The Strange Attractor
The Strange Attractor
Make It Stick: Plasma as a Platform Technology for Better Biomolecule Binding with Culturon | #14
When Stuart Fraser looked at the tech his physicist colleague Marcella showed him – a two-nanometer carbon layer that could bind biomolecules with unprecedented strength – he immediately recognised its world-changing potential. 'If I didn't commercialise this, it would be a tremendous waste for society,' he recalls thinking.
That moment transformed Fraser from a redundant academic to the founder of Culturon, an Australian biotech company revolutionising how we attach biomolecules to surfaces. Alongside Research and Business Development Manager Bailey Logan, Stuart is tackling problems ranging from diagnostic testing to agricultural innovation with their elegantly simple, cool plasma treatment technology.
At its core, Culturon solves a mundane but crucial problem: laboratory plastic plates hate the expensive proteins scientists try to put on them. They've unlocked extraordinary capabilities by using cold plasma to create an ultra-thin carbon coating that forms incredibly strong bonds with any – proteins, DNA, complex sugars, or fats – without chemical linkers. Moreover, these plates and products can be stored at room temperature for months, eliminating costly cold shipping and expanding access to remote areas – reducing both the economic and environmental footprint associated with doing science.
What began as a solution for lab diagnostics has blossomed into applications spanning multiple industries. From enhancing seed germination and creating simple soil carbon measurement tools for farmers to developing potential alternatives to harmful PFAS chemicals in cookware, Culturon demonstrates the power of platform technologies. Like the beginning of infinity, every new collaboration reveals unexpected possibilities.
Fraser and Logan's journey highlights how curiosity-led transdisciplinary innovation can create exponential value. 'Scientists, artists and people of faith are all trying to explain the world, but we just do it with different tools,' Fraser observes. In Culturon's case, these tools strive to create a future where diagnostics are more accessible, agricultural practices are more sustainable, and waste is significantly reduced.
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Hello and welcome to the Strange Attractor, an experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation hub and biotechnology co-working lab based in Melbourne, australia. I'm your co-host, sam Wines, and alongside my co-founder, andrew Gray, we'll delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation, informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes, could help us catalyze a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Strange Attractor. It's been a busy couple of months for us getting this new site at Notting Hill up and running. It's got a couple of events coming up soon as well the launch event and an event with MPN Network about supporting, starting and scaling bio-led ventures in the Monash precinct, as well as an event with the Australian SynBio Challenge crew. So it's all happening and, yeah, I guess that's a big part of why we've been delayed on the podcast front. Anyway, now that that little PSA is sorted, yeah, on to today's guest.
Speaker 1:So this time around we sat down with Stuart Fraser and Bailey Logan from Culturon. Stuart is the founder of Culturon and the CEO, and Bailey is the research and business development manager for Culturon. So we've been involved, supporting, helping from the sidelines and within the ring the development of Culturon pretty much from the get-go. So this has been a long time coming, sitting down to have a chat and partake in this podcast. We think that the tech is pretty amazing and has some pretty large implications for so many different fields of research, which is why I was really excited to get to sit down and have a chat about what they're up to. Yeah, who knows? Hopefully we can um support them in the future. Anyway, enough of that, enough of me talking. Uh, enjoy this conversation with stewart and bailey from culture on all righty. So here we are again.
Speaker 1:We're back, never been here before, back again, back again, but never been here before I like it, so when's the concert? Um?
Speaker 4:he's going to do. You gonna do it for tonight. I'm very excited, but you went to do a leap in Portugal last year.
Speaker 1:It's very fun I just would never know most people wouldn't, especially when all my other music's just country music. Yeah, do a special spot, do a little what, what is the interest or what is that I mean? I can't say that on the radio. Oh, that's a great start there we go no love of music.
Speaker 4:Lots of good memories at our concert, so nice no, that's good to hear.
