Community in the Time of COVID

Jolie is back on the podcast with her supervisor Josue Moran, who is the co-founder and VP of Research and Development at Angstrom Bio. Angstrom Bio is an Austin-based biotech company that is using Amplicon sequencing to revolutionize diagnostics, which Josue and Jolie explain in detail. Angstrom Bio’s ultimate goal is to develop a diagnostic tool that is more efficient and sensitive, so that one test tube can detect multiple viruses and variants at a faster rate, instead of requiring multiple tests for each virus. They are also able to test more patients at once, so the work that they are doing is incredibly valuable on many levels. 


Angstrom Bio is a start-up that was conceived in response to COVID-19, and Josue shares the company’s journey from their initial pivot to work on diagnostics, to moving from St. Louis to Austin, to finding a community of entrepreneurial scientists that helped them scale and grow. Josue and Jolie met through the Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator lab space, and Josue shares how Angstrom Bio found lab space at ABI through a company called Tevido, highlighting the unique community of entrepreneurs in the biosciences here in Austin. Josue and Jolie share the journey that Angstrom Bio has been on over the last 2 years, and explain how crucial ABI and Austin’s community of entrepreneurs and ecosystem of resources and like-minded scientists was to their development. 


Jolie explains how she was able to use her experiences at ABI to start her career as a Research and Development Scientist, and Josue and Jolie talk about their shared mindset about what they’re looking for in their team members. They highlight the importance of being fearless and being willing to test and fail and never give up. They close out the episode with advice for people who are interested in a career in the biosciences, vouching for the importance of networking and finding creative ways to “prove” your skills and character to hiring teams, whether it’s through an internship or a volunteer opportunity or in the classroom. 


Learn more about Angstrom Bio


Learn more about ACC Bioscience Incubator


This is a founding_media podcast.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.