, which is very, very impressive for them. So, so right now we have this app available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and this is free. This is open source. We offer this, this application for any emergency system in Latin America, so they can use it to better manage their ambulance service. So the other thing we did in Mexico is the nine one, one emergency cars were completely overwhelmed. So we got together with the government trying to help them. So we train our students who are medicine students. So they can work as emergency advisors, providing medical and psychological, uh, advice for people that used to have COVID and they want to transport their patient, but we don’t have ambulance. They work 24 seven. So from April to September, we received maybe 20,000, uh, calls for help

Speaker 2 (05:42):

So that’s where we’re very, a lot of work and dispatch close to 20, 2,600 ambulance. And we gave the people advice what to do at home, because sometimes they do not know what to do, or they don’t have any instruments to follow the, the, the, the health of their relatives. So using this, uh, EMS truck, uh, solution, we were able to manage the, the ambulance. Then we developed algorithms to optimize the location of the ambulance so we can know where the ambulance must to be, to reduce the time. And at the same time, we share data with Red Cross. And we discovered that a lot of people was dying at home. And the reason was that they have silent hypoxemia and we don’t have oximeter. So we do something using telemedicine, yes, asking the people to take a deep breath and then count 13. And based on the time, the number they can reach, we have a scale, which is the estimated oximetry, because they don’t have oximeter at home.

Speaker 2 (06:43):

And then we were able to, to help people at the same time, we start some medicine telemedicine platforms. So we can see them because it’s very hard to get advisors by telephone. So we try to use more technology to help people at home. So then later we, we work with UCSD trying to make intelligence of this data. So we know where the emergency calls come from. And we see all the emergency calls from Baha, California in our university system, and then share the information with the [inaudible], which are people expert in geography and social issues. And we discovered that the calls come from the more vulnerable places in Tijuana. So we share the data with the health department and they relocalized localized in different places. They in order to be close to the people. So this is the first time I see that the government listened to these scientific data, and they really redo something, not, not by experience by, by, by the scientific data.

Speaker 2 (07:49):

At the same time, we don’t have an in May and June. We don’t have any way to have a PCR lab in Tijuana. So we modify your molecular biology lab trying to offer this service to the people. And we are, we’ll have limited capabilities, but we are offering this PCR testing free of charge for the people in the health system and university population. So we contribute to the testing. Uh, at the same time, we were looking, trying to understand how the incidents and how the emergency happens, starting to do preventive medicine and trying to do something else. Then many, many of the students and faculty in our university get COVID. So we have hundreds of people that did rehabilitation and are problem in, in Mexico. As you can see, this is the ICU unit. You see a lot of the fancy equipment around one patient.

Speaker 2 (08:40):

I like take the liberty to take off the equipment that we don’t build or design in Mexico. So we have a problem. In Mexico we don’t have technology, we don’t have industry to produce biomedical device. So we need to do something because otherwise this is, this is very expensive. We need to buy instruments and wait in line to get ventilators in May and June for Mexico. [inaudible] with students, with people that are doing in very, very interesting things without any funding. So we help them. By example, my former student [inaudible] she is from biomedical engineering. She was trying to help people with Cerebral Palsy. So she’s, yeah, it’s using 3D printers to produce personalized devices for child,hood cerebral palsy  or muscular dystrophy. And we’re gonna expand this, this, this approach to help people with problems with, with lung, um, um, probably with rehabilitation that we can help them to their recovery.

Speaker 2 (09:45):

So we w we want to do, to produce a lab in which we can build devices for physical therapy and lung therapy for people after COVID. So our idea is to promote this and promote the research and development. And we are doing other strategies because we have very, very high problems, but for example, this week, we received the report from the students and the hospitals, that there is a lack of personal protective equipment. We make an effort before to provide them with equipment, but we need more equipment because the government doesn’t have the resources to provide them with equipment. They are in the last of the list and they don’t have even passing the vaccination for them. So we are fighting for them because we need them to be working in a, in a, in a proper situation, and then besides that the violence is very, very, very bad in Tijuana.

