Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

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What if the reason we haven’t explored deep space isn’t because we can’t… but because our engines are fundamentally too slow?

Richard Dinan is Founder and CEO of Pulsar Fusion ( https://pulsarfusion.com/ ) and one of the few entrepreneurs in the world not trying to bring fusion power to Earth… but to space.

While most fusion startups are focused on powering cities, Richard is building engines designed to power spacecraft—fusion propulsion systems that could dramatically cut travel times to Mars, unlock missions to Saturn’s moon Titan, an...

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What if we could build a fusion reactor that runs continuously—without the instability issues that have plagued the field for years?

Brian Berzin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Thea Energy ( https://thea.energy/ ), a next-generation fusion company focused on advancing stellarator technology—one of the most promising but historically underexplored approaches to magnetic confinement fusion.

Brian brings a unique combination of deep technical and financial expertise, with a background spanning electrical engineering, venture capital, private equity, and investment banking. 

Prior to founding Thea Energy, Brian serve...

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Imagine treating back pain not with surgery, not with opioids—but by using your own stem cells to repair the damage at its source.

Lance Alstodt is President, CEO, and Chairman of BioRestorative Therapies, Inc. ( https://biorestorative.com/ ), a publicly traded regenerative medicine company focused on developing stem cell-based therapies to treat highly prevalent conditions, including chronic lower back pain and metabolic disorders.

With more than 25 years of experience across healthcare investment banking, medical technology, and company building, Lance brings a unique perspective at the intersection of science and ca...

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We’re living through a golden age of rare disease breakthroughs—but for many patients, the hardest part begins after the drug is approved.

Today we’re joined by two leaders from the multinational biopharmaceutical company UCB ( https://www.ucb.com/ ) who are helping reshape how the rare disease community thinks about what happens after a therapy is approved—because for many families, approval is just the beginning of the journey.

Dr. Kim Moran, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President and Head of U.S. Rare Diseases at UCB ( https...

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Whether it’s a battlefield, a construction site, or a farm, the challenge is the same: how do you turn massive amounts of visual data into fast, accurate decisions? Increasingly, the answer is autonomous systems. transforming how we see the world—turning raw imagery into decisions at unprecedented speed.

Bill Irby is CEO and Board Member of EagleNXT ( https://eaglenxt.com/ ), a leading provider of full-stack drone, sensor, and software solutions serving both commercial and government customers worldwide.

Bill brings more than 25 years of leadership experience across the unmanned syst...

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Preventing transplant loss doesn’t just save organs—it could eliminate hospitalizations, reduce lifelong medications, and transform millions of lives.

Dr. Janine Gaiha-Rohrbach, Ph.D. is a globally recognized leader in immunology and medical strategy, currently serving as Head of Global Medical Immunology at Biogen ( https://www.biogen.com/ ). 

With a PhD in Immunology and Virology from the University Hospital of Berne and extensive postdoctoral research at the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard, Dr. Gaiha-Rohrbach has dedicated her career to translating complex scientific advances into high...

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Pharma has spent decades building a graveyard of failed drugs — but hidden inside that data may be treatments that actually worked… for someone.

Vin Singh is Founder and CEO of BullFrog AI ( https://bullfrogai.com/ ), a company working at the intersection of machine learning, causal modeling, and drug development.

BullFrog is focused on a fundamental problem in biopharma — not just how to analyze increasingly large datasets, but how to extract meaningful cause-and-effect relationships from them. Their platform integrates data preparation, analysis, and network-based modeling to help research teams better unders...

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Bone marrow transplants have always depended on finding the right donor at the right time. But what if bone marrow could be stored, shipped, and used on demand—just like a drug? That’s exactly what Ossium Health is now showing in human clinical data.

Kevin Caldwell is the Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Ossium Health ( https://ossiumhealth.com/ ), a clinical-stage bioengineering company pioneering off-the-shelf, cryopreserved bone marrow therapies derived from deceased organ donors.

Under Kevin’s leadership, Ossium has developed a novel platform designed to solve one of the mo...

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Lyme disease affects hundreds of thousands of people every year—and yet we still struggle to diagnose it, treat it, and prevent it.