Speaker 1:So I guess it probably we should start with who we have in the room today for um, this podcast. So, um, welcome stewart fr Fraser and welcome Bailey Logan. Thank you, thanks. Yeah, it's the dynamic duo from culture on. Yeah, I mean, I could say things, but I'd rather not maybe if we just, steward, did you want to give us a bit of a background?
Speaker 3:yeah, stuart Fraser, I am the founder and CEO of Coldron. We're about three years old. We'll turn three next month. That's wild. Yeah, I know because you knew us from the start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from when the egg was first in the nest, exactly.
Speaker 3:No, we're a biotech company that specializes in making amazing surfaces for people to grow cells on. Make new diagnostics with you know for the best surfaces in the world.
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm sure you can back that up with evidence. Yeah, tons of it, yeah more every day no, I know it's a, it's a. It's actually such an amazing concepts. I'm super keen to go there. And Bailey, yeah, baileyiley, yeah I'm bailey.
Speaker 4:I'm cultron's research and business development manager. Um been with cultron for two years now, I think. Uh, and me and stewart met right at the start of cultron, I think, um, which is like three years ago in a couple weeks, it's exciting grown a lot since then. So it's a really exciting place to work and got a lot going on we have like another project every time I chat with you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah there is yeah, I mean because we're a platform technology, so we like making things that other people can then add on to create more value, and going off in all sorts of directions with people who are experts in what they're interested in yeah, no, it makes sense once, once we get there it absolutely makes sense why that's the case and it's exciting to see you know we can speak to
Speaker 1:it in the chat later on if you'd like. Just like it's exciting, see even the potential collaborations that are popping up with like Co labs members as well. But yeah, I guess before we fully dive into it, this is actually quite an interesting journey, I guess from you know your background at uni and then making that transition. So I just thought it might be really interesting to get a bit of a reason like let's let's give a little bit of context to where you were and where you are now and why that was such like a big sort of transition in your life yeah, how far back do you want to go?
Speaker 3:I guess I was thinking about it and I had quite a conventional nerd childhood. I think I was the kid who sat and read the encyclopedia in the corner quietly whilst his brother created havoc. And then I'd just go and ride my bike with all my mates and we'd ride up into the dandenongs or down to frankston and then suddenly realized the sun was going down and had to get back to glenway, didn't really care and um no, it was just. I wanted to be a researcher. From as young as I can remember. Even I had no idea what that meant. But I just I wanted to be a researcher. From as young as I can remember. I had no idea what that meant, but I just always wanted to do science and I think it's a genetic thing. As an academic, I used to have students come into the lab and they would vary from. I hate it. I hate the smell. I want to get out right away to people who I'd have to turf out so I could go home. So I think it's a bit of a genetic thing. Loving labs, hmm, yes, I grew up in.
Speaker 3:I was born in Perth, grew up in Glen Waverley, went to Monash, did an undergrad in immunology and pathology and, yeah, when I was a teenager I think I really started to work out what I liked. I remember watching Living Planet by David Attenborough and just seeing the beautiful helicopter shots of Maui and the Hawaiian Islands covered in living things. It just always amazed me How's their life everywhere? How is there life everywhere? And my mum used to actually send me along to Double Helix, which was the kids CSIRO science club, which is pretty nerdy. She was nerdy. My mum would happily drop me off and then come back a few hours later, having gone shopping or something. Something fun distracted me. Yeah, I was just super interested in it. Don't know why my marks weren't that good in science. My marks are really good in history in English. Sorry, all my teachers thought I was gonna be a journalist, but I just didn't find it very challenging. And science I actually wasn't very good at at least chemistry and physics. Terrible at maths, basically innumerate. Relatable.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's something I've come to learn, yeah.
Speaker 3:But I am good at working out how cells operate and how the body comes together and how biomolecules work. I can model that quite well in my head.
