#77: Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer (RooSense // SweatID)

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:00:00]:
We wanna have our sweat ID system on everyone to teach people about their health noninvasively so that they can be learning about, you know, their different health parameters, whether that be, you know, how how hydrated they are, if they need to eat something, other other, you know, indicators in their sweat that can, you know, give an alert so that we're really using wearables to prevent people from getting sick. And in a wearable, like, garment that, you know, people are not, you know, averse to wearing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:33]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the pleasure of speaking with doctor Chelsea Monte Brommer. Chelsea founded Sweat iD back in December of 2017 in order to make personalized health sensors available for everyone. She began working with health sensors back in 2010 while developing a fabric based temperature sensor for use in prosthetic sockets. With her research focused on bioelectrochemical interfaces, doctor Chelsea Monte Brommer received her PhD in 2009 from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and is currently an associate professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Cleveland State University.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:27]:
I very much enjoyed covering the breadth of Chelsea's research in bioelectrochemical interfaces, which we will cover in more depth in our conversation. The commercial implications and applications of it through the work she's doing at Sweat ID, which just recently closed on its pre seed funding, bridging the academia and entrepreneurship divide, and ultimately, the market at large for Weibo's. Please enjoy my conversation with doctor Chelsea Monty Brommer. I wanted to start with your your academic and research focus, the the world of bioelectrochemical interfaces, which in preparation for this, I found really fascinating and I knew nothing about. But I'd I'd love to start with, you know, where your interest in that came from and and what ultimately drew you down the path of pursuing chemical and and biomolecular engineering.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:02:23]:
So I started my academic journey. So I did my undergrad in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. And we were about, I don't know, like, 2 semesters in, and we had to go as part of an assignment to a career fair and talk to, you know, the traditional chemical engineering companies. And I went to my adviser right after and said, you know, I don't think this is for me. Like, I'm not yeah. I don't think I could work for any of these companies. This doesn't seem like a good fit. And he encouraged me to start thinking about, you know, going to graduate school.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:02:53]:
So I was always kind of interested in how biology and kind of the health and medical field integrated with kind of the traditional engineering. So I did a minor in biomedical engineering. All of my undergraduate research was kind of in, you know, growing bone cells, osteoblasts, all these different, you know, kind of bio applications. And so when I started looking for PhD programs, I was really drawn to the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. But when I got there, I realized that the researchers that I was really drawn to were all electrochemists. So I did my master's degree in almost fundamentally just only electrochemistry, so no biology. And then I changed from my master's to my PhD. I changed advisors, and I ended up in the group of a serial entrepreneur.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:03:39]:
His name is Richard Maisel, and he had started numerous companies, had run his family's company for several years. And his take on research was very, let's take what we're doing in the lab and make sure we can scale it to something that people can use. And so I started doing things there, really combining the biology and biomedical that I had done as an undergrad with the kind of electrochemistry that I had started in my my master's and really was working on, sensors for chemical warfare agents. So electrochemical biosensors for chemical warfare agents and working on every everything from, the preconcentrations. So how are we gonna concentrate these to a, you know, detectable limit, to doing detection, to doing field testing? So I got to work, you know, hand in hand with a bunch of different types of engineering and really hone, my sensors piece. So I had kind of a little bit of biomedical, a little bit of electrochemistry, and a little bit of biosensing. When I started at the University of Akron as an assistant professor, I didn't really wanna be in the defense space. It's really hard to get funding.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:04:47]:
It's a little it was a little bit dangerous. I was sick of kind of being in a bunker, testing chemical worker agents. So I started doing kind of wearable health sensing and looking into how can I use this electrochemistry to, you know, detect things at the surface of the skin, to look at how microbes are influencing corrosion? And so I started just kind of taking all of these pieces that I had been putting together in my toolbox, and that's how we kind of really developed our group into one of the leaders in kind of using noninvasive electrochemistry to really study how microbes and biology interacts with our surroundings.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:25]:
That's that's fascinating journey there. Yeah. Maybe just keeping it at the high level here

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:05:31]:
Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:31]:
To just kinda set the stage for because it's really as I'm understanding, it's sitting at the intersection of a lot of different Yep.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:05:38]:
Pieces. Areas

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:38]:
of of focus here. Right? So how would you describe, you know, the the old explain it like I'm 5 kinda thing for bioelectrochemical interface and how you think about applications at a at a high level?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:05:51]:
At a high level. Yeah. So we really think about studying how biology changes, how electrons flow. So if you think about power, so how electrons flow without changing their environment. So we don't want to influence them in any way. We don't want to we don't wanna just listen to what they're doing and learn from them. So we do that using electrochemistry because it allows us to not have to change their environment and to really listen to what they're doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:28]:
And so when, and maybe maybe there aren't, but when you think of the the kind of standard applications, you know, in in in the real world for bioelectrochemical interfaces, you know, what are the kinds of things we're talking about here?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:06:43]:
Yeah. So you can think about things, like, you know, a traditional biosensor might apply a potential, so it's adding power to the system. So it's kind of changing how things operate. A biofuel cell might change the conditions that a typical set of microbes might grow in. And so we just really wanna take kind of all of that change out and just let let biology kind of do it run its course. So we don't apply any potentials even with our wearable sensors. We just measure resistance. So we're really big on, you know, allowing the body or allowing, microbes in an oil field, for example, to just do their thing, and we just report back what they're doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:24]:
Is that concept that you came across thinking about how to scale the research that you're doing in the real world, is that is that is that something that is not standard, you know, kind of MO, for for the for the research? Or is that really kind of a novel take on, you know, as we're researching new concepts here, how can we how can we make sure it it has some general applicability?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:07:47]:
Right. And so I would say that when I was a graduate student, it was not the norm. You know, it was typically you focused on something really specific. If your grandma asked you at dinner what you were doing, you really couldn't explain it because it was very, niche and very high level. But I think that the National Science Foundation has done a really good job of trying to change that attitude in academia. Right? And, so through their National Science Foundation Innovation Core Program, they're really trying to take, you know, really NSF funded core science problems and teach people how to take them from the lab scale to something that could be, you know, scaled up and given to the everyday person. So I would say, you know, when I was in grad school, it probably wasn't as common, and now it's starting to become more and more common with as that program grows and gains in popularity.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:38]:
I guess one of the things that I'd be interested to get your perspective on, because I I feel like as we maybe transition a little bit to the the entrepreneurial side of it, That the origin for ideas that people are working on often come from identifying a problem first Right. And then thinking about the the potential solutions. Is it flipped in in in your model and and how you think about it? Or as you're thinking and doing this research, is it coming from a a place of having identified a problem, and then thinking about the potential applications or having discovered some kind of technology in the the bioelectrochemical Mhmm. You know, world, what could we use this for to solve other problems?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:09:19]:
Right. Yeah. So we start we start with a problem. Right? I think like most good, you know, research ideas, we start with a problem. I think where we kind of put a different spin on it is we we are constantly making sure one is something we can scale up. So, you know, there's many different ways to solve a problem. That's kind of one of the criteria we use. And, also, a lot of our research, I would say 90% of the research in my lab is led by, you know, how the end user is gonna use it.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:09:50]:
So what are their key criteria? You know, scientifically, there's a set of key requirements that we have to make sure we hit, but then are we also hitting the criteria for usability? And so those really from a very early stage of research in my group, we start with kind of those problems. And I actually make all of my grad students go through the NSF I Corps program in some stage, whether it's at the University of Akron Research Foundation at their sites or the whole, you know, going to the national teams. Because I think it makes them a better researcher because they can understand, okay, the end user is an endurance athlete. They're gonna need to wear this for, you know, 4 plus hours. So I need to think about biocompatibility, chafing, battery life, you know. So, yes, they're solving the problem of making a nonwoven material that's selective to sodium, for example, but their set of criteria includes how their end user's gonna gonna use this. And I think it's really important as, you know, a researcher, and I think it helps them to better focus when they're in the lab, even if they're doing something that maybe the end users never gonna notice that they're that they're asking these questions.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:01]:
So so as we tie, Roussens into the into the narrative here, you know, what what, I guess, were those criteria that you were contemplating at that point? What were the questions you were asking? What were you trying to validate?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:11:13]:
Yeah. So the Roussens product is actually it started out not where it ended. So we started out as a wearable fabric sensor. So the reason why it's a fabric because people ask me this a lot. You know, why why isn't a why isn't it just a hard plastic material or flexible plastic? The reason why it's a fabric is because it was initially designed to go in prosthetic sockets. So at the stump socket interface, we wanted to monitor temperature, different conditions in the sweat. Basically, we wanted to make sure that it never sweat. So it was supposed to kick on a cooling device.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:11:46]:
So we'd look at temperature, we'd look at moisture, and then it would kick on a cooling device. So if you were coming back, we were funded by the VA. So if you're coming back, you had a lower limb amputation, you wanted to still be active, you still wanted to run, you could wear this, and you wouldn't have to worry about chafing or blisters, because, you know, this would prevent your stump socket from sweating. But what we found is the cooling device was very power intense. So it's basically like carrying a car battery around to, you know, run a 5 k. So that wasn't gonna really work in the the grand scheme of things. So we we did the NSF I Core program, and we started with okay. We have a fabric sensor.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:12:26]:
We can do temperature. We can do lactate, and we can do sodium. You're thinking, obviously, every athlete's gonna want all 3. Every person's gonna want all 3 of these things. They're they need to know all of this information. We'll have a a suite of sensors that can do it. And so we kind of started with a wide net. And we really quickly honed in on endurance athletes and really high level athletes wanna know how much sodium they're losing in their sweat so they can hydrate properly, perform better, and reduce injury.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:12:56]:
And so we started with this kind of wide net. We We ended up with, how do you hydrate? What are you using right now? What do you wish? If you could wave a magic wand, that kind of magic wand experiment, what would your Garmin watch tell you that you don't already know? And it just kept coming back to, to sodium. And so now when we're asking questions, or it's much more specific, how would you wear it? Where would you wear it? But when we really started, it was this wide net of different things.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:24]:
So as you kind of hone in on on sodium as a as a focus Mhmm. For the pursuit of this idea, what does the product development actually look like? Like, how do you how do you build something Right. That you could test?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:13:39]:
Right. And so that's a great that's a great question. So what we what we initially did was we just we would hand sew the fabric with conductive thread, you know, a tiny piece of fabric, and we would just tape it to people's bodies just to see if it worked. And so people were at the very onset of this, so around 2018 time frame, people were just sitting on a bike hooked up to a big piece of electronics equipment. And then we slowly started scaling everything down. So we scaled the electronics down. We work very closely with another small business, Tiny Circuits, in downtown Akron. So they initially just took, okay.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:14:15]:
We have all these chips. Let's just stack them on top of one another, and you can record things onto an SD card. Then once we had that validated, we moved to a printed circuit board and went it to Bluetooth. And so it's kind of been the same thing. When we moved away from tape, we just got, an ace bandage, tennis elbow strap, cut 2 holes in it, and and put our sensor in it that way. And now we're working with the Kent State School of Fashion to get something designed that people can actually wear. So it's just been kind of taking it one step at a time and doing a lot of, okay, what do we have in the lab that might not look good, but then we can kinda put together, glue onto this, cut off of it to make it to make it work to the place where we now have a finalized design that we can start to scale up. So what we have right now doesn't look pretty.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:15:03]:
It works. But moving from that to something that looks nice. So it's kind of been a a kind of 4 year iterative process of tackling 1 piece at a time and making sure we can can scale it up and make it look better.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:17]:
And and what what did the the team look like through those kinda different iterations?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:15:22]:
So we've really, as a small start up in Northeast Ohio, really benefited from, the entrepreneurial service provider or the ESP network. So we've only ever really had one full time employee and a team of interns up until right now, and we've been really fortunate to work with Bounce, the Bounce Innovation Hub, through their entrepreneur in residence program. They have a lot of facilities, so marketing. They have a maker space that we can use. They have tech support. We've been able to use the University of Akron Research Foundation and rely very heavily on them. Case Western and Bob Sopko have been super helpful. And then even through COVID, the University of Toledo, we've been able to even virtually resource with them, to help with marketing and rebranding.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:16:09]:
And so as a a small business, we've used them to act like a bigger company. And now we've done we've finally finished our fundraise of $750,000 for a pre seed round. So now we've brought on a CEO, a chief scientist, and a full time chemical engineer who's actually one of our interns for 3 years to bring her on full time. So now we kind of have this team in place. But until then, it's just kind of been one full time scientist and and a team of kind of part time entrepreneurial service providers and part time people that have just been helping kinda fill in the gaps.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:46]:
Well, congratulations on the raise. That's very exciting.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:16:48]:
Oh, thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:51]:
I'm curious at what point in the in the the life cycle of of the company when the the naming, convention switched from from RUSENZ to Sweat ID and and the story behind the name.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:17:03]:
Yeah. So so when we started, I was at the University of Akron. And so for people who don't know, the University of Akron has one of the few female mascots in the country. So their, their Fear the Roo. Their mascot is Zippy. She is a female kangaroo. And so as a female founded company, I really wanted to pay tribute to her. And so we came up with the name Rusense, to kind of give an homage to Zippy.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:17:27]:
And then in 2020, I left the University of Akron, and we started, you know, really reaching out to, our launch customers and end users, and nobody knew what a roostech was. So we took we took some time in 2021, with the help of, Kristen Chinever at the University of Toledo to, you know, rebrand, rename, and kind of come up with something that, you know, our end user kind of gets it. Okay. They're they're telling me what my sweat's like. They're giving me my sweat ID. So something that's a little bit more tangible for our end users.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:02]:
So off the bat of the the funding, I'm curious how how that pitch went. You know, how how are you how are you talking and thinking about the market? What does competition look like?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:18:13]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:14]:
And and just kinda the the state of the the company itself.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:18:17]:
The company itself. Yeah. So so when we talk about, like, the future of wearables and where the wearables market's going, you know, people really want everything to be personalized. Right? So the market is really moving much more towards personalized fitness, personalized health care, virtual health, telehealth. Everything's kind of moving in this virtual personalized space. And so we feel like we really fit in very nicely with that personalized health space. But one of the things that I think, and I guess time will tell, that the future of wearables really is is gonna be in the smart textile market. So right.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:18:52]:
So everybody's got the watches now, but how many different pieces can you wear? How many different add ons to your watch can you get? I really think the future of wearables is gonna be in these smart textiles integrating into something that you're already wearing, you already feel comfortable with. But now it's gonna tell you, you know, how how much sodium you lost, how you need to hydrate, what you need to be doing. And we kind of see it growing as a whole platform. Right? So multiple sensors on this fabric telling you, you know, how healthy you are in a noninvasive way. And so I really think that's kind of where that's where I see the future of wearables going. And there's several different, you know, smart textile companies. One of them just closed around with Drive by DraftKings as the lead investor, called Nextiles. And so they're doing, like, movement, motion capture, heart rate, those kinds of things.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:19:42]:
So not in the the sweat sensing, but, you know, those kind of things are really exciting to athletes because then they're not wearing one more thing. It's just right into what they were already getting put on. No.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:53]:
I think that that makes a lot of sense. As you kind of explored the, I don't know, hydration generally, like, as a as a market Mhmm. What were what did you, like, learn, through that process, and what what did people not understand that they should have about this?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:20:08]:
Right. So one of the things I think that's a very common misconception, especially when you're talking to a non athlete. Right? So when you're talking to an endurance athlete, they're like, yes. I have every you know, most of them have every step of their race worked out, what they're gonna drink, when they're gonna drink it. But when you're talking to investors, the biggest misconception they have is, okay. I'm thirsty. I just drink water. It'll be fine.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:20:30]:
Everything's great. And, actually, that's that misconception is, is actually deadly because if you're drinking too much water and you're not replacing the sodium that you're losing or the electrolytes that you're losing, that's when you get over hydrated. And that's really where the highest instance of death, and, and very high level athletes, comes. And so, you know, kind of fighting this investor battle of, okay, just drink more water was was really difficult. But one of the things we really learned is that a lot of athletes are keeping track of their hydration very, very accurately, how much water they lose, how much water they take in, what they think the amount of sodium that they're losing is. And in Gatorade, did a very large study and, you know, only 40% of athletes can actually guess that right. So they're trying. They want this information, but they're guessing.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:21:17]:
And they're saying, okay. I think my sweat is salty. I think I sweat a lot. You know, my my clothes are really wet when I'm done running, and they don't really know what they're losing and really know what they need. And so it becomes this kind of guess and check circle that often ends up with them in the medical tent not finishing races or not performing at their best. And so that's really what what we learned because I was one of those, okay, you're thirsty, you just drink water people before I I started this journey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:46]:
Yeah. No. I I, I unfortunately can empathize with the the downside of of the improper sodium

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:21:54]:
balance. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:55]:
Having fainted in a soccer game in in middle school. Yep. Yep.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:22:00]:
Yep. Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:02]:
Definitely. It made a lot of sense to me just when I was reading about it. So I I think I've understood most of the the kind of use cases, that you've worked out to be, you know, athletics, potentially still prosthetics or or the military coming back. How how do you think about potentially the different applications here of of the technology and and of

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:22:22]:
Right. So we are you know, our first use case, our first product is gonna be focused on, endurance athletes or athletes that we consider in high sweat sports. So people like on a soccer team, a hockey team, football. And as we grow, really, what what's lacking right now is the data. So no one's been able to measure sodium concentration in real time as athletes are in their activity. So we have some we have, information from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute of, you know, points in time during a very set you know, they were on a cycling bike and they did this this duration exercise. So as we get, information, one of the things that we're going to do is start to machine learn the data that we get. So what are our athletes doing? What does their sodium profile look like? How much are they losing? When are they losing it? So that we can start to go into a more consumer market.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:23:17]:
So starting with kind of this these high sweat athletes, people who really understand this, moving into a consumer market, and all at the same time, making sure that we're putting everything into place so we can move into a medical or a military market. So making sure we have all of the FDA approvals that we need. We have everything quality controlled and audited. So that once we have this data and we feel really confident that, you know, we have some an algorithm that can help assist people, without just, you know, this is how much sodium you should intake, but really to start predicting dehydration and over hydration, then we can move into those medical markets. So it's kind of a a 3 step, like, a 3 phase plan, for us to grow from, you know, a very small subset of elite high sweat athletes to a broader general or more medical market.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:09]:
And when you just kind of extend that even further looking out into the future, what what do you really see as the the vision for the whole company, the the impact that that you would hope to have, you know, looking back in in retrospect?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:24:22]:
Right. So we wanna have our sweat ID system on everyone to teach people about their health noninvasively so that they can be learning about, you know, their different health parameters, whether that be, you know, how how hydrated they are, if they need to eat something, other other, you know, indicators in their sweat that can, you know, give an alert so that we're really using wearables to prevent people from getting sick. And in a wearable, like, garment that, you know, people are not, you know, averse to wearing. So they'll put something on. It'll tell you how healthy you are. No lab tests. As a needle phobe, that's something really important to me. But that's really where I see us moving.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:25:04]:
You know, we're starting small. You know, I've talked to a lot of smart textile manufacturers who have just jumped right into the entire garment, multi you know, measuring multiple things and have kind of fallen short because, you know, they can't make it at the price point that people will pay for it. So we're starting small, growing, with something that's of of, you know, really high interest. And I see us in 5 to 10 years having a suite of these sensors that are teaching people about their health, not invasively.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:35]:
If just to talk at a macro level for a sec. If if wearables, you know, don't take off in the in the way that you're thinking about them, what would be the reasons why? Like, what what are what are the barriers to to adoption here?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:25:52]:
That's a great question. And I think the the biggest barrier to adoption is how you give people that information. Right? So there's a lot of great wearables that tell you a lot of great things, but the average user just it's too much for them. Right? They can't, like, okay. This is, like you know, this is how much sugar I need. This is how much the sodium I need. This is how much potassium I lost. Like, it's it's too much.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:26:15]:
So, you know, I think that as an you know, a maker of a wearable, and all makers of wearables really need to be thinking about how we give people that data and giving it to them in usable pieces that make a difference in their life. Because if we don't do that, it doesn't matter how accurate we are, how comfortable we are, how pretty we look. If we're not giving people information in a way that they can process it, it's not gonna matter. And so I think that's gonna be the it's not gonna be accuracy. It's not gonna be form factor. It's gonna be how people interact with the the data that they're given.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:51]:
So just just over the the next year, you know, what what does the road map look like? What are the things that you're most excited about?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:26:59]:
Yeah. So so we're really excited because in the next year, our plan is to move from, one, a device that it looks like a scientist put together in the lab. Right? So right now, we have a lot of devices that, you know, you look at pictures and it looks like a scientist puts together in the lab. I'm excited to move to something that has been designed and manufactured at a larger scale that looks like a really well done professional product. And so to do that, you know, we're gonna have to move into a manufacturing facility. So we're really excited about scaling up, getting all the equipment that we need in place, and then also working, like I said, with the Kent State School of Fashion. And I'm now at Cleveland State, so working with some data analytics people at Cleveland State University, to help us really grow from you know, we put this together. We glued it together.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:27:51]:
We got it to work. We can make, I don't know, 10 of them in a day to making, you know, a 1000 of them in a week and being able to to really mass produce. That's what I'm most excited about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:03]:
What on the flip side has you most nervous?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:28:07]:
Well, it's, you know, it's really, it's nerve wracking. Right? Because now I don't and I don't wanna say this, like, I don't have a lot of control over it. Right? It's it's going outside of my lab, a couple people making it, going to a big piece of equipment, right, where there's not as much control. You you have to trust your work over the last you know, we've been working on this since 2010. So my work over the last 12 years, I have to trust that. But it's also very scary. Right? It's a step into a new a new direction and kind of letting people take it and run with it. It's kinda terrifying.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:46]:
Yeah. No. It it is. Maybe in in a similar kind of vein, how is it bridging or crossing the the bridge, I guess, between, you know, academia and and research and entrepreneurship on the the other side and and just your reflections on that process and journey so far.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:29:07]:
So I would say now that I'm at Cleveland State, it I'm very fortunate because they really value kind of that that entrepreneurial spirit. And and so, you know, my research group and my, you know, in Roussens. Right? So my Cleveland State Research Group and Roussens have labs right down the hall from each other. So they're very accommodating. They've rented us space. They've, you know, helped us a lot to, you know, get things off the ground. And so, you know, the University of Akron Research Foundation really helped us get started. I still interact with them on a regular basis.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:29:40]:
But to finally have kind of my research group and my my start up company right down the hall from each other, be able to interact, everybody kind of sits together and eats lunch. So it's it's really fostering ideas a lot faster, fostering collaboration a lot faster. So I feel very fortunate to be at a university that really, one, wants to grow, you know, tech in Northeast Ohio and also wants to to bring jobs here and really values that, you know, that entrepreneurial spirit and allowing people to to kind of have this, you know, side hustle that doesn't necessarily have to take away from their academic, pursuit.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:19]:
This might be a little in the weeds, but I was just generally curious about the process of, you know, creating a a for profit company, leveraging the the technology, the research, that's coming out of the the academic institutions. How how does the the IP process work there?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:30:39]:
So the RUSense technology and, actually, I have another startup company called Coralytics that started at the University of Akron as well. So anything that a professor kind of does with their research grant is owned by the university. So the university files the IP. They do the IP maintenance, But we're also very fortunate that the University of Akron and Cleveland State really wanna get these ideas commercialized. So we have an exclusive license in both cases. As long as we're paying, you know, our patent up upkeep fees and our royalty fees, that license will belong to us. And so, you know, in that way, it's it's really fortunate because although we do have to kind of go through a couple more hurdles in proving to the university that it's worth patenting, You know, we're very fortunate to have both of both University of Akron and Cleveland State be willing to, you know, help us patent our technologies and give us those license agreements. And they're they're very fair.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:31:35]:
They're not anything crazy. They're very fair license agreements. And, you know, I'm an inventor on both of the patents. So, you know, I benefit from from those license agreements as well. So it's it's nice to to be in a place. Some universities are not like that. They do not allow you to, you know, they don't give you an exclusive license. They kinda take it out for bidding and see if anybody else wants it.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:31:56]:
And so we're very fortunate in Northeast Ohio to have 2 universities who get it and really want to work with their inventors.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:03]:
Yeah. I'll pass the the magic wand question back to you. And I would like to get your perspective on if you could wave it. And with the intent of having more academics, and researchers pursue entrepreneurship, what would you change? Like, what would facilitate more people doing what you're doing?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:32:25]:
So I think if I had a magic wand, right, I would love for universities to put in some of their own money, right, to help these start ups grow. And so, actually, my chair and I have been talking about, you know, wouldn't it be great if we had an entrepreneurship postdoc? Right? That if your research as a PhD student turns into something that you wanna try to do a company, helping with some of the salary. Because there's a lot of grants in Northeast Ohio where you can get money for supplies and everything else under the sun, but not people. So I think if academics and academics, you know, like to make sure that their students have jobs. I think if we could wave a magic wand and have a pool of, you know, maybe graduate student stipends or a a postdoc in entrepreneurship, I think that would really move the needle, and I think that would be I have several graduate students who would love that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:16]:
I I could imagine. In in prep for for this, I came across something that I hadn't really heard of before. But I really liked the idea of and I also wanted to get your perspective on which was this whole concept of orphan technologies at at different, institutions. And just maybe you could describe what those are and and we can go from there.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:33:39]:
Yeah. So actually, we started out as an orphan technology. Right? So we we had a technology. It was for, know, for use in a prosthetic, for use for a totally different application. And so what happens when you have an orphan technology is you have something that was designed for project x, you know, use case x, and that falls through. And now, you know, it's just sitting there. So it's either something that was patented or something that could easily be patented and now it's just sitting on a shelf. And so I I really think that this the National Science Foundation and this I Corps program helping you really dig into product market fit is really reducing that because people are coming in and they're quickly realizing, okay, I wrote this grant to the FDA for x y z purpose, and I couldn't sell 10 of those.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:34:26]:
But if I transition the technology over here and I look at, you know, more of a consumer focus or focus in defense, that's gonna get help me out a lot. And so I think, you know, even if we could, you know, Matt waving a magic wand again, if we could get the NSF to go and look at some of these technologies that are sitting there patented but unlicensed, different use cases for them as part of the I Corps program. You know, if you don't have an idea of your own, come do the program, and we'll give you one of these, previous ideas. I think that would be great.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:56]:
Yeah. No. That sounds like it would be very cool. Is there a particular cadence by which orphan technologies are revisited ever or yeah. Or they just they just kinda sit there?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:35:08]:
I think they just kinda sit there until, you know so there are firms that will go through and, like, look through patents and see if there's anything that's, you know, that's not being used yet and see if they can focus them. But, no, I don't think that there's at least not to my knowledge, there's anyone doing that on a regular cadence. So I think, you know, if the National Science Foundation ever has people that really wanna do the program but don't have their own idea, I think that would be a great a great thing to add.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:34]:
Yeah. No. It's it just seems very interesting. Well, I'll I'll tie it back a little bit. I am just more on the on your own research. I think similar to to the development on, on RUSENCE and and sweat ID, you know, what what what is most exciting to you about the the research you're doing right now? And

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:35:51]:
So I'm really excited about really for the first time, I feel like all of the different parts of my toolbox are being used at the same time. So I've always felt like, okay. I'm using electrochemistry or I'm using, you know, sensory design, But I really feel like now for the first time, everything's being used all at once. And that's really exciting. And it's this you know, it all kind of reached about a year ago. It all kind of, like, fell into place, and everything started, like, operating kind of in sync. And so I feel very fortunate that now I can start to think about new applications. Okay.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:36:27]:
How can we use this for something else? How can we, you know, how can we use, you know, studying the bio the bioelectrochemical interface in a totally different way? And and working with new collaborators and bringing new people on board, where we've kinda spent the last 10 years, like, like, hyper focused on proving it out and make making sure, you know, we really had the techniques available to to do these things. And now I feel like we're really starting to run. So we're walking for a very long time. And so the most exciting thing for me is that everything's falling into place. And every time I look at a problem, it's using kind of all of the pieces of my toolbox instead of just, you know, picking certain ones.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:10]:
Yeah. No. That that is very exciting. I think especially considering how many circles are overlapping before you're at the center of

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:37:17]:
that diagram. Yeah. I kind of never thought that that would happen. And, actually, you know, my application to Cleveland State made me really start to focus. Right? Because you have to put together this, you know, long road map. And, you know, up until then, it had always just felt like kind of multiple very distinct projects. But now starting to see how they all intertwined together and taking a step back and really focusing on everything has really been helpful.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:41]:
What do you think might be the second order implications of of kinda mass adoption of being able to track this this data about ourselves? You know, maybe not maybe some of the less obvious ones that that you thought about that it might allow for us to do some things that maybe we haven't been able to to do before.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:38:00]:
So yeah. So one of the things that we're really interested in, and this is, you know, very long term, is, you know, being able to monitor inflammation and infection in implants. So whether they be, like, dental implants, hip hip replacement. So we're really excited about the concept of, you know, can we extend the things that we're already doing outside the body or, you know, in you know, we do a lot of stuff with oil and gas. Can we extend that to inside the body? And I think, you know, that's really some of the things that we don't think about. I think, you know, being able to monitor stress. So cortisol levels is something that I'm really interested in. So if you think about, you know, okay.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:38:40]:
You're sitting there. You're doing hot yoga. Are you really calm? You know, make really getting I don't know if that'll stress people out more, but, you know, being able to to monitor a lot of these, you know, mental health as well as overall health biomarkers, I think, is gonna be really important.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:55]:
Are there any parts of of your journey of of sweat ID, of the whole process that that you'd like to touch on that we haven't talked about yet?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:39:05]:
No. I think we touched on I think we touched on all of the the key highlights. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:12]:
Well, I'll I'll, I'll bookend this then with our closing question that that we have everyone on the the podcast speak to, which is Mhmm. Not necessarily for your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something that other folks may not know about, hidden gem, if you will.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:39:29]:
Okay. Hidden so I don't know how hidden it is, but, you know, our favorite our favorite place to go as a group is Liwa in, Asia Town. So that's our our our favorite hidden gem, I guess. Good food, great place to talk about science and entrepreneurship. So we really, like, you know, give them a plug because we've done we've had a lot of great discussions

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:50]:
Oh, that's awesome.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:39:51]:
There to help guide our process.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:53]:
That is the perfect place to discuss. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chelsea, I I really appreciate you taking the time and and coming on and and sharing your story. So thank you very much.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:40:03]:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:05]:
If, if folks have anything they would like to follow-up with you about, whether that be your your research or or sweat ID or or otherwise, what is the the best way for them to do so?

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:40:15]:
The best way for them to do so is to go to the Cleveland State website, find my email, and send me an email.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:20]:
Alright. Thank you so much.

Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer [00:40:22]:
Alright. Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:25]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guess for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.