David Walsey is a strategic biotech leader with more than two decades of experience helping public life sciences companies translate scientific innovation into market impact. 

As Executive Director of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation ( https://www.bayarealyme.org/ ), David leads national efforts to accelerate research, improve diagnostics, and expand access to effective treatments for Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses—an area of growing public health urgen...

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There’s an entire medical specialty, Physiatry, dedicated not to treating disease - but to helping patients regain their lives. And most people have never heard of it.

Dr. Michael Yochelson is a Physiatrist and a nationally recognized leader in rehabilitation medicine and brain injury care ( https://shepherd.org/staff-directory/michael-yochelson/ ).

Dr. Yochelson serves as the Chief Medical Officer at Shepherd Center, one of the top hospitals in the United States for spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Emory University School of Me...

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For decades, male birth control has remained one of medicine’s most elusive goals. Now, a new non-hormonal pill is entering human trials—and could finally change the balance of reproductive responsibility

Akash Bakshi is CEO and Co-Founder of YourChoice Therapeutics ( https://www.yourchoicetx.com/ ), a company working to develop the first hormone-free birth control pill for men.

Akash’s work sits at the intersection of biotechnology innovation, reproductive health, and social change. His team is advancing YCT-529, a first-in-class non-hormonal contraceptive currently in human clinical trials, designed to safely...

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There’s an animal that can rebuild its entire body structure in just a few days—and it might hold clues to a new kind of medicine.

Eden Ben is CEO of Amorphical ( https://www.amorphical.com/ ), a pioneering biotech company out of Israel that’s been quietly building a completely new approach to mineral-based therapeutics.

Founded in 2004, Amorphical has developed a proprietary nano-formulation of amorphous calcium carbonate—what they call ACC—engineered using biomimicry principles inspired by how certain organisms naturally stabilize calcium in highly bioavailable forms.

What m...

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What if AI didn’t need massive data centers—and could think more like the human brain?

Sean Hehir is the Chief Executive Officer of BrainChip ( https://brainchip.com/ ), a pioneer in neuromorphic computing and ultra-low-power artificial intelligence hardware designed for intelligent edge devices.

At BrainChip, Sean oversees the commercialization of the company’s Akida neuromorphic processor—an advanced AI chip inspired by the architecture of the human brain. Akida enables real-time machine learning and pattern recognition directly at the edge, dramatically reducing power consumption and latency compared to traditio...

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Norberto Chaclin is Executive Vice President, Chief Research & Development Officer of Mondelēz International ( https://www.mondelezinternational.com/about-us/leadership/executive-team/norberto-chaclin/ ), a global snacking leader with 2025 net revenues of approximately $38.5 billion, driven by iconic brands such as Oreo, Ritz, LU, Clif Bar and Tate's Bake Shop biscuits and baked snacks, as well as Cadbury Dairy Milk, Milka and Toblerone chocolate. 

Norberto most recently served as the Company’s Senior Vice President, R&D, Global Biscuits and Regional R&D partner for North America. Under his leadership, Mondelēz rolled out excit...

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Adam Molnar is Co-Founder, COO and Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Neurable ( https://www.neurable.com/ ), a pioneering neurotechnology company developing real-time brain-computer interface systems that translate neural signals into actionable insights.

Over the past decade, Adam and his team have been working at the frontier of non-invasive EEG-based brain-computer interfaces, building technology capable of measuring cognitive states such as workload, fatigue, and attention directly from brain activity. Neurable’s platform has attracted over $40 million in funding and has led to collaborations with organizations including the U.S. Air Force, th...

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Modern warfare is changing—and it’s not just about weapons anymore.
The real battle may be logistics, and autonomous systems are about to transform how wars are fought and sustained.

Brandon Florian is Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Grid Aero ( https://www.grid.aero/ ), a venture-backed aerospace and defense startup building low-cost, autonomous aircraft designed for long-range operations and resilient logistics.

Brandon has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of aerospace engineering, national security strategy, and emerging defense technologies. His career spans engineering, busi...

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Greg Fallon is the CEO of Geminus AI ( https://www.geminus.ai/ ), a company developing real-time, physics-native artificial intelligence designed to operate complex industrial and energy systems. His work focuses on combining engineering simulation, machine learning, and physical laws to create AI systems that can reason about and optimize real-world infrastructure under uncertainty.