Speaker 1:I think that's and that's some. This is a really important point. I think a lot of people tend to assume that science is very reductionist, ik and very mechanical. But when you're getting to living systems, there is like a level of like that intuition about understanding concepts and how things work and being able to play that in your mind and being able to understand it in a way that's not easy to translate or explain with words, but you're like I think this will work and I I could. I don't know the equation, but I can understand it and I feel like if we can prototype that, then maybe you know something good will come from that. Um, I feel like so many of the best scientists have that I think one thing that isn't appreciated is science is unbelievably creative I agree.
Speaker 1:I say that it's the underrepresented creative class I, yeah, I love that yeah I feel, creative.
Speaker 4:And underrepresented.
Speaker 1:Waiting for that second part.
Speaker 3:I was tempted to say that, but as a middle-aged white male I can't really say that.
Speaker 1:No, no, you can't, but at least you can use that privilege that comes from that position to do something cool in the world. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And so the way I kind of see it is scientists, artists and people of faith are all trying to explain the world, but we just do it with different tools. So artists do it through emotion, through conveying emotion, People of faith do it through faith and scientists do it through evidence of things that we can quantify, count and understand. I think we all work together really well to explain the world that we live in, which is pretty tricky to understand.
Speaker 3:So I find that really exciting then, I find modeling how cells behave in my head very, very intriguing.
Speaker 1:I think cells are quite amazing, especially when you grow, say, stem cells, which I've spent 30 years doing it is quite a fascinating thing when you realize that nothing else in the universe self assembles in the same way that a cell does and reproduces right, this, this auto poetic nature which is like for those who don't know, it's like self authoring, essentially, if you take those two words, but that is like a fundamental tenant of life, and the cell is like the smallest unit that can do that, and it's, it's so amazing what can come from this, and like the context of the environment that you put it in and then you can get different results right yeah.
Speaker 3:So I love that word poesis that you just raised with autopoetic. So for about 30 years I've been working on hematopoetic or hematopoesis, which is, how do you produce blood from nothing. So poesis is this beautiful Greek word which kind of means the production of something, and it used to refer to glory. Someone goes through poesis to develop as a person and develop their own character and and achieve glory. Now we use it kind of separately from genesis, which is the very first thing. How do we then keep that production going or something.
Speaker 3:So I've studied hematopoietic stem cells for, yeah, about 30 plus years. They're the ones in the bone marrow that make two million new red blood cells a second. The ones in the bone marrow that make two million new red blood cells a second, which is kind of mind-blowing. Yep, how do we do that? And then, yeah, I did a lot of modeling with stem cells in a dish and how we turn them into different things. And then it kind of all came together where I could take someone's blood, take the white blood cells, turn them into stem cells, turn those stem cells into different things like nerves or beating heart muscle.
Speaker 1:In addition, try and work out what the genetic disease was doing and find the best drugs for it hmm, yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing, but really fun yeah, I mean, I can just see how like that sort of work leads into there's quite a lot of members that we support that working in that space and working with stem cells, and it's just such a fascinating and rich area for development, whether it's cultivated meat, whether it's organoids that could be used to do biological computation. There's so much that seems to be emerging from this space. It was primarily initially researched from a very like med tech health tech angle, but very much just seeing it spiral out and I guess, in a way, that that is where this venture has kind of come from right. It was like realizing that this could be in service to so many people in the ecosystem, which I think is really cool. So, yeah, did you want to speak to? How? I guess? How did you come across this technology? Technology?
Speaker 3:yes, I've got a great colleague at the University of Sydney, professor Marcel Abilic. She's an amazing physicist and engineer and actually the first time I was introduced to her, another colleague he, who's a specialist in the circular economy was trying to find a way to reuse the bone of cuttlefish and what he wanted to do was treat it with um marcella's technology and then grow a metapodic or blood stem cells on it, hematopoietic or blood stem cells on it. So that was how, how can we reuse cuttlefish bone to um give people new therapies? Unfortunately, it turns out that cuttlefish bone has a secret compartment that bacteria live in and they just get popping out and contaminating everything constantly. And when we tried autoclaving them they just fell apart. But Marcella and I started working together. So Marcella's got some really spectacular technology.