Speaker 2 (10:38):

So we need to protect our students because there are some, the bad, bad things happens in this in the past month, in which some of the students had been injured, and one of them has been killed, not in the university, but in Mexico. So we want to protect them because people is very biased against them because they think that they transmit COVID, or they’re not working as fast or as good as possible because they don’t have equipment. So we need to protect them. So the idea is that now we are dealing with politics, violence, pandemics world is so we can cut back on this one for our sense of doctors, so that they might study science, medicine, engineering, and maybe their children may perform art, music, poetry. They will enjoy the benefits of synthetic biology very soon. So I think this is a, uh, a big challenge that we have to overcome, and we are sure that we are going to overcome it. And after that, we can come back and do many, many good things in that sequence things. So that’s the overview of the situations.

Speaker 1 (11:40):

Carlos, it isn’t an inspiration. I am blessed. Uh, and, and my heart goes out to, to the situation that is going on there. It is really incomprehensible, um, from afar and, and, uh, you’ve given us, you know, a lot of insight into what it is to be there. And, and some things that I had never thought of or considered as, as collateral damage from the COVID era that we are living through, but how grateful we all are to see the work that you are doing and how you have redeployed every resource you can, your, your intellect, your, your team, your, thinking, um, your projects to, to meet this challenge. It is, it is incredible.

Speaker 2 (12:30):

Yeah. I think it’s time for, for us to help because we have resources, we have human resources, we have close to 1200 students, and they are willing to work. Sometimes it’s not safe for them, but they can work from home. And yes, they use the tele-health system. They can work from home so they can respond to calls. We don’t expose them to the virus, but they can help. So at the same time, our students are working at the hospital, so we have to protect them because sometimes they don’t have a protective equipment, but they are trying to do their best as possible.

Speaker 1 (13:03):

I mean, I, I think so many of us are trying to do our best, but the challenges that are being faced by you, you know, and, and all those around you are really just, as I say, almost incomprehensible, but, you know, thank you for, for giving us insight into what, what life looks like for you these days. It is, it is probably very different from what you had started doing there and, and thinking, and working on there. Can I ask you what, what personal sort of qualities or, uh, training have you found to be essential or, or meaningful and helpful as you have taken on these just tremendous challenges in your career?

Speaker 2 (13:58):

Yes. I think to be trained as an industrial engineer was very useful because we had a lot of models to optimization. So right now we are management resources, ambulance, hospitals, or medicine students. So we’ve got to, we have to do our best. So I think mathematics is very important. So you can use mathematics to use optimization models. Then we can use that those as a way to produce very intelligence patterns, so we can use intelligent use of resources. So that’s good. I am not using now my medicine training because I am not in the hospital, but I use in my electrical engineering, industrial engineering skills, using mathematics, that’s the

Speaker 1 (14:45):

Very broadly trained, a very cross trained faculty member, for sure. And I think it’s so interesting that you say math because it has come up on a couple of these conversations that behind biology is chemistry and behind chemistry is physics and behind physics is math. So when you go all the way back to the origin of where these disciplines come from, a solid appreciation and an ability to deploy math in a smart way is, is helpful for all of them. For sure. It’s interesting to hear you say that. Uh, yeah. Are there people that you are working with that you, you know, find complimentary skillsets or have been surprising collaborators in this moment?

Speaker 2 (15:36):

Oh, yes. Yes. We tried to do this, this telehealth system years before and I never heard that nothing happens, but we propose to do that this time, the government say yes, and in 24 hours, they got all the equipment ready. They get the computers, they got the telephone system and say, okay, yes, the persons, the, the people that we try to train them. So they respond very, very fast. And in order to establish our PCR testing lab, we use our faculty and say, we want to do this. We only have one PCR real time machine. We are going to use it as much as possible. And they start working from zero and in one week we have the lab work. So they are very fast. They are, and there are many people willing to help. Sometimes when we are asked for people to, can you help with protective equipment? I said, yes. And 24 hours later, they arrive at the hospital with N95 masks and protective gloves. The social response is impressive. So we can see that there are people doing their best, not only from the scientific side, from the social science. Yes,

Speaker 1 (16:42):

It’s so interesting because, you know, um, the, the speed with which the responses have happened during this COVID era is really an unbelievable, right. You look around and, and although I know Mexico is having a terrible time getting doses of the vaccine, the fact that the world has a vaccine in such a short period of time is really a triumph of, of science. And it took many people collaborating and, uh, saying yes to things that they needed to get done and working with people they had not worked with before doing things differently, to make those remarkable achievements possible. And it sounds like you are the catalyst of that kind of work in, uh in your town and in, in Tijuana there.

