884: Investigating the Physics of Ultra-Fast Movements in Animals and Developing Low-Cost Scientific Tools - Dr. Saad Bhamla

Introduction and guest background

0:00Thanks for joining me today for episode 884 of People Behind the Science. I'm Dr. Marie McNeely, and this week I'm excited to reshare our interview with our guest, Dr. Saad Balmla. Listeners, Saad is working to develop very low-cost scientific tools and medical devices that are accessible and affordable worldwide. Another area of his research examines how animals are able to move very rapidly, as well as how organisms can form aggregates that can sense their environment and share information. Through his research, Saad is using engineering

0:33to solve problems and help people. In our conversation, he shared some fantastic stories about his life in science. So get ready to meet another one of our brilliant people behind the science. Every day, discoveries are made that will change our understanding of the world around us. Dr. Marie McNeely is here to bring you the brilliant minds who are making these discoveries so they can share their incredible stories and take you on an amazing journey. Welcome to People Behind the Science. Hello, everyone, and welcome to People Behind the Science. Today, I am thrilled to be speaking with

1:17our guest scientist, Dr. Saad Balmla. So, Saad, welcome to our show today. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much, Mary. I'm so happy to be here. We are delighted to have you with us today, and I'm looking forward to chatting with you and learning more about you and your work. But let me first start by giving our listeners a little bit of background here. So, listeners, Saad is assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech. He received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and his PhD in chemical engineering from

1:50Stanford University. Afterwards, Saad conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University, and he was awarded a Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioengineering. In addition, Saad has been awarded a National Science Foundation Career Award, a Beasley Design Award, MedGadget's Best Medical Technology Award, an award from the Index Project, an Innovation in MedTech Award from the American India Foundation and Stanford University, the Centennial Teaching Award from Stanford University, and the Milton Van Dyke Award from the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics. Saad has also been awarded an Excel Innovation Scholarship,

2:23and has been named a National Geographic Explorer. And in our interview today, Saad is going to share more about his life and research. So, Saad, we're looking forward to hearing more about the science, the work in your lab, but also more about you. So, can you start by telling us what do you like to do with your time when you're not doing research?

Running and ideas

2:40Saad, usually outside of science, one of the things I really enjoy is running. And the reason I discovered running is as an undergraduate in India at IIT, the chemical engineering faculty in a capitalist course one day said that we won't have lecture on one of the days because she was going to be out running a marathon, a half marathon in Mumbai. And that was the first time I had heard about that. And I inquired, what is a half marathon and why do you run? And kind of that got me hooked. And slowly, we had a running club over there and I started running. And I kind of realized that it is such

3:14a wonderful thing to do, especially as it allows you to cogitate on ideas. But anyways, the initial thought that somebody would cancel a lecture just because they had a half marathon was a very shocking concept. And now I can see runners take their running quite seriously. And it's really a complementary thing to some of the things we do in science, because it's not as cerebral, however it is, but on kind of a back burner. So that's something I really, really enjoy, especially now with my dogs, we go out on long runs and process some of my ideas,

3:45especially if I'm stuck in writing for my students. If I need to help them brainstorm something, it usually lubricates the thought process a bit. Oh, absolutely. So have you done marathons and half marathons yourself? Yes, I have done half marathons, graduated up to a full marathon, and then wanted more challenging things. So I've done sprint triathlons. And now I'm back to just running. I think there's a little bit more challenging. I was in California while I was doing it in Atlanta. Running is the only thing I can squeeze in and kind of have to pick and choose my passion.

4:17Oh, definitely. Well, it sounds like a fantastic way to, like you said, clear your mind, get outside, take a break a little bit from the science, because you are working hard in the lab. And I'd love to talk about your research next. So how do you describe it, Saad, to people who aren't familiar with your work or your area of science?