Speaker 3:It's based on plasma, so this is working. It confusing for people who do know me as a blood person, because this plasma has nothing to do with blood. It's the false state of matter in the end, and it's actually for pub trivia questions, if you get ever asked what's the most common form of matter? Plasma. 99.9% Plasma is ionized gas and all of the stars are plasma and the universe is made up of stars. So the way the physicists kindly explain it is you take a solid like ice, put some energy like heat, heat into it. You'll get a liquid More energy. You'll get a gas More energy. And we use an electric field and you'll get a plasma. So we really reduce things to its basic ionic form in a gas.
Speaker 3:And then what Marcella found was she could put different surfaces in and get an incredibly thin layer of carbon on the bottom and that layer of carbon could bind to any biomolecule we put on, and extremely strongly, so we couldn't wash it off. And that strangely, that obscure little fact is now revolutionizing how we deal with making new diagnostics and new cell culture surfaces and cell agriculture and all of those kind of things and, I guess, interesting and important because of the role that carbon plays as, like, the most important backbone of life, right?
Speaker 1:so being able to have a carbon surface which you can bind things to, it's just like that. It's a naturally something that is binding to so many other different things in, so it's such a it's like a having a piece of Lego that can kind of click into any other Lego piece, right?
Speaker 3:absolutely so, and this is carbon. It's two nanometers thick, so two one billionths of a meter thick, incredibly thin, and it's basically graphite. We think. We're not exactly sure, maybe it's a little bit wavy form of graphite, but what it has in it is that in graphite, so, carbon's got four electrons that can bind to its neighbors.
Speaker 3:And then in diamond you'll have all four binding and that's why it's super strong. In graphite, three bind to their neighbors and there's one that's kind of free and that's the one that we use to bind to proteins or DNA or any biomolecule hmm, interesting and okay.
Speaker 1:so I really want to weave you into this conversation, else youales you can weave away. We will get there. We will get there, I guess so, from this collaboration. So this was a research project that you first met on and then you were like hang on a minute, this is amazing. There's something here.
Speaker 3:I said to Marcella well, there's all of this field of stem cell biology that desperately needs what you've got. And she said I've never heard about it. I said, well, I know about it. And so we came from very I mean, everyone would think, yeah, you're all scientists, but we come from very, very different fields, where Marcella's thinking about atoms and carbon and all sorts of things and I'm thinking about how cells can turn into useful things this is.
Speaker 1:This is key, because this is something that I speak of all the time when I speak about um, transdisciplinary innovation and like, even if you just think of this as the metaphor of like ecosystems right, so, the most biodiverse regions are overlapping ecosystems, which is called an eco tone. That's where you get the most vibrancy of life, all this different innovation in living systems and forms of being in the world. And innovation is no different, like, the most innovative things come from the overlapping of areas. And, to your point, yeah, sure, a scientist, but such a different training, such a different way of looking at the world, and most of the best innovations, I think, do come from taking a wider boundary perspective of how this fits into other areas and other contexts, and I just think this is such a prime example of that sort of thinking yeah, so we're both in our silos and then someone with cuttlefish bone came along and said can you talk to each other and try and work something out?
Speaker 3:Cuttlefish. And we're like what.
Speaker 1:Bringing people together. Oh, that's great. And then so from that moment, like because we caught up with you when you were still teaching, right.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, yep. So I was an academic for about 30 years and, yeah, I was at the University of Sydney in physiology for nearly a dozen years. Due to things going on in COVID, most of my department got made redundant. Sorry, our positions got made redundant, sorry, our positions got made redundant. And just at that time, marcella had put in to the university about this technology as an invention and the university chose not to support it to go forward, and so I had a redundancy payout and I wasn't going back to physiology and I was actually going to become a barista, move to Cairns and write the great Australian novel which I'm about 80,000 words through.