Speaker 2 (17:37):

And we have a lot of good people there. We have some people with the proper training our problem is the infrastructure. So I think the government needs to refocus everything. So we can have more emphasis in research and education, maybe in the next time, next pandemic, we will have the capacity to produce our own vaccinations to have better testing devices. And synthetic biology is going to be critical. I am sure that we have more, but in these right direction. So I think after this we will have a new, a new [inaudible] for synthetic biology, we may have some funding in Mexico because they, they know now that we have the necessity to do that,

Speaker 1 (18:17):

We do. It is a necessity. I do think that synthetic biology is the technology for this new century to meet these challenges. Because as you say, this is a, an incredible one, but it will not be the last one that we face. And so, um, I, I am very grateful that BioBuilder and synthetic biology have brought our professional careers, uh, overlap to overlap. And, we had a wonderful time working together when you, came in as a, as a teacher, to train with us at MIT in our summer workshop. And then you led a remarkable workshop in Tijuana for teachers there, in BioBuilder content. Um, do you want to share what you remember about that project? And about that time?

Speaker 2 (19:07):

I remember Rebekah was so, so happy and so enthusiastic. So we love her that she is the best teacher we ever had. So

Speaker 1 (19:16):

Rebekah Ragiala is one of our BioBuilder master teacher. She’s an incredible high school teacher working so very hard, and she loves teaching other teachers. We were very delighted that you guys could pair up and, uh, you know, uh, engage in that workshop in, in Tijuana.

Speaker 2 (19:36):

Yes. I remember the enthusiasm from the students. They are so excited. They want to do more. So I tried to contact, okay, let’s do that. That they went through so many things after this workshop, so yeah. And they go through that, they come back to their schools and say, and then spread the news. So that’s very much so more people know we are working on site.

Speaker 1 (19:58):

Yeah. I mean, you, you are an ambassador for this program and, and that you excite other teachers to teach synthetic biology is the greatest amplifier we could hope for. And you’re just such a wonderful teacher. Do you want to say a little bit about how you got interested in teaching? Um, cause clearly you have interests in great many things, uh, but you are a, a remarkable teacher, a wonderful, wonderful teacher. Uh, what led you to include that in your career?

Speaker 2 (20:34):

So I think that I start to love teaching when I was learning first aid. So after I got my first aid course in, in, in Rosalito, they allow me to get into an ambulance. So I was so afraid to make a mistake. So I want to learn more and after I learned more, I want to the other people have the excitement to help so I can see their eyes. Oh, I can I do that? So, so the nice thing to teaching is that sometimes you provided with tools or they, they use the tools and they just, those are use it to save lives. They are so happy. They feel fulfilled. So what I want, what I like more of teaching is their eyes. Their eyes is when they discover or understand a new concept. And that I discover that this is giving me happiness. So I say, okay, I am going to do this all my life because I want to spread the happiness of people shared with the knowledge. And they, after they have the knowledge, they can do things for others. So I think it’s a very good to have impact. So that’s the reason I love to teach.

Speaker 1 (21:37):

Yes, I could not agree more. It is such a joy when you hear the class just humming along and knowing that you have sparked something in the students who are in the room and teachers, when you train other teachers, it is particularly joyful because teachers are, are wonderful learners. And, uh, so, uh, I am looking forward to the time when we can be back in person and working, um, you know, in, in the same location. But, uh, I think that the online work at least gets us to, include people who wouldn’t normally be able to be in the room with us and students who couldn’t travel or be in the same location.

Speaker 2 (22:19):

Yeah. I think we’re going to access other people that doesn’t have the means to be there. So I think this opportunity to expand our horizon. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:30):

So before we close out a little bit, uh, just this, this conversation, um, are, are there things that, uh, you wish you knew when you were say in, in high school or younger before you, you went on this journey, this path towards, uh, this interdisciplinary work and the teaching, uh, and the, the social application of biotechnology

Speaker 2 (22:53):

I did, I wish to know more mathematics and know how to code, because that gave me a very, very, very powerful tool to do many things in many fields. So if I can come back and start, start again, I begin with mathematics and

Speaker 1 (23:11):

Well, all the, all the math, uh, teachers, have just, you’ve brought a big smile to their face. Thank you so much. It’s amazing.