Natalie Kuldell (00:04):
Hi Zeke. Thank you for joining us today.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (00:07):
Thank you for the invitation.
Natalie Kuldell (00:09):
I always like talking with some of my dear friends who are doing really incredible work and you and I are connected in educational mission, so this is especially fun for me to think not only about science, but also about education. So, with that as a preamble, maybe you can introduce, miniPCR, what you’re doing, what your role is there and what you’re doing with it.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (00:35):
Sure. I started miniPCR bio company with a friend and scientist, Sebastian Craves. We started this in 2003, with a goal of, sorry, not 2003, it was 2013. No, I was in grad school in 2003. I’m sorry. Our goal was to bring all the cool science that happened while I was in grad school and that happens every day in labs across the world, to more places and, particularly the classroom. There are barriers to do science in the classroom beyond the chaos of a school. Not the chaos, but the hecticness of school. One of them is equipment. Another one is having the resources, the reagents, the curriculum – obviously BioBuilder is a pioneer in that.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (01:46):
We started with the idea of making things more accessible and easier to use, and robust for the classroom. As you may have guessed from the name of the company, we started by trying to make a small PCR machine. PCR machines amplify DNA, and that’s sort of a basic step in any biotech microbiology experiment. PCR machines are typically expensive, they’re big and they are not designed for teaching. It’s more for a scientist that knows what they’re doing and we wanted to bring that more into what’s going on when you’re doing this. So, we made the machine transparent and we have software that helps the student or the user see what’s going on inside the machine.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (02:52):
We started there and then obviously we realized this is not the only thing that makes it hard to teach science or do science in low research or remote places. Then we added an electrophoresis system, which you use to view the results of your PCR. Again, it’s a similar idea: it’s all compact, it’s all in one, it’s safe and it’s inexpensive. Our company tries to do that in general, to make science more accessible. We also have a lot of experiments that students can do in the classroom.
Natalie Kuldell (03:33):
It’s so funny, I’ve often felt that BioBuilder and miniPCR are like close cousins, because we are motivated in so much of the same way: the idea of bringing authentic science, modern biotechnology into the hands of people and demystifying it. I think I have one of the earliest of the miniPCR machines that you ever made. It’s beautifully transparent and easy to use. You guys were just a delight to work with as we started to integrate it into the teaching we do. So, I I’ve often felt that we are quite connected in our mission and on our goals around education for science and that more people should have access to it.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (04:25):
That was one of the very first. I remember going to your office and I was very nervous. <laugh>
Natalie Kuldell (04:35):
I wasn’t gonna bring that up.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (04:37):
I was even doing the right thing, trying to make this little machine, but you were so excited actually, that helped a lot.
Natalie Kuldell (04:46):
That’s so that’s so nice to hear. I wasn’t going to bring it up because I do remember you brought me a replacement cord because the cord I had wasn’t working. I think that also pulls back the curtain a little bit on the leap of faith it takes to start an educational venture like this. You’re a PhD scientist, I’m a PhD scientist, and yet, the idea of starting an organization to help bring science education into the world is a scary thing to start and is out of our comfort zone, let’s say. So, I remember you coming to my office with the earliest among the earliest of prototypes.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (05:29):
We’ll buy back from a museum. <Laugh>
Natalie Kuldell (05:35):
Can you brag a little bit about how far miniPCR has come because you guys now are just astonishingly impactful across the country and in terms of education. So, here’s the floor. Tell me what you’re proud of from miniPCR.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (05:55):
This started with just the idea of making something very small. It wasn’t even supposed to be a company in the very beginning. I think what I can brag about is we get emails from teachers on a weekly basis, just thanking us so much for giving the opportunity to do what they want. When you see that come in your inbox, I brag about it internally. That’s very rewarding and I think people really appreciate what we do. When we go to conferences, teachers are really excited.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (06:53):
We hear stories, from middle school through college, about how this enabled, not just classroom, but also field use. Sometimes by students, but many times by scientists that need to go somewhere where they can run this off the grid. That happens in the US, but also typically happens far away. Amazon is an example. We have someone setting biodiversity, go there, collect samples, amplify them and then put them in a sequencer. And identify right where they were and know the species that were around the site.
Natalie Kuldell (07:44):
This is incredible. This point of use PCR machines is just awesome. While we’re talking about placing them far afield, you also put them up into space if I’m not mistaken.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (07:56):
Yes. We have actually a few machines in the international space station and they made their way there through a partnership with Boeing, the same company that makes the planes. They have an aerospace side of the company. We met at an accelerator here in Boston called MassChallenge and, we’re both excited about what we were doing. They were trying to expand what they could do in space with microbiology. They didn’t have a PCR machine, so we decided, okay, we’re going to send one but what are we actually going to do with it? So we thought, why don’t we ask students? We put together this competition called Genes in Space and each year we ask students to think about questions that would advance space exploration, and that can be solved with DNA analysis. We get entries and have a bunch of mentors, often grad students here in the local area. We get together, we review applications and we go through a series of steps and presentations, and then eventually we select a winner. We help the winner prepare the experiment and then we launch it to space. We just launched one last month.
Natalie Kuldell (09:32):
That’s so exciting, and what an impactful moment that is for a student to have an idea realized, and not only realized here, but to think of it running up in space – that’s just incredible.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (09:49):
Yes, it is. It’s also something way beyond our initial expectations. This is real science, being done on the space station. All of this ends up being published in peer review journals and it’s very, very exciting for everyone involved. The mentors also love it. There’s only one winner like in most competitions but we also put a ton of resources on the website (genesinspace.org), including fun interviews with NASA scientists and mentors. It’s a nice resource.
Natalie Kuldell (10:42):
Incredible. How many years has it been going? I have forgotten now.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (10:46):
It’s five, I think? Or six? Yeah, it was actually very early on that we started. Yeah.
Natalie Kuldell (10:52):
That’s awesome. I wanted to back up a little bit and ask you, because you are a scientist as well as an entrepreneur because you’re running this incredible company. So, I’ll just back up and ask about your starting interests in science and the way that you got led into science. And then maybe from there go into entrepreneurship because we have students who will watch this and are maybe at that stage where you were when you were thinking of science as a career.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (11:24):
Yeah. Well, I think I was about 13 when my dad, he worked at a pharmaceutical company, and he had received these magazines and I tended to read these little things. There was one little article about genetically modified cotton at the time. When I heard that, I thought that’s so cool that you can actually make things better. I know tinker may not be the right word because we do things very conscientiously when you touch DNA. But I thought, no, that is so powerful. I was interested in biology in general so when I finished high school, I went into undergrad in Argentina, where I’m from. So I studied there for about four or five years, biology, like a lot of biology. Then I really wanted to do research. I think that’s the exciting part and it was very hard to do in Argentina. So I transferred to the US and I finished undergrad, where I spent most of my time in the lab, not in classes.
Natalie Kuldell (12:46):
Where was your undergraduate lab?
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (12:49):
It was at Stanford and was a lab that did research, in it’s dermatology department. So we did epithelial research. I guess my dream was to go into lab and then have a lab on my own, ideally be a scientist all my life. I think once you have your PhD, you’re a scientist for life. Then I came to Boston/Cambridge and I went to MIT for grad school. I studied genetics in tiny worm called C. elegans. At the time there was this very exciting new molecule called MicroRNA. It’s tiny, tiny pieces of RNA that do all sorts of cool stuff. And they were just essentially discovered at that time, the class was discovered at the time. There were many and that were in humans. I was very excited about that and I spent longer than I should have in the lab studying this. Fortunately my PI, my boss, was very flexible. He didn’t want to force you to stay and he didn’t force you to leave. So it’s up was up to me to decide when enough was enough and that took about eight or nine years.
Natalie Kuldell (14:30):
You know, I think it’s probably a surprise to students to imagine, to be motoring your own boat through school, and that you can decide to stay or decide to leave, given certain constraints about how far you’ve gotten on a project. You can continue there or you can decide to move on to the next step and that it’s in your control, right? It’s not like you go 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th. You can choose when you’re in graduate school and control a little bit about your career as a graduate student. Partially because you’re on a fellowship or your salary is covered. So, it’s not that you’re paying tuition every year.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (15:10):
Yeah, that’s fundamental. When you go into grad school, you are not only paid tuition, but you get a stipend, which is enough usually to live fine. Now, I lived okay as a student. I didn’t have kids to take care of, but it’s a very fun time because you’re really doing absolutely what you love and the lab is open 24/7. You can go whenever you please – at night, morning – different people have different ways, and it’s very flexible. You can decide to maybe take the next step and go to a biotech company or go to a consulting company. There are many things you can do after grad school.
Natalie Kuldell (16:06):
Yes, and you chose a very difficult route, which was entrepreneurship. So, your transition from the bench into running a company, what was that like?
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (16:18):
I don’t know that I chose it. You know, I told you, I always wanted to be a scientist and have a lab by the end of grad school. I said, well, maybe that’s not for me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. What I did is, I took a year off. I went on a long trip with my family, thinking when I came back, I’m going to know what I want to do. <laugh> That didn’t work. I was still debating what do I like to do in life and I went to work with some friends that had a small engineering firm, and they did stuff completely different – all sorts of random, cool projects. They welcomed me there and I worked with a couple people trying to develop this small PCR machine.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (17:21):
They actually had already thought about it. There was a biologist there. So, I spent a year, mostly it was like an internship for me, to try to see if I liked engineering and building things. I did, and after a year I had a prototype, it didn’t look very different from the one you have, Natalie. But then I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. That’s when I met with Sebastian. Actually, we were friends and met in college in Argentina and we just happened to cross path again. He had actually left grad school a lot earlier than I had. So he had gone into consulting for quite a few years. And he was thinking that he had enough of consulting, but what to do?
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (18:20):
So, we got together and talked about this machine. It’s like, well, let’s see there’s interest in this. We actually went to a professional development session at MIT and there were lots of high school teachers. They gave us two minutes to talk about what we were doing and they were really excited. That’s sort of how we got into it. None of us has a business background but that’s how entrepreneurship started for us. We have a small machine that people like, now, what comes next?
Natalie Kuldell (19:00):
That’s great. I mean, the impact that you’ve had is so tremendous. And it started with a good idea and some smart, small steps in the right direction. I think that sometimes people think they need to have the whole vision laid out. Like, their whole business plan and whole revenue model, and I think especially with startups, it’s sort of a keep going in the right direction and then you’ll get to a good place. It certainly seems that way with you.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (19:30):
Yeah. Honestly, we had no business plan. Really no clue. We didn’t know we were going to be doing that for a week, a month, a year or more. It was like, well, let’s try it. And it actually did take a while to get started, especially where you have to manufacture something. If you think about all that is involved there, it’s like buying the right parts – they’re custom. Someone has to build them, and it was us in the beginning, even though we didn’t know how to solder and things like that. So, we were building this stuff as we went. I think we both shared the passion for science. I think we see this as a science experiment, as you know, we’re doing science not just building machines. So, that kept us going and it took a couple of years really, which is the two of us for over three years. Then things started picking up and we started growing the team.
Natalie Kuldell (20:44):
Yep. Finding and bringing good people in at the right time because there’s only 24 hours in the day. And if there’s only one or two of you, you’re limited in how you can scale. So, finding that right moment to just expand what you do. I think that’s a hard part about being an entrepreneur and knowing all that. I mean it’s worked out great.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (21:08):
It’s worked out. There’s probably not a right or wrong way. This is how it worked and we’re very excited every day to come to work and we have our team. We have engineers and we have teachers and scientists, that’s part of the team, so it’s a really great place to be. And we have idea sessions where we just think about what’s next.
Natalie Kuldell (21:39):
Well it’s inspirational and I hope that anybody who looks at the work that you’ve done and thinks about possibly starting a company can see that it’s not an easy path, it’s not a clear path, but it’s a doable one. There are successes like yours and I hope they’ll take inspiration from pursuing something you think is important and something you are excited to do, and making it happen.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (22:11):
Yeah.
Zeke Alvarez Saavedra (22:14):
I’m happy to talk to anyone. Natalie, you can share the information afterwards. But yes, I think being a scientist, to me, is one of the best decisions I could have made. It’s not just about doing experiments, but about how you think about things and how you approach problems. I think that helped with the company to do things very rationally. It’s almost everything I said before, everything is an experiment. After doing grad school, you know that many of them fail and that’s fine. Keep pursuing the ones that work.
Natalie Kuldell (23:01):
Right. I think that is exactly right. And what a good note to close the conversation on. I think it’s really an inspiration and obviously you guys will continue to do great, great things and I’m excited to have BioBuilder and miniPCR collaborating where we can.