Speaker 3:I'll get there one day and instead I started a biotech company. Yeah, For better or for worse.
Speaker 1:Well, that's no. I think it's such an interesting journey around being able to perceive something and go. You know what I'm gonna?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna back it, I'm gonna as soon as marcella showed me the invention, I was like I actually texted her and I said, if I ever start a company, this is it. I think that was 2019. Um, I just thought, wow, the potential here is just enormous. Um, and you know, fortunately now actually that technology is else, so we have the pattern for it, which is exciting so this transitioning from academia to a startup founder now I know that your pathway is a little less like this.
Speaker 1:Let's say that it's a bit more of a break between right. It's like a clear okay, there's no more work here, and then now a startup comes. Now, but, but still, it is a transition from one way of being in the world to a very different way of being in the world. So I'm super curious, I guess, like what was your experience in figuring this out and was there any, I guess, turning points or moments that significantly have impacted your worldview and your approach to, I guess, leadership as well? Going from you know, teaching people, it's a very different style of being it is, but there's a couple of things.
Speaker 3:One is freedom, with guidelines to get the best out of people. That's one thing I worked out with teaching thousands of students is that if you can get them doing their own teaching to themselves, then it'll always be the best type, and so I always gave people really good guidelines. And then freedom to choose things, and that leads people along a path of self-learning and self-development where I don't have to tell people what to do. In the end, I just give lots of guidelines. Um, the other thing was I was a.
Speaker 3:I was a research and teaching academic and so I had my own lab and had many research students had ras um so I had in a way kind of a proto small business set up. In fact, all laboratory research labs are small businesses because you have to get money in to fund it. You have to get an output. It's a different kind of output. It's not a commercial product, but it's a research product yeah, it rhymes right.
Speaker 1:There's similar patting and processes that are going on. It's just that there might be a different way of relating to resources, which might be a little bit different once you're a organization.
Speaker 3:It's not like oh, I can just tap into that five million dollar piece of kit that's sitting over there now yeah with relative ease yeah, I would say, academia is nowhere near as free as people say you have to do what you can get the money to do the project on. In what we're doing, I mean cultrum's doing science. Every day we have people from around the world reaching out to us. We're solving problems. I do far more science now than I was when I was an academic, because I'm not doing admin it sounds like more like a also like a co-design process of science.
Speaker 1:So, rather than like we have this hypothesis or this hunch, or like this is a field of research that we're trying to further with funding, it's like how might we apply this? It's like a yeah, like a co-design with someone else who has a challenge area as well as like bringing in that design early approach to iterating and prototyping. Not necessarily going I need more data to do the same thing a hundred times in a row, but like it's a it's a massive co-design process, and that's what I find incredibly exciting.
Speaker 3:Hmm, we do have companies, universities, agencies from around the world right now that reach out to us and with specific problems. They say you know, this is what we're struggling with. Can you help? And so far we've been up now everyone? I think no. I think women and and now we're diversifying into many different other fields that we'd never predict predicted, including with people at Co labs he's very exciting.
Speaker 1:No, I look forward to getting there, bailey yes oh, you've been watching this like a tennis match back and forward.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, that's right because I've heard I've obviously heard Stewart do the you know academic, 30 years, redundant startup, but it's not. We've never kind of gone into what it actually took to go from academia to running a startup. I'm a bit lucky to have been there quite early and some known kind of what a few of the differences are, where the issues are. I think a lot of it's been like how you would communicate in a lab, yeah, and to students and to other academics. Compared to in just a professional world, it's quite different yeah out.
Speaker 4:Here you can be a lot more direct, yeah, which is really refreshing. It's very good, and there's not this overarching kind of grandiose ness of academia that you have to appeal to I think there's.