Before founding Geminus AI, Greg held leadership roles at Autodesk and Ansys, two of the world’s leading platforms for digital engineering and simulation. Across more than two decades in industrial technology, he has worked at the intersection of...

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Artificial intelligence and robotics are rapidly transforming surgery. In this episode we explore the future of the operating room with Medtronic’s vision for the AiBLE ecosystem and the newly cleared Stealth AXiS surgical platform — technologies designed to integrate surgical planning, navigation, robotics, and real-time intelligence into a single system.

Vignesh Shetty is Vice President of AI and Product Development at Medtronic Cranial and Spine Therapies, where he leads the convergence of AI, Robotics, and R&D for the company’s $6B Cranial and Spine portfolio, with objectives of moving beyond standa...

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Dr. Javad Shabani, Ph.D. ( https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/javad-shabani.html ) is Professor of Physics; Director of the Center of Quantum Information Physics ( https://as.nyu.edu/departments/physics/research/center-for-quantum-information-physics.html ); Director of the NYU Quantum Institute; and member of the Affiliated Faculty, NYU-Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Global Innovation and Research Institute ( https://www.nyu.edu/research/nyu-kaist.html ).

Dr. Shabani’s team of engineers is focused on building hybrid semiconductor–superconductor systems designed to make quantum bits — or qubits — more stable, scalable, and ultimately practical.

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Tara Austraat-Churik is a Partner at Blue Matter ( https://bluematterconsulting.com/ ), a strategic consulting firm serving the life sciences industry, bringing new approaches to consulting with original ideas that deliver a meaningful impact. 

Tara began her career as a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she prepared strategic assessments for senior policymakers, Cabinet officials, and members of the intelligence community. Trained in structured analytic tradecraft and foreign denial and deception, she worked in environments defined by incomplete information, high stakes, and institutional bias.

Tar would l...

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For most of the history of computing, software systems were written by humans and—at least in theory—understood by humans.

But with AI coding assistants now embedded in everyday development workflows, we may be entering an era where large portions of production software are generated, modified, and extended by machines.

Pramin Pradeep is the Co-Founder and CEO of BotGauge ( https://www.botgauge.com/ ), an autonomous “QA-as-a-Solution“ company focused on using AI to improve software testing and observability in modern development environments.

Pramin’s background sits at the inters...

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Kabir Nath is Chief Executive Officer of Compass Pathways  ( https://compasspathways.com/ ), a biotechnology company pioneering evidence-based psychedelic innovation for serious mental health conditions.

Kabir brings nearly three decades of leadership experience across the biopharmaceutical and medical device industries. Before joining Compass, he served as Senior Managing Director of Global Pharmaceuticals at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., and previously as President and CEO of Otsuka’s North America Pharmaceutical Business, where he led the development of therapies and digital solutions addressing complex mental health needs. Earlier in his career, he held senior leadership rol...

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Lacey Stone is Chief Development Officer at USA for UNHCR ( https://www.unrefugees.org/about-us/ ), the U.S. partner of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR - https://www.unhcr.org/ ), the UN Refugee Agency.

UNHCR is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights, and building better futures for refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people. It provides life-saving assistance (shelter, food, medical care) and works in over 130 countries to ensure safety and human rights, often deploying within 72 hours of a crisis.

Lacey is a mission-driven...

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Dr. Tomasz Beer, MD is a nationally recognized medical oncologist and clinical research leader who serves as Chief Medical Officer for Multi-Cancer Early Detection at Exact Sciences Corporation ( https://www.exactsciences.com/ ), a molecular diagnostics company focused on the eradication of cancer by preventing it, detecting it earlier, and guiding personalized treatment.

Before joining Exact Sciences, Dr. Beer spent decades at the forefront of academic oncology, including serving as Deputy Director of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute, where he helped build one of the country’s leading pr...

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Dr. Sharron Gargosky, Ph.D. is Chief Clinical Officer of Spinogenix, Inc. ( https://spinogenix.com/ ), a clinical-stage company pioneering a new class of therapeutics designed to reverse synaptic loss and dysfunction in the brain.

Spinogenix is advancing two first-in-class oral small molecules. Tazbentetol is a synaptic regenerative therapy shown to regrow brain synapses — the vital connections between neurons. Clinical data have demonstrated rapid and significant improvements in memory and thinking in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as clinically meaningful slowing of disease progression in ALS. The therapy is also being evaluated in s...

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Paul Woodward ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2813295/ ) is a filmmaker, storyteller, and advocate whose deeply personal work has touched audiences around the world.

Paul is the producer of the feature documentary The Little Things ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZDDw4yYl_w ), a film that invites viewers behind the doors of Derian House Children's Hospice ( https://www.derianhouse.co.uk/ ) — not to witness sadness, but to witness love and the remarkable humanity that unfolds in the most challenging of circumstances.

Inspired by his own experience as a pa...

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Dr. Allison Reiss, MD is an internal medicine physician, molecular biologist, and educator whose career sits at the critical intersection of inflammation, cardiometabolic disorders, and neurodegeneration.

Dr. Reiss serves as Associate Professor of Medicine and Head of the Inflammation Laboratory at the NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine ( https://medli.nyu.edu/faculty/allison-b-reiss ).  She is also a Member of the Medical, Scientific & Memory Screening Advisory Board of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

For more than 25 years, Dr. Reiss' research has explored how immune and metabolic dysfunction con...

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Dr. Kevin Rynearson, Ph.D. is a medicinal chemist and translational neuroscientist focused on developing disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

Over more than a decade, Dr. Rynearson's work has centered on the design and optimization of gamma-secretase modulators, an approach aimed at altering amyloid biology in a safer and more physiologically balanced way than earlier generations of therapies.

During his time at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Dr. Rynearson helped advance mechanistic understanding of gamma-secretase activity, tau phosphorylation, and structure-activity relationships guiding next-generation Alzheimer’s dr...

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Thomas Hamilton is a Board Director Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance   ( FARA - https://www.curefa.org/ ), Co-Founder of the CureFA Foundation ( https://curefafoundation.org/ ), which supports diverse and innovative research strategies aimed at curing the disease, and the Founder of FA212, LLC, an organization pursuing a novel gene therapy strategy designed to address both central nervous system and systemic manifestations of FA.

Thomas' journey into rare disease advocacy began not in a laboratory, but at home when in 2013, his nine-year-old daughter Annie was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia — a rare, progressive neuro...

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Dr. Ben Hwang, Ph.D. is Chairman and CEO of Profusa ( https://profusa.com/ ), a pioneering bioengineering company developing tissue-integrated biosensors designed to continuously measure key chemical markers within the body. Profusa’s mission is to make our body’s chemistry as accessible as heart rate or step count — transforming personal and societal health through real-time molecular insight.

Dr. Hwang has spent his career at the frontier where life science tools, digital systems, and global markets intersect. As an undergraduate research fellow in the laboratory of systems biology pioneer Leroy Hood at Cal...

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Donna Letier is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gardenuity ( https://gardenuity.com/ ), a gardening and well-being company dedicated to helping people grow healthier lifestyles through accessible, personalized gardening experiences.

An entrepreneur with a background spanning consumer brands, hospitality, and lifestyle innovation, Donna launched Gardenuity to bridge the gap between everyday wellness and nature — making gardening approachable even for people without outdoor space, time, or prior experience.

Under her leadership, Gardenuity has pioneered customized container and desktop gardening systems designed to support mental health, stress reduction, nutrition, and meaningful daily ri...

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Susie Singer Carter ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Singer_Carter ) is an award-winning filmmaker ( https://www.gogirlmedia.com/ ) and caregiver advocate with a powerful new docuseries, No Country For Old People ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0F7D1RR5X/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r  ), a Gold Anthem Award-winning exposé on nursing home neglect and the systemic failures facing America’s elderly. Through film, podcasting, and activism, she has become one of the most compelling creative voices in Alzheimer’s awareness and elder care reform.

Susie first...

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Dr. Karsten Eastman, Ph.D. is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sethera Therapeutics ( https://setheratx.com/ ), a company focused revolutionizing peptide-based drug development with a cutting-edge enzymatic cross-linking technology, and their platform enables the synthesis of highly stable, polymacrocyclic peptides designed to engage multiple targets simultaneously, offering unparalleled precision in therapeutic design.

Trained as a chemist at the University of Utah, where he earned his PhD in 2023, Dr. Eastman has built his career at the intersection of peptide synthesis, protein engineering, and radical enzymology. His work focuses on understanding how enzymes...

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Why do some scientific breakthroughs begin with ridicule?
In this episode, we explore cancer research, serendipity, and the philosophy behind unconventional biomedical innovation.

Dr. Alexander Shneider, Ph.D. is a biotech entrepreneur and scientist with more than three decades of experience spanning oncology, immunology, vaccines, and translational medicine. He is the Founder and CEO of CureLab Oncology ( https://www.curelaboncology.com/ ), where he is leading the development of a novel biological agent designed to fight cancer through a dual approach—stimulating anti-tumor immunity while also addressing the chronic inflammation that of...

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Antimicrobial resistance is a systems failure — not just a prescribing problem.  

Olivier Niyonshima, Founder of ZeroX Intelligence and Medikal Africa, explains how NVIDIA-backed edge AI infrastructure is transforming healthcare across Africa.

Olivier Niyonshima ( https://olivierniyonshima.com/ ) is the Founder and CEO of ZeroX Intelligence ( https://zeroxintelligence.com/ ), a Rwandan–Canadian AI company focused on building practical, production-grade technology for healthcare, agriculture, and education across Africa.

He leads Medikal Africa ( https://www.medikalafrica.com/ ), an AI-powered clinical intelligence platform designed to combat antimicrobial resistance and strengthen digital health syste...

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Dr. Raza Bokhari, MD ( https://www.razabokhari.com/ ) is the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medicus Pharma Ltd. ( https://medicuspharma.com/ ), a precision-guided biotechnology company focused on accelerating the clinical development of novel and potentially disruptive therapeutic assets designed to transform the standard of care.

A physician turned serial entrepreneur, Dr. Bokhari has built a distinguished career identifying, aggregating, and advancing life sciences, healthcare services, and pharmaceutical R&D companies. He is also the Managing Partner of RBx Capital, LP, an investment fund dedicated to biotech and life sciences...

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Nishant Rastogi is the inaugural Managing Director of Lupus Ventures ( https://www.lupusventures.org/ ), the venture investment fund of the Lupus Research Alliance ( LRA - https://www.lupusresearch.org/ ), where he serves on the Investment Committee. In this role, he leads all aspects of the fund — from sourcing and evaluating opportunities to structuring deals and managing the portfolio — while overseeing team recruitment, business development, and coordination with the fund’s Investment Committee and Scientific Advisory Board.

Lupus Ventures is the world’s only venture fund dedicated to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rela...

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Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has rapidly entered drug discovery — but one of the true “holy grail” challenges inside pharma is no longer just predicting what proteins look like, but understanding how molecules actually interact: how proteins bind drugs, antibodies, RNA, and each other, and how those insights can guide better decisions long before anything reaches the lab.

Early breakthroughs in structure prediction made protein models widely accessible, but real biology happens at interfaces, in motion, and often in fleeting conformations that determine whether a therapy ultimately succeeds or fails...

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Meduza documentary interview with director Roc Morin.

A Ukrainian actor who once played a sniper on screen is recruited as one in real life—this conversation explores how war reshapes identity, memory, and meaning.

Roc Morin is a filmmaker and journalist whose work explores the intersection of conflict, culture, and the inner lives of people living through historical rupture.

He is the director of the documentary MEDUZA, which follows Ukrainian artist and actor Pavlo Aldoshyn, who became a sniper when the full-scale invasion began in 2022—drawing, uncannily, on s...

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Join us for a deep dive with Dr. Sonia Grego, scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur at the forefront of redefining human health through everyday biological data.

In this episode, we explore how Dr. Grego’s groundbreaking work with Coprata’s smart toilet platform is turning stool into actionable health insights — passively, seamlessly, and in the comfort of your own home. We discuss biomarkers, gut health monitoring, and how cutting-edge sensor and AI technologies are making preventive medicine more personalized and accessible.

Dr. Grego is Co-Founder & CEO of Coprata and Director of the...