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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• How an Austin-based biotech company is making COVID testing faster and more efficient
• The ways in which ABI is incubating scientists and start-ups alike
• Why a mindset of fearlessness and the willingness to mess up is critical for a scientists
• Ideas for how to dazzle potential employers by showcasing your unique talents and skills

Angstrom Bio was founded in St. Louis, but is now an Austin-based biotech company. Ultimately, their goal is to streamline COVID diagnoses. They do this with a diagnostic tool, AMPD, that is so sensitive and accurate that one test tube can detect multiple viruses — and variants. This makes the process much more efficient, nixing the need for multiple tests, and allowing them to service more patients at once. This gets people results much faster.

They’re able to achieve this through Amplicon sequencing, an extremely targeted approach that allows researchers to analyze genetic variation in specific genomic regions. If that doesn’t mean much to you, don’t worry, Josue and Jolie explain in further detail about it and their work at Angstrom in this episode of Science in the Mall,Y’all.

Jolie Muren is a former ACC Bioscience Incubator Intern and current employee of Angstrom Bio. This time she’s brought her supervisor, Josue Moran, the co-founder and VP of Research and Development at Angstrom Bio, along for a conversation with Nancy and Dan.

Like many other diagnostic companies, Angstrom Bio was conceived in response to COVID-19. But for them, it wasn’t a straight shot to success. Though the company started out in St. Louis, they moved to Austin, seeking out an ecosystem that would allow the company to grow and scale. They found the lab space where they started out in Austin at ABI through a company called Tevido. It was there that Josue met Jolie.

In the past two years, Angstrom Bio has seen a lot of growth, and both Jolie and Josue credit ABI and Austin’s scientific and entrepreneurial communities as instrumental in the company’s growth and success.

But it’s not just businesses that ABI incubates. Jolie’s experiences at ABI were also crucial in springboarding her into a career as a Research and Development Scientist. There she developed her lab skills, of course, but even more so, her mindset. Having a fearless mindset, one that pushes experimentation and persistence, even when experiments fail, is something that both Jolie and Josue share. And it’s the cornerstone of their successful work-partnership at Angstrom Bio.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about ACC’s Bioscience Incubator, the work in diagnostics that Jolie and Josue do at Angstrom Bio, and finding creative ways to “prove” your skills and character to hiring teams..

Science In the Mall, Y’all is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with the ACC Bioscience Incubator.

Host: Dan Dillard, founding_media

Guests: Nancy Lyon, ACC Bioscience Incubator Director

Jolie Muren, Angstrom Bio

Josue Moran, Angstrom Bio