Speaker 3:There's one thing I like in business, which is when I tell people what we do, they either say, oh, that's, that sounds very exciting, but nothing to do with us, best of luck. Or and we're getting this more and more that sounds super exciting. That could really help us. We want to talk with you it's either those two. It's not like oh, you're a threat to my career development of the university, so I don't like yeah, whoever you are, or every person you talk to is a direct competitor.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:It's such a shame that that's what's happened with academia. Like I see it as a like a truly like a kind of thing what the appropriate word is a sacred thing like a pursuit of knowledge and trying to understand the world better so they can benefit everyone, not just humans, but the more than human world as well, and it but it does feel like it's become very bureaucratic, over financialized and maybe focusing on outputs or outcomes which actually are not in service to the whole or the people who are a part of it yeah, I think the the educational aspect and the research aspect has really diminished and now it's a quite a bit of empire building by management.
Speaker 1:I would go off on a rant on that, but it's an important like look, it's not because I'm dissing it, because I don't like it. I I love the concept of the university, I love the concept of academia, but it does feel overly bureaucratic now and it feels very stifling and quite a lot, quite frankly, like a lot of the best and brightest minds feel like they're being caged in they're tuning out, they're really, they're walking off they're walking away.
Speaker 3:they're getting burnt out, which is really a shame, because I'm a strong believer that our universities are our centre of innovation. I agree, what they're not the centre of is how to take that innovation into the bigger world.
Speaker 1:And that's an important point around the genesis versus the poesis.
Speaker 3:To bring it back to a point we mentioned before yeah, yeah, the universities are genesis, exactly, and start-ups are to bring it back to a point we mentioned before, yeah, yeah, and it's like genesis exactly, and startups are poises. I, I love that man. That's a great. That's a t-shirt, that's right, let's start.
Speaker 1:Let's put it there. So, speaking of you know, stewart and colteron and the genesis, and then bailey coming along as well and supporting the poesis of the keeping the things going like. Talk me through this when did you come into the team and then how's the experience been for you as well? Because I mean, it was pretty much like straight out of uni. Yeah, startup startup.
Speaker 4:So I guess when, like me and Stewart, the journey it is probably quite similar. You know, undergrad biochem, then did a bit of research. I only did a year of research and then I had my master's in biotech at Melbourne and that was all about commercialising science because I guess, finishing my bachelor's I didn't know if I wanted to do research or anything like that. I felt a little bit like it would lock you into an area that you'd struggle to get out of. I think that's pretty true from what I've been hearing from other people. But so I did you know something different, focus on commercializing science. And it just clicked to me that you could have these really simple ideas that are actually quite like complex to expand and get out to a commercial product.
Speaker 4:And so I met stewart at another company consulting for another company through go labs again, yeah, shout out, um. And then I think we just we got along quite easily, um, and from there it was just we were doing similar things at that company, focusing on translating science into an actual product and how do you test that and how do you prove it to people. And then it kind of finished up a bit sooner than we probably both expected and Stuart's culture was kicking off a little bit. There was a lot of interest, but there was also a lot of work for just Stuart to be doing.
Speaker 4:There was a lot of interest um, but there was also a lot of work for just do it to be doing, yeah, um, and I think not dissing or anything, but there was a lot that you didn't know how to do?
Speaker 3:yeah, enormously, and that's why you were a great addition right at the start, because you had that interest in commercialization that I was developing because I had to, but you had that from the start. Well, I hope so Well you did. That's why we brought you on.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's been from there. The amount of learning I've done in Cultron compared to what we actually got in New News, it's insane. You're really thrown into the deep end at a startup and it's very quick, really fast-paced. But it's pretty rewarding as well, like every single decision or piece of work that you make directly impacts the company and how you're A perceived and how successful you're going to be in the long run, and I think so far we've done a pretty good job.
Speaker 3:I think we have yeah.
Speaker 4:Quite a lot of roadblocks, hurdles along the way, but I think we're in a position now, especially now that things are going to take off and you know people will hear about it soon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think we had a bit of a crunch point about this time last year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember when my bootstrapping efforts were running out out um and bailey was actually instrumental in getting our first investments and that changed everything. Once I could hire great people who and each one of the hires have really brought very different things on board, and we've had kind of an unusual process for hiring people, which is we actually get to know them first and like them as people and then see how their skill sets fit in, rather than looking for a skill set and bringing someone in for it?
