Hemdeep (00:10)
Welcome to Big Ideas in Microscale, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking research happening at the microscale where microinnovations makes a big impact. We're excited to showcase the incredible work being done by our users from around the world who are pushing the boundaries of microfluidics, lab on a chip, organ on a chip, and beyond. Through these conversations, we hope to learn from their experiences, uncover their insight, and bring their big ideas to a wider audience. So whether in a lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of microtechnology, join us as we dive into big ideas at Microscale.

Welcome back to Big Ideas at Microscale. I'm your host, Hemdeep, co-founder of Creative Cadworks, Cadworks3D, and Resinworks3D.

Robin (01:09)
I'm Robin, co-host and technical writer of the marketing team. Last week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Veronica Mcdans and Noah Franco from the University of Waterloo. They shared their journey into the world of micro robotics and gave us a look at their groundbreaking research from non-surgical gallstone treatments to sperm-based robots and 3D bio-printed organ models. If you missed that conversation, go back and listen to the previous episode.

Hemdeep (01:34)
This week, we're back with Veronica and Noah to explore the challenges of balancing academia and industry, the value of failure, and how these were juggled and helped them with the validation process for cytoclear photopolymer resin, our newest 3D material here at Catworks 3D that was formulated for broad spectrum cell viability and biocompatibility.

Robin (01:58)
conversation about curiosity, persistence, and the real world process behind breakthrough ideas. So join us as we dive into big ideas at Microscale.

Hemdeep (02:08)
When you're learning a brand new topic or even sort of creating a brand new topic out of nothing, there's this level of expectation of success, but then there's an overwhelming expectation that none of it's going to work. How do you guys manage that? In our case, you you invest months and years into a topic and then it is all for naught. How do you manage those?

Veronika (02:30)
Yeah, I think for me, the strategy has always been that I never just focus on one thing. So I usually have two, three, four, maybe 10 different things going on. And you know that probably most of them won't work out the way I hope. But then we live off those little successes in that one project that does work out. And it's so exciting.

When you see things happening in the lab or trying out experiments that you've never tried out and nobody has ever tried out and you tried and it works, it's just so amazing. I think we live off those moments. And then on the other hand, we do draw experience also from different projects. So despite having so many different projects, we have a common theme, especially across the micro robot research where it's all about making therapies more targeted.

and more actively delivered. So that is true for like galsome treatment, but also a blood clot removal, kidney stone removal, even antibiotics delivery. Basically, like looking at the conventional treatment or also cancer treatment where you have drugs going into your whole body because you take them either by IV or oral medication and affects your whole body. And the idea is to just make

these therapies much more targeted and more successful and get rid of all the side effects. So that's one of the, I think, common themes for the micro robots. And the other important thing for us is that we go into completely new fields and that's the exciting part. And we're not competing with 20 other groups around the world that do the same stuff. Noir is probably the only one working on what he's working on. And so it's also a bit easier to be successful because whatever you get out, is a result. It's something you can share and it's worth sharing. So yeah, I think that way it's also exciting.

Noah (04:23)
for sure.

Hemdeep (04:24)
Considering that you're at the starting phase of your life in academia, how do you manage expectations and this level of failure or expected failure?

Noah (04:36)
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely scary, especially when you come up with something and you're really passionate about it. And that's the thing that you want to see work. You have to balance that with the fact that it's very entrepreneurial and when you make it a company and it's successful, that's the best thing ever, but they almost always fail. So I try and balance my expectations with the fact that it's okay if things don't work. But at the very minimum, we can at least make

like a framework for future researchers to build off of it. Cause you know, at the very minimum, I want to be able to introduce something new and unique that can be able to benefit the field. Right? So it was definitely scary, but it's the little steps that you have to like use as milestones to kind of keep yourself going.

Hemdeep (05:27)
What are the characteristics, would you say, that allow you to do that? Because, so for example, in business, you evaluate risk in a particular way. You either are adverse to risk or you're okay with it. You know, what are the traits in the field of academia? Like that really make a successful researcher and one that sort of may want to just continue doing the exact same thing day in, day out.

Noah (05:52)
Yeah, yeah, like you definitely have to have a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset to want to go and pursue something new. Yeah, I think that is definitely important if you're pursuing a project, but you don't have to. There's people who don't, there's people who just do their masters and their PhD and go into work, but having a project and having an entrepreneurial mindset will let you take it that step further to the point where it's more than just a degree. Our program, it's actually something you can call your own and something that could have an impact.

Veronika (06:25)
Yeah, I think it's also that curiosity that you have to really embrace and live out. That's where I usually see students be successful too, when they are really curious, they really own the topic and just go at it. Like just be super proactive. Just go to the lab, try out things. Don't read for three weeks and see, this could go wrong and this could go wrong. No, just go and try it out and learn on your own. That's where I see.

Like a lot of success coming out. And of course, failures too, but failures are never the mistake of a person. It's a failed experiment. It has nothing to do with me or with Noah failing. It's not our failure. It's just a result that we should consider and take serious. But I think it's also important to distance ourselves from the results in a way that this is not my self-worth that I'm dealing with. But the other thing I want to just mention that may be a bit different to what Hamdi mentioned.

you know, when you do your risk analysis and so on, we have the privilege and I really see that as a privilege to work in research that I still going to have my job tomorrow if my experiment fails today. Right? Whereas in a company, that's not a given. If you're not selling, right? If you if things are not going well, this really affects your company and your people. For me and Noah, you know, this is and like I said, this is a privilege being able to work off of research funds.

to have that freedom and curiosity and follow that. I think it's really an honor and that's sort of the way I see it for the research.

Noah (08:02)
Yeah, it's good you brought that up. then on the flip side, Hamdi, what's your thought on failure within the industry side of research?

Hemdeep (08:09)
You know what, industry, the number of failures that I've had, epic failures. We're talking failures that were setbacks of like, you know, a four or five year setback. That type of failure, we've done it. Through it all, it's been myself, my brother have co-founded things and the failures that we see and that we've done.

in retrospect, now that we're in our 50s and we look back, we can map it out where our shortcomings were, where we were navel gazing and we were not planning out, really strategizing for Epic Failure and we were very sick-headed and ⁓ all of our attributes that are really wrong, we realized that we had to modify that. so over the last, say, you

five or six years, we've gotten a lot better with really understanding what we have, what we don't have, where our gaps are. even, the one thing that I tell our team every day is the fact, well, maybe not every day, but it used to be every day. Now it's like once a week or once a month, we have this moment where we just sit down and we speak of what is our blind spots. It's a moment of reflecting on, yes, we may be doing X, Y, and Z well, but there is a spot where we just don't see

there are mistakes that are sort of compounding on each other. And eventually when you find it, it may be too late. So can we identify that? And so that seems to be the one big thing that we... But then in terms of risk, we're very, very poor in evaluating risk. We seem to run head first. I think even during our interaction for the last two years, there have been moments where I'm sure the two of you, and even before this with Lydia probably scratched their head and just said, God.

These guys are just... What are they doing? Why are they doing it this way? This is not the way that you're supposed to do things. It's almost our fabric of the way that we function. I do believe it's a fault, but we haven't killed ourselves. We've nearly burnt down my mom's home. We nearly burnt down our office that we used to be at in the city itself. when I mean burnt it down, we almost burnt it down. There was a fire. There was a alcohol. ⁓

Noah (10:22)
3D printer.

Hemdeep (10:23)
So there was a material that my brother was sort of manufacturing and he goes, look, you know what? This thing has got amazing components and you know how we have to use IPA to clean our models. So we were on this large workbench right beside a wall and the workbench itself, you know, there's a very thin layer of IPA on the workbench. We didn't notice it, but my brother wanted to sort of take a model and light it just to sort of showcase.

And he didn't realize it, but a drop of it fell on the bench. And we didn't notice anything until this blue flame just right up the wall. And we're like, no.

Robin (11:04)
Was that your mother's house or was this going into office?

Hemdeep (11:08)
no, this was at the office. My mother's house, we burnt her kitchen. When we were, I was 13 and my brother was nine, we burnt her kitchen. She was away at work. I kid you not, we burnt the ceiling, the stove hood. And then like a typical 13 year old and nine year old, we proceeded to invite all of our friends with paint and brush and we repainted my mom's ceiling.

Robin (11:38)
Can stress cause gallbladder? Because gallbladder stones? Because I think we know where it came from.

Hemdeep (11:45)
It was the best thing. My mom came home that afternoon. So we did this all in the afternoon. So we burnt the kitchen at around noon. By three o'clock, we had the place painted. It was in the summer and my mom's coming home and the house has paint fumes everywhere. We've opened all the windows. We've got fans going. My mom walks up the street and says, what happened? Why are all the doors open? We go, don't worry about it, mom. were just trying to...

We were just airing the place out and she goes, why are here? we go, well, oh, we decided to paint this area. She goes, why would you do that? And so it didn't dawn on her that her sons would have decided to pull this. She goes upstairs to her bedroom and she notices that there is smoked soot that had fallen on her bed. That's how much we lit the place up. And she came down and she just had it.

She chased us down. It was epic. And that's the starting of a great relationship, right? This is how you find your co-founder. That's the story of my life.

Veronika (12:52)
You've been doing this business for a while now. How many years have you been working with your brother?

Hemdeep (12:57)
Oh my God, I think forever in a day. I joined my dad's business when I was 23. He then joined our business when I was 27. So 27. So we're now closing in on 30 years together.

Veronika (13:12)
Amazing. Did you ever have a point where, because you described you had also lots of down downhill times or failures. Did you ever have a moment where you were going to fold it and say, that's it.

Hemdeep (13:25)
I don't know about Foldit. think we really were wired in this way of like, okay, so what do we do now? Actually as a team, what do we do now? Nice. You know, we've had major deflection points. The one that we had in 09 is when my dad had passed away at that point. That was a really big change in where we sort of reorganized ourselves. And it was in 09 that we took up 3D printing. We self-taught ourselves CAD design.

At that time, it was a really big reset in our life. when we looked at it, we looked at it as, okay, what do we do now? Don't recall any time ever, Sarah saying, I don't know, maybe I need to sort of list part ways. I don't know if that ever crossed my mind. We've had many moments where we didn't connect in terms of strategy, but then we really started designing our businesses where, okay,

You're really good at this in this business. is our CTO. So he manages, you know, whether it's all the technology side, the photopolymer manufacturing formulation and all of that is his. And I do all of the business side and I have a very good understanding of what happens on the technology side, but that's not the thing that wakes me up in the morning. way the thing that wakes me up in the morning is trying to distill.

complicated processes or technologies into a format that can be understood by a wide range of people and that also excites them. you know, when I connected with your team two years ago, it was purely on this, oh, wow, this might be interesting. This is something that we'd done before. We had done one with a collaboration with the U of T in 2018.

I did a collaboration with the Majid team from UTS Sydney in 2018-2019. We really enjoyed those collaborations. And it's so funny when our collaboration happened, I had approached a couple of teams prior to that. And I think they sort of looked at us and they're like, oh, what do you guys do? And we explained what we wanted to do.

but there wasn't a keen curiosity or interest. We thought, okay, well, maybe it's not the right time. And then you guys came along and it was a really good opportunity and a good relationship that I think we've built over the last couple of years.

Robin (15:58)
So how did that actually happen? Like how did you find out about Cowards 3D? Like were you searching for something?

Veronika (16:04)
So I started as assistant professor here in Waterloo in fall 2022. And it was a big change for me. I came from Barcelona and had done my postdoc there at the Institute for Bio, Catalonia Institute for Bioengineering. I had to start building my network in North America. And as you probably know, one of the big funding opportunities in Canada is in collaboration with industry and their

programs like Mitacs that really support that. I was looking to build a network with industry, with companies that are also interested in doing research together. And there was a call from Mitacs that was going to support collaborations in the biotech field between academic research and industry.

So I was looking for local companies, but really I didn't know at all the area. And I was talking to my colleague in Barcelona and she said, I think we just bought a printer from a company that's really close by. And I said, really, what's their name? This creative cut works and passed me on the contact. And I wrote an email to Hemdeep and you wrote back right away and said, sure, let's talk. And I was really amazed about.

the interest in doing collaboration with us, because it's not a given. Often industry has, you know, runs differently, has different interests. But I think when we were brainstorming, there were a few topics right away that we could see there could be some common interest. So yeah, we started going into our first Mitacs collaboration and now we're onto our second one and they are expanding. So it's been really great.

Robin (17:45)
So when the collaboration first started, actually how far along was the site so clear in development?

Hemdeep (17:54)
it was on the shelf at that point. At that time, it would have been on a shelf for about, I'd say three years. We had it running. We were very happy with it, but there was some significant shortfalls that we noticed and we wanted to get it validated. There were a lot of steps that were still left to do and it really wasn't on our radar at all. There was a sort of, ⁓ we should get to it.

But think when that email came in, in fact, it's so strange. Veronica says it was a conversation that she had already had with Barcelona. I had got an email from a student in the UK that came to us and said, I'm going to be at Waterloo. Would I be able to intern with you as the ⁓ industry with Waterloo? And so that's where our connection happened.

And then at that point, it sort of dawned on us that, you know what, what about that clear material that we've been sort of kicking around for the last three years? Is that something that we can sort of bring to the table and see if we can sort of push it through and figure out if we can get it validated, really understand what do we have on hand? And that was the starting point for us. We were very excited when that email came in that there was an opportunity because ⁓ up until that time, as I said, we had a couple of conversations with some teams across Canada and there wasn't a lot of reciprocal curiosity about what we were doing. And so it was like, okay, all right, maybe we might have to sort of wait a bit longer for that ideal partnership.

Veronika (19:33)
Thanks.

Robin (19:33)
So I have a lot of follow up questions about this, but for now, we're going to have to wrap up today's episode and continue this conversation next week. That's it for today's episode of Big Ideas on Microscale.

Hemdeep (19:44)
A big thanks to Veronica Magdez and Noah Franco for joining us. In today's conversation, we explore the challenges of balancing academia with industry collaboration, the importance of failure in innovation, and how Veronica, Noah, and my work led to the inception of Cytoclear.

Robin (20:04)
If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to join us next because we look into the iterative journey behind the development of the cyto clear. We'll explore how multiple versions of the photopolymer resin were tested, refined and improved in close collaboration with the McDan's lab.

Hemdeep (20:20)
Veronica and Noah will share their hands-on experience navigating both setbacks and breakthroughs as they test its cells on 3D printed microfluidic chips and explore the resin's potential in medical diagnostic and point-of-care devices. We'll also reflect on the vital role of perseverance in research and the exciting possibilities that lie ahead for Cytoclare.

Robin (20:41)
Thanks for tuning in to Big Ideas of Microscale. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to follow us and stay up to date. You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch the full video on YouTube. You can also follow us for more updates and behind the scenes content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky, and X. We're Cadworx3D across the board. Let's spell C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S 3D.

For show notes, paper references, and bonus resources on today's topic, visit our website, catworks3d.com. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S 3D.com. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, stay curious, keep exploring, and never stop asking the big questions that are shaping our world. Whether you're in the lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of technology, join us as we continue to dive into big ideas of microscale.