Frugal science and organismal physics

4:33Saad So there are two parts to our science, and one is very easily accessible that you and I can explain to my family. And the other one, not so much, but just takes a little bit of explanation. So in the first part, which is the more accessible, we work in this philosophy of frugal science. And here really our motto is to develop really, really low cost scientific tools and biomedical devices to broaden the accessibility and the affordability of scientific instruments,

5:05whether it's for diagnostics or for STEM learning. Examples that help provide some context for what we mean by frugal sciences. In the past, we built the $1 centrifuge, which has helped in diagnosing anemia, malaria, and other infectious diseases, as well as low cost, 50 cent elect operators that enable synthetic biology, as well as drug delivery. Recently, we have a paper coming out on a $1 hearing aid to address the high costs of hearing aids. So that's basically channeling my drive as an engineer to address and to build stuff with my skills to help society. Now, the other hat,

5:41the other part of our science is really curiosity driven on biology and organismal physics. So here, we are asking questions about how do organisms move really, really rapidly. So we study spiders in the Amazon rainforest. We study single cells that can squish their bodies, the cells that don't have any muscles or nervous system, but they can sense their environment using mechanical properties, as well as communicate with each other over long distances. We study how worms form aggregates, we call them blobs,

6:12and how we can leverage this to understand how to create collectives. So these are the aspects that slightly go outside the realm of an engineer. But I think at the end of the day, we're all just curious scientists and we want to understand what makes things tick and how nature does something extreme. And that's kind of what we're driven by. Oh, definitely. It sounds like curiosity is a big driving force than for you in your science. And I love hearing a little bit more about what motivates and inspires scientists and curiosity is often a key theme. But do you have particular quotes or sayings or just things that really resonate

6:47with you and get you motivated? One of the quotes that really motivated me was, actually, it's two of them. One comes from Einstein that everybody would know and kind of when asked how he describes his talents, he referred that he's just passionately curious. And that's kind of one of his main talents. I'm probably botchering up his exact verbatim quote. And the other stems from Muhammad Ali, who was a reasonable role model because of his very courageous and bold stances that he would take. And really, that stood out to me,

7:20because I see that as a parallel for scientists today that we can't just put our heads down and focus on one aspect. But he was being boxed into really being just a boxer or a sports, but he was actually making commentary on the social and political aspects. And as scientists today, we recognize how critical that is that we are scientists first and then the science can be humans as well. And that's kind of in our discussion and your title of your podcast. So Muhammad Ali's quotes about being the best that we envision in ourselves is most important in doing things, not for what we care about,

7:52what other people think that we should do, but really, what should we care how other people think we should behave, and why we shouldn't be disruptive or what boxes society puts on it. So being a little bit conscientiously rebellious, I think is critical and shouldn't just take the excuse that, oh, I'm a scientist, I shouldn't comment on other things, or most of our role models go beyond their own disciplines, whether it's sports or science. Absolutely. I think how you interpret it and how you apply it to your own life is super important. And you mentioned this idea of being a multifaceted person. And I think you're absolutely right.

8:25Scientists have all of these different parts of their lives coming together, and you can find role models for your science and for all these other areas of your life as well. So I'd love to talk about maybe some of the people who motivated or inspired you. Muhammad Ali is a great example, but are there others who maybe have had a big impact on your career or your life? Muhammad Ali throughout our journey. And I think everybody has this at different stages of our lives, different people inspire, and we kind of take the best version of that self to become, as we get inspired and motivated by people, I would look up to people and say, oh my gosh,

8:56when I grow up, I want to be just like that person. And in trying to imbibe that, some of those aspects would rub off. And then as you mature, or you go into something different, you'd find another person. And so you become this hodgepodge, and you become the best version, which has some aspects of all these different folks combined into one and then your unique aspects. Along the lines, being in academia for, gosh, more than a decade now, early on, scientists had such a huge impact because of their ability to be so humble and just so curious about their science. And this was important

9:27because the context was I was in India, and really to see that happening there and scientists driven by their ideas was just really powerful and made a big impression on a young person. Obviously, there is always looking up to some of the folks on a slightly bigger global platform, if you might, from Muhammad Ali to Bill Gates, thinking about how people think beyond just fame, or how to capitalize huge financial gains to now turn into addressing grand challenges. And that can

9:58be whether disease or it can also be inequity in social aspects really revealed to me and kind of imbibed in me that we have to always oscillate between. And that's what we do in science, focus on a very small question, that's our expertise, but then have to thread it and think about it on the context of the bigger picture and think beyond just ourselves and our labs and our universities into education and scientific equity on a broader scale. In terms of kind of looking up to people, you mentioned that already at a young age, you were inspired by scientists there growing up in India. Can you take us back to the beginning,

10:32Saad, and tell us maybe a little bit more about how this interest of yours maybe in science or engineering initially developed?

Formative experiences in India

10:39So I think one key instrumental person that really set me on the spot is Dr. Ashish Lele. He's a scientist at a national lab in India. And I had applied for this really competitive fellowship in India to work in a summer at a research lab. And he selected me and he kind of gave me a project. What I enjoyed is at that time I wanted to be a computational biophysicist. And he said, yeah, no, this is the problem I have and it requires an experimentalist and that's what you're going to do. I was like, okay. Oh, wow. Decision made.

11:11Yeah. I was like, all right. And the problem he gave me was a very weird problem. It was at that point elevated to his attention by a bread making company. And the question they were asking is, look, we have all these different kinds of grains that we get across India. We want to understand the consistency of dough so that we can measure its properties really scientifically and systematically. So we can, in scaled up in our machines, we can distinguish which type of different breads from flat breads to noodles to other kinds of breads, how to tune it because the properties of

11:45that dough, the individual components from starch, gluten and water, those combinations really mattered to the final texture and the shape of the properties of the final product. And typically it was done is some of these experts who would know the property of the dough by smell, touch, and these would be the chefs and they would just know by experience of decades. So they wanted to convert that into a scientific instrument so that they didn't have to depend on one person and their intuition. So he gave me that challenge. And the tool we use was, it's known as rheology. Really, it's a understanding of how when you apply

12:22a force or deformation to a material, how it behaves, and you can calculate its stress modulus, its viscosity, and other complex properties. So I was fascinated because this was such a real world problem. And he had given me kind of an open area and there was nobody else that had no mentor. And he just said, go. And to me, as an undergraduate, I was like, oh my God, I get to work with the faculty directly. Like I get to report to him and play with this half a million dollar instrument in India. There was so much trust, right? After my training, I was allowed to work. And he said, I don't care. I'm not going to take

12:53attendance. You can work at night. And so that's what I did. Because in the daytime, the postdocs and the graduates would hog the machine, but at night it would be free. So I completely switched my cycle and said, okay, I'll sleep in the day. I'm going to come at night. And I would work all night. He would come in at 8am and I would show him what I had done in the night. And then he'd give me some feedback ideas and I'd go back to sleep. And then at the end of the day, I would check in at 6pm when he was just closing off and heading out and he would check in with me. And then I felt, oh my gosh, this is such an amazing way to do science, right? It's like a 24 hour

13:23productive cycle. I had such a ball. There were accidents where I had left some dough initially and mice infested the lab. I forgot that sometimes on experiment, things can attract the unwanted pests. And any case, it was such a formative moment. I had so much fun. I was so obsessed. And I was like, ah, I want to do science for the rest of my life. So that's the one that really picked this whole thing off. And I said, yes, I found my calling. Oh, that is amazing. So then how did you ultimately find your way there to Georgia Tech? What were some

13:56of these key steps along the way? I think the next step over there, after I had finished one internship, I went back working with him because it reminded me as I was interacting with him that this was in my second or third year of undergrad. And I realized that in science for me, the scientific problem mattered. Of course, it's important, but the scientists matter so much. So that's why I was so excited. I keep coming back to how amazing your podcast is called People Behind the Science. And this is what I tell my students. Remember, the scientific problem is important, but we have to choose our mentors and advisors and PhD advisors based on who they are,

14:31because it's a long time relationship. And to me, I just love the way he thought and our interaction. And to me, that was so uplifting and motivating that I just wanted to work with him, no matter what the project. So I went back with him and I did two more internships with him once I had found somebody who kind of believed in me and gave me a chance. And after finishing,

Path to Stanford

14:53I had to come back and think about grad school. I think it's usually around this time of the year, September, October, when undergraduates are in their last semester. I was in the parking lot. I just walked into his car and I was going to take a bus to come back to Mumbai. And I talked to him about grad school. And I said, I think I should go to grad school. I think I like doing this. I want to keep doing this. And he said, yeah, you should. I said, do you have any recommendations on where I should apply? I was thinking of some second tier schools. I thought that was where I was. And he said, Saad, you should apply to Stanford and MIT. I was like, what? Geographically to me,

15:27this kid in this parking lot in Pune, India, this scientist telling me I should apply to Stanford and MIT. I was like, holy smokes. I didn't see my potential at that time as much. But to see somebody else say that, I went back and told my dad, I think this guy is crazy. He's telling me to apply to Stanford. And my dad's advice was, sometimes we don't see our own potential, but somebody who has that much experience and they've seen enough of scientists. And if they say something, even if you don't believe it, just take his word for it. Believe in what he is seeing for you.

15:58So I applied to Stanford and got in and really, I owe a lot of gratitude to him and his belief in me more than what I saw in myself at that time or imagined what was possible. So that led me to Stanford. My advisor there, Jerry Fuller, really was instrumental and allowed me to play around and do a lot of fun things from soap bubbles and other adventures. So I did a PhD, which I had envisioned. And I remember telling my advisor at that time, Jerry, what I wanted. And then that led

16:32me to one day, as I was deciding what I would do after my PhD, I saw this TED talk by a guy who had built a low cost microscope. And I saw that and I said, that's the philosophy. And that's kind of where I learned about from real science, from Manu Prakash, who's a faculty member at Stanford in bioengineering. And incidentally, we were in the same building at Stanford in the Shriram Center in the basement. And I kind of went outside his office and knocked on his door and said, I have to work with you. I need to understand how we can build low cost tools to address grand challenges. So I worked

17:07with him for two to three years, I built this low cost centrifuge there, really had an amazing time at Stanford. And that was when as we transition out of the postdoc, look for faculty position, that led me to Georgia Tech. Phenomenal. And I know at Georgia Tech, you have so many cool projects, you sort of hinted at it in the beginning of our conversation today, you've got a couple different lines of research there. Is there one particular project, Saad, that you are just so excited about at the moment that you want to tell us more

Worm blobs and robotic collectives

17:34about? So most recently, we've been after this challenge with these worm blobs and thinking about how do you make an active material that basically can conform different shapes and can achieve a task. And so we have these worms that we discovered in the lab that can form, aggregate, and the worm blob can be, imagine these spaghetti-like structures that can entangle and form. Like when you go to eat ramen, you have this big blob. That's basically the length scale and size scale of how big these

18:06blobs can get. But we can also make worm blobs as big as 500,000 worms. It reminds me of my undergraduate studies research with dough. It's just like a ball of a silly putty or dough. However, it's alive. So it can move and change shapes. And if you put it in a structured environment, like a 3D printed staircase, it'll climb or it can flow through tubes. Also, it can do interesting things like solve mazes. So we're trying to understand how do you have information traveled with this? How does something like this collectively behave? And we're applying this with a collaboration

18:38with Professor Dan Gold, who's actually somebody you've noticed you've interviewed. And I enjoyed listening to your discussion with him on people behind the science. He's a faculty at Georgia Tech, and he works with robotics. And so we've teamed up with him to understand how can we build robotic collectives that you don't have to program each individual them. But emergent behavior happens when you put a bunch of them together and they can do something useful for society. Oh, this is so cool, Saad. And I think we could talk all day, but I think I'd love to touch on the

19:09challenges because this sounds like a difficult problem to solve. There are so many challenges you encounter in science and engineering, whether it's failures, struggles, or just scientific challenges with experiments in the lab. So when you think about your own career and your own experiences, are there particular challenges that really stick out or maybe big failures that you had that you can tell me and our listeners about?

Overcoming setbacks in research

19:29This is an interesting topic of discussion because I'm on Twitter quite a lot for scientific reasons, because most of the people I follow are scientists and graduate students and postdoc. And we discuss a lot about people getting grants and publishing in journals and their science, but very rarely are discussions about grants being rejected or experiments not working. There are setbacks that happen. I don't know why it is, but it's also important because it kind of gives this skewed perspective. And I've had the same struggles as everybody else, whether it's for

20:00grants or scientific experiments and major failures to me. Everything seems major at the moment when you get a paper rejected. It seems so major. It seems like, oh my God, this is it. This is the end. And then you sleep on it or you go for a run. And then you come back the next day and you shake it off and you continue trudging along. And there are challenges I've learned based on our work. For example, in the worm blobs, it's a really challenging system to work with. And you have to attract people to work with worm blobs. It's not an easy thing. And for a long time, we were challenged

20:33to find somebody who was not so squeamish, who would work with worm, because everybody is excited to look at it from outside and say, oh, that's a great idea. And if you tell them, you have to work on this for a year or so. So knuckles deep in worm blobs. Yeah, I know. It's the stuff of nightmares. It's like in science fiction, there's never a hero who's made out of worms. It's always the evil can evil thing. So it's a challenge, right? And on our project with slingshot spiders at the Amazon rainforest, I hired a postdoc, Simone Alexander. And when we started, we flew all

21:07the way down to the rainforest to see these spiders. And once we landed in Lima, she tells me that she's scared of spiders. I said, no, you had to wait all these months to tell me this. And it's the same reason that I wanted to be there as a kid. We all are excited to go to the rainforest and discover and study new things that she was driven by the same things that sometimes we overcome something that seems like a major setback. And now she's a spider ally. I think all of these we take in our spirit of growth as we grow both as a human being,

21:37but also as a scientist. And I think that's important. Always remember that what seems like a major setback in a couple of days, weeks and years just seems like a tiny blip and things work out. The important thing is just to keep moving forward. And I always remind myself that even the best scientists I work with, gosh, their papers get rejected. Their grants get not funded and their experiments don't work. Everybody I've seen has a drawer filled with widgets and gadgets and experiments and data unpublished that just didn't work. But the important thing is it's like you have

22:09to keep moving on. It's the numbers game, right? It's like one or 10% of things work. So you have to do a hundred things to get one or five things to work. I think that's what keeps me going from things that set me back. Definitely. And I think, Saad, having that positive outlook and that perseverance to just keep going in the face of these struggles and challenges is so important. And I'm curious, you mentioned some of your students or postdocs have had these maybe challenges with things they were squeamish about that they had to overcome. Was this the case for you? Were you a little squeamish with the worms and the spiders at first? I actually love it. I even show my infant some of my experiments. When my dad visited,

22:44I showed him and I love organisms. So I will take anything I can get. Even things like bullet ends that can hurt you to me are just fascinating. How can organisms in such a small package do such extraordinary things? For me, the lens is that if we could understand even a fraction of how these things can do such incredible things, we could design such amazing things. So I love them. The crazier, the messier, the better. I think we shouldn't shy away from things just because of a perception.

23:15Definitely. Well, I love your fortitude there. We touched on some of the challenges that you've encountered, but I'd love to talk about these successes. I think, Saad, you have so many to celebrate, whether they're big wins or even just small but meaningful victories in the lab there. So do you have a favorite success story of your own?

Studying slingshot spiders

23:32I'll share a general philosophy and then I'll share a specific success. We've now learned in academia as we published that publishing is such a long journey that we never went to celebrate because you finish a paper and then you submit it to a journal. Should you celebrate then or not? Then you put a preprint out and then should you celebrate or not? And when the reviews come back and then when it actually comes out, it's like a year from them and you've kind of moved on and done a second project by then. It really doesn't make sense to celebrate it, but you still want to celebrate it, especially if

24:03somebody asks you about that project. So what we've decided is we basically have a beer and celebrate it every step. Reviews are great. Let's celebrate. Reviews are bad. Let's celebrate.

24:15There's an opportunity to just enjoy every step and that kind of is our lab philosophy. Now we've learned that we can't wait for one defining moment where we have arrived. The fact that we get to do this is what our reward is. So we just use every tiny opportunity. It's like figure done. Oh, let's celebrate. Awesome. So that's kind of the small successes. And I think it's just important because even when our undergraduates win a small, tiny amount, I think it's a success because in their world, at their scale, gosh, it's like a big, unlocking achievement. So we celebrate that

24:49together. I think the most recent success that we were excited about is the spider paper that just came out, I think, a couple of months ago or maybe a month ago. I've lost my ability to discern time in 2020. Yes, me as well. Oh my God, I can't believe it's September. Yeah, this was a special story for me because this is kind of the first organism in my lab that we studied and I was obsessed as I started my faculty position. I said to myself that I'm going to do the science I care

25:19about, irrespective of whether I have funding or not, whether I'm an engineer or not, I want to go and study this thing. So I did this and now this paper to me is really a special pleasure and a labor of love because I was able to do this with Simone and be able to do it irrespective of whether we had the funding. And it kind of, I was motivated and driven by the fact that we would get the funding later, people would recognize good science and we have this idea that we should wait and do it when we have tenure or we have X or Y. And that even whether you want to do some other aspects of your job, we're always in

25:54this thing to wait and say, oh, we're not there yet. When I become so-and-so, I'll do it. I think we're all important. We were empowered in a specific way and we should just do things instead of just waiting. So that is a testament that I'm thankful for that I persevered and didn't say, oh, I'm only an assistant professor in my first year. I should do projects that people expect me to do. So it seemed pretty crazy at that time to tell people that I'm going to go to the rainforest and study spiders. So in any case, that was special for me. It was a personal victory. Well, congratulations to both you and Simone on this success. I think

26:26the work that you did on that project was phenomenal. And you were specifically, was that the paper looking at the acceleration of these slingshot spiders? Yeah, we discovered that they make these triangular, three-dimensional webs that they use as a spring to launch themselves. And really how they actuate and really trigger these structures is just incredible. And the spider silk material is one of the highest power density materials, larger than some of the synthetic actuators we looked at, like carbon nanotubes or something like that. So it really changes the perspective of how you think about

26:58spider silk and spiders and what they're capable of. It's amazing and a bit terrifying, I think. Well, the spiders are launching up insects and not humans, and that's the only solace for us. Right. Well, congratulations again on the success. And as you alluded to, I think in science, you are constantly immersed in the work, digging through the literature, trying to learn more and more so you can continue advancing your research. But we like to encourage our listeners out there to take a step back and do a little reading for fun as well. So Saad, do you have a favorite book

27:30that you've read, whether it's related to science or not, that you can recommend for all of us? I recently stumbled upon a book and it's interesting because it has to do with spiders and I'm pulling up my Audible. So I really love Audible because I do a lot of reading for papers and we all do, right? So we're always staring at our screens and apps. So Audible to me is just a great way. And of course, I'm not being paid by them. Sure. But I think audiobooks is great because it allows us to run and do other things, but use our other sense to ingest information. The book I'm currently reading,

28:02and I'm just in love with is called Children of Time. And it's interesting because the science fiction and describes a planet inhabited by spiders and really how spiders have taken over the amazing things that they're doing and communicating with satellites. I am so enthralled to think about a planet just with spiders who have evolved and doing all these incredible things and giving me so many ideas. And as a science fiction writer, the author is really coming up with clever ways to examine how they're exchanging information and communicating and defending and exploiting

28:37technology. And it helps me think about questions for our slingshot spiders and it gives a different perspective to think about organisms. Oh, very cool. We will add Children of Time to our reading list on our website for all of our listeners to find there. And as you mentioned earlier, you've had some amazing opportunities to travel for your science. Going to the Amazon rainforest is one of them. Are there other opportunities for travel that were just your absolute favorite? Or was that it? There's another one. And if you had asked me maybe a year ago, I would have told you, obviously, all our work in the rainforest, that we've been to Madagascar for the Amazon rainforest,

29:11and those are special. But the most recent one that was special for a slightly different reason, I think that's also important for folks to think about academia as a career. So I met my partner a couple of years ago, and we were just dating. She told me, I'm planning to go to Egypt because that was her childhood dream growing up as a young girl in Alabama. And she thought, oh, I want to expand beyond just Alabama and the South and explore the world. And Egypt was something she wanted to go to watching all these BBC documentaries and national graphics. And so when we got married, I had the opportunity to apply for a conference. This was the

29:47National Academy of Engineering Frontiers conference in Egypt. So I applied for it thinking, Oh, what a reward it would be to take my young wife and fulfill her childhood dream. And the reason this is important as academics, we don't do things because of money and success in the conventional way. However, having said all of this, apart from all the perks of doing science and enjoying it, one of the underappreciated things is that as scientists, we get to travel a lot. Oftentimes, it's paid because we get invited to give talks and conferences. And I think that's a

30:19really nice thing because we get to interact with scientists all across the world, but also explore different cultures. And so I didn't know if I could ever take my wife to Egypt on my own time. But as part of a conference, I was able to take her to Egypt. And as a husband, it's one of my proud women to help fulfill somebody else's dream. And it's a small win. I'll take it. Oh, I think that's a big win. So were you able to explore and see some cool things while you were there? Unfortunately, for majority of the time, maybe 90% of I was in the conference doing science while she was out exploring the pyramids and having a ball. But I got to see that she got to do what

30:55she wanted to do was enough. Oh, definitely. And how was the conference, I must ask? Oh, my God. It was amazing. In fact, we have one or two collaborations with some of the connections we made. And there are two levels of interaction. One was obviously the scientists. They were from Lebanon, Egypt, all across North Africa. And the second one is recognizing some of the challenges that some of the folks in the community are facing, whether it's in refugee camps, infectious diseases, and political challenges, as well as climate change. So oftentimes, we're so

31:30engrossed in a very Western-centric world. And to be able to go there and to recognize, one, that scientists and students over there are fighting and doing things that they best can. And the same thing, they can't just isolate the science from the world around them. But second, really, the tremendous challenges they face. There were stories about this colleague I met over there. She was explaining that to do her experiments, electricity is a challenge. And we know all of this, but still really recognize how they're doing. And some of the outreach we do, for example, is at high schools. For them, outreach is a very high, meaningful thing where they're going and

32:04teaching kids in refugee camps. Like, to me, the level is so much different than the passion I saw in some of the scientists over there. And how they do their work is just very inspiring. Definitely. I think it really makes you appreciate some of the amenities that you have in your own lab and the opportunities that we have here in America. We're so fortunate. And that's why some of our field work, whether it's for frugal science or doing some of these art, personal science, I take my strengths because I think the context is so important. That's why, for example, our low-cost hearing aid, we did field work in Lima, as well as in

32:35India, just to provide some context for who are we building, who is our customer, and what is the real-world challenges they face with. So I think empathy goes a long way in understanding and thinking about solutions and problems. Definitely. And I think you are solving some amazing problems in the lab. And you've had an opportunity to work with some incredible people over the years, whether it's your students, postdocs, collaborators, colleagues. And I think in science, there are often stereotypes about what people are like and maybe what life as a scientist or engineer is like. And we try to break those on

33:06our show by talking about these human moments in science, the different personalities that you see, the quirky traditions, and perhaps we can touch on maybe the super happy fun time in your lab. But do you have examples of maybe these human side of science elements that people may not realize are part of it?

Lab culture and mentoring

33:23I think the super happy fun time is an activity we call SHFT. And this is the tradition we started in our lab. And it's for the same reason that you're saying our lab is so diverse. We've got people from all walks of life. We've got folks from India, obviously, I'm from India, but from the Middle East, from Africa, from the US, and different parts of the US too. And it's a whole divide. So lab meetings are the first one person will lead the scientific aspect. And we used to do it and realize that the science brings us together. But we have to also acknowledge that as a second layer and as a

33:57lab, as a community, we needed something. And I kind of stole this from somebody else who was doing it. And I realized, oh, gosh, this is such a wonderful idea. And I'm gonna steal it. And we incorporated in our lab. And this is what we call super happy fun time. So after the science, one person is designated to do some activity, which is basically non science related. So examples of this, people will go around asking questions like, oh, what's your favorite food and why? And most recently, we talked about, oh, if COVID hadn't happened, where were we planning travel and what we would eat. And through this, we start realizing people share stories about missing,

34:31they haven't seen their grandmothers, and they miss their grandmothers cooking, whether they're from the Caribbean, or whether they're from Lebanon. And describing some of the yearnings is basically the same, irrespective of who we are, we care about our family, our communities, things that we think about when we are really, really down is really the food that our grandmothers cook. And to see everybody saying similar things brings us closer. And one of the unanticipated things of these super happy fun times is that we do this all. And lots of times, all group meetings

35:03are not about, oh, everything worked, and I figured out a model that lines up with my experiment. It's like, shoot, I tried 10 different things, and all 10 things failed. Bummer, that's basically my update. Now, that leaves a very strange taste in our mouths, right? Because they're like, oh, gosh. But we wash it all away with super happy fun time, because we're like, all right, okay, moving on. And I think that's basically our antidote for recognizing that science is basically 10 steps backward, and then one step forward. But at the same time, we have to provide other ways to bring ourselves together and tell everybody, look, it's okay, we're all in the same boat.

35:38And to me, this is great. Because even if great things happen, super happy fun time just elevates it. We just wash it all away. And before we leave, we all just talk about personal stuff or play a game. Sometimes it's some puzzles online people will find or before COVID, we used to do puzzles together. It brings out all these personalities about people and words and what words mean in German versus Chinese and what their names mean. I think it's just so wonderful. We're growing together closer as a community because of this. Definitely. Well, this sounds like a

36:10wonderful tradition in your group. And I love that you brought together these people from all different backgrounds, because I think having these diverse perspectives and backgrounds can really be beneficial when you're trying to find these creative solutions to solve some of the big problems that you're working on in the lab. And I'm curious, Saad, if we took away a lot of the barriers that you normally have to contend with, whether it's funding, staff, technology, feasibility, time, what is the big question you would want to answer most? I think I can fortunately say essentially that this is the thing we are doing. It's one of those

36:43things that I always wanted to say. I have run a marathon because it's in the past and you've gone through the pain. But that was what I would look forward to telling somebody, oh, yeah, yeah, I've run a marathon. I don't want to be in the middle of a marathon thinking, oh, shoot, I'm running a marathon. As scientists starting on, I always thought to myself like looking back, I always want to say that I did what I cared about, irrespective of what at that time was hot topic or what was available and what I could do just to be able to say, look, I did it because I

37:16cared and it allowed me to become a better version of myself and become the version that I in my head saw. And my students, I kind of helped them shape that as well. So whether it's these spiders or worm blobs, I had all these ideas that we would write papers that would be very interdisciplinary and elevate these science and support it not just by mathematical modeling, but also physical experiments. And so to bring in some of these robotic structures in our recent paper, to me, it's just the way we think about science now. We have to work with others and bridge disciplines to

37:48address some of these more important challenges. Another paper that's going to come out, I think next week is our low cost $1 hearing aid. Really, I'm not trained as an audiologist, but three years ago, we started on this mission with my student, Soham. It was a personal challenge because he was born with hearing impairment and we wanted to understand and solve and build the world's cheapest hearing aid to address this disparity that millions of people who need hearing aids don't have them because hearing aids cost $5,000, almost as much as a used car.

38:18And why do they cost that much? And we want to kind of think about hearing aids. So we've kept on moving forward with our vision. And I've learned that if we do that, then the funding comes along. It's important to do what you think is best. And I've learned now slowly that people will come along, the money comes along, and other things come along. It's important to do it that way than to be unhappy trying to please somebody. It's just, it's not worth it. Life is too short. Well, definitely. Well, I'm glad you are able to be tackling some of these questions that you are the most excited about, the most passionate about. And you've shared so much with us today, Saad. I'd

38:52love to end with advice. So is there one particular piece of advice maybe that really helped you that you can share with our listeners today? I think that's essentially what I tell my students and somebody told me. So I'm basically borrowing from other advice that appeal to me and work for me is try to be the best version of yourself. We take inspiration and get motivated by other people. I think that's healthy and that's great. But I tell my students, the way we find your project is it should take your sleep away. And this, for example, happened to me last night. It's recruiting season and we're identifying students.

39:24And we went through a couple of projects. And on one, the student emailed me at midnight saying, oh my God, I can't sleep. And that's what I'm looking for. Science happens when we have people who are obsessed in a positive way, not in an unhealthy way. But science has so many setbacks. We want people who are passionate about what they want to do. Life is so short. And I think that's the goal for all of my mentees and what I choose for myself is we have to do things that we deeply, deeply care about. It doesn't matter what it is, but we have to identify that and then align

39:56us and surround us by people who have our back and we want to be with. So I tell my students always, I articulate it because it shouldn't be unsaid, but I tell them I have your back. It doesn't matter if your paper gets rejected. I'm going to be there. I'm going to figure this out because I believe in you, right? Because I know that they are there too. If I don't get a grant, we're going to continue marching forward. So I think that's the advice and things is to first find the people that you respect, admire and want to be with and also then identify the question that it's going to just take your sleep away. Because if you enjoy it so much, it'll come across and others will

40:29appreciate it. There's so much interesting things even in the seemingly obvious and things right in front of our eyes. Well, Saad, thank you so much for sharing that message with all of us today. If our listeners are intrigued and they would like to learn more about you and your work, what is the best way to do so? I think Twitter is the right way to go. And there's so many other scientists from all walks of life, from all different places. And so I'm on Twitter. I enjoy learning. And Twitter, I love because you can find undergraduates to high schoolers, to citizen scientists. I think

40:59Twitter is the best way to engage with us as well as find other people that you may not even imagine exist in science and are doing incredible science. Oh, phenomenal. Well, listeners, definitely get connected with Saad on Twitter. And Saad, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thank you so much, Mary. I really, really appreciated you giving me the opportunity to share. I have to admit, this is the first time I've had an interview like this, which kind of integrates and balances between the personal aspects and the professional aspects. And I'm really, really grateful. I clearly resonate with your philosophy and vision of giving an access to

41:35people behind the science. I think it's such a wonderful idea. I have enjoyed listening to some of my colleagues and others who are on your podcast. I just think you're doing such an amazing job. Thank you so much, Mary. I really appreciate it. Oh, well, thank you so much, Saad. Listeners, I promise I didn't pay him to say any of that.

41:52Well, it's been a joy to have you here, listeners. Great to have you here as well. We'll see you next time on another episode of People Behind the Science.

42:05People Behind the Science