Speaker 1:yeah, I totally. I get that. I think as well. Like, um, this sort of work is so relational, right, and you can look great on paper, but how do you show up day to day? Can I have a? Like? The reason I knew you guys were going to end up doing something was because you wouldn't stop cracking jokes all the time and you're constantly laughing right then.
Speaker 3:Our business meetings are just strangely enjoyable. We have meetings at 11 o'clock at night with people in europe and we're all laughing 5 am in the morning, 5 am in the morning, and you know with california. And why are we laughing?
Speaker 1:it was just like I thought this was going to be harder I think when you are a human and look, look, everything that we're doing in the startup space is incredibly difficult and challenging, if you're not laughing and enjoying the journey and finding ways to relate to the inordinate amounts of suffering that come from trying to do something new, like you may as well not do it. I think you have to have that sense of humor.
Speaker 3:We're not digging coal out, though we're not suffering that much. I mean, there's stress that goes on our shoulders, yeah, but in the end of the day we can do our very best. We can design things as well as we can and we think we have a very good chance of success. But you know, we're not digging coal. I'm not suffering physically anymore.
Speaker 1:Yes, Well, that's good. It's good to know Like it's yeah, when I use it. I don't mean it in a crazy sense, but it's um, yeah, when I use it. I don't mean it in the in a crazy sense, but it's definitely a different experience and a heightened level of pressure versus any other role where you're not the ones in complete control like.
Speaker 3:Well, that that's it. You know, there's an amazing study about cardiac death in british bureaucrats. This is one thing I remember from my teaching of physiology. It's called the Whitehall study, and what they actually found was the people who died of cardiac problems. We're not the top bureaucrats. They weren't the ones at the bottom, though, the ones right in the middle, where they were getting harangued from each side, all sides, yeah, in us or without, with culture on and with startups. It's the only pressure that we develop is upon ourselves largely, and the major, the major pressure I think we have is imagining what we want to look like in one month, 12 months, years, and we really hone that we know what we want to be, and then it's just reverse engineering to get there, and that's actually a lot less stressful when you can see the lights on the pathway of where to go.
Speaker 1:And in a way it's like kind of creating like a telos, like something that's pulling you forward towards that, rather than not necessarily knowing where to go.
Speaker 3:And again, that goes back to the super creative side of science where you have to. You have to time travel in your mind to five years in the future and say what's that project gonna look like when it's all done, what's the product going to be in our case, instead of what's the publication or what's the student's thesis and then reverse engineer it and it's actually really calming because it's not that you're stumbling around in the dark. You've got some lights in the pathway, in the aisle, in the airplane as it's going down to land safely to land safely.
Speaker 1:Yes, um, on that note, like I was going to save this for a little bit later, but I'm happy to just go there now. Like what is your vision for the future? Like we haven't even got to, like what the plasma treated surfaces like truly are and why that's useful for biomolecular mobilization, but like what is your vision for the future?
Speaker 3:maybe we can then backwards step yeah, so I I guess I can. That moment that marcella billick showed me the invention and I could see how it could be used all around the world to improve everything from diagnostics through to growing cells, through to many forms of what we do behind the scenes in science, and I could just immediately see that we could become the gold standard that everyone using these kind of plastic plates which are used.
Speaker 3:there's millions every day being used. We could help reduce waste, we could help answer questions faster, we can convert things from you know, petrochemical plastics through to corn-based plastics and just make everything that lab scientists in the biomedical field are doing just faster, easier, better, more scientifically robust. And the main thing I thought was if I didn't commercialize this, it would be a tremendous waste for society, to be honest, because the technology was just so epic and it has so many repercussions to improve life that if I didn't do it, it would be, yeah, a real waste. And so that's why I'm not writing the great Australian rule. In cans also, the the state lines went down cheering covert, so I couldn't buy that apartment in Cairns. That's actually one thing that stopped me from you know, folks in the road, kind of thing gosh, I'm just picturing you up there now sitting on a rocking chair just writing this novel.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's a mullet, of course, yeah, absolutely yeah. No one would read the book, it'd just be awful.
Speaker 1:So I guess, with this tech now I know that there are some other things that make it a bit more unique, like this has been demonstrated on flat surfaces. But I guess, like when you're looking at, I guess, the things that you're using this technology on, it's not a flat surface, right? No?
Speaker 3:so basically our technology is trying to solve one problem that it's just not glamorous at all, it's really mundane.
Speaker 3:But behind the scenes there's tens of thousands of biomedical scientists who are using plastic plates that have little worlds in them and in each well they might put something to measure whether someone's got COVID or whether they've got a problem in their blood or cancer cells or all sorts of things.
Speaker 3:And we also use them for growing cells, for a whole range of stuff, for stem cell therapies, for immunotherapies, for cellular agriculture. All of these things. And it's just the mundane bit is that that plastic hates the expensive proteins that we're putting on it will just destroy most of them instantly and we just put this incredibly thin coating of carbon on that will grab them very strongly, basically make them part of the material, part of the well plate, and then they can be stored, uh, very easily at room temperature. Cut down on all the packaging for cold shipping. You know some companies are spending millions of dollars on polystyrene boxes and ice packs to ship things around the world. We're keen on making tests that can go to rural and regional Australia without any cold shipping whatsoever. Work beautifully on a farm, those kind of things. So it's.
Speaker 1:It's just a better way of sticking molecules on, but it actually has huge repercussions so just to double click on that, so your tech reduces the need for chemical linkers which is no chemical linkers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's no chemistry, no other chemicals involved. It's our plates with the carbon coating and your, your protein or your DNA or your fat molecules with where the first in the world to put really complex sugars that you find on the outside of bacteria or yeast so that we can put them on. Okay, we can put on things like hyaluronic acid, which you might have heard about in the cosmetic industry. I was going to say it's on my face.
Speaker 3:It does not surprise me, it's that glow when you add it, so we can unlike any other technology globally. Sounds obnoxious, but it's actually true. We can put on any biomolecule.
Speaker 1:we haven't failed on anything yet so I just want to like stress this, because you're doing a, you being the king of playing it down, but that like the amount of waste, that like. So we deal with this every day, with shipments coming into the lab, yeah, everything being on dry ice, everything being in polystyrene packaging, like it is such a waste, yeah, sterile and it's such a pain that it has to be like that.
Speaker 3:But your technology can potentially alleviate like quite a lot of things having to be shipped in those containers so, yeah, we've, we found that some of the proteins that we look at and we do this for each protein that people want us to look at For some we can store our protein-coated plates at room temperature for six months and they behave just as the same as the day after they've been manufactured. So you could ship them at room temperature, store them at room temperature, temperature and then do your test and, yeah, find out someone in you know outside of Alice Springs where they can't get cold shipping has got you know covert or yeah, something like that yeah, I just I feel like I can't stress how big that is like.
Speaker 1:Do you have any stats or numbers on how much stuff is cold shipped that you might be able to alleviate?
Speaker 3:I, I do know that some of the, the big companies, when you add up how much they're spending on cold shipping, uh, consumables, the, the polystyrene boxes and the ice packs, it's in the tens of millions. So if you can get, if you can alleviate that, and then also, where does it all that go.
Speaker 1:That's my main thing is like this is just so much like. This is reducing the carbon footprint for the entire ecosystem. It's it's helping increase efficiencies and all sorts of things like it's not replacing petrochemical plastics but it is well.
Speaker 1:We're actually working with a company in germany, green elephant, and they make the same plates, but from corn so using pla or yeah yeah, and so I guess that's what's exciting as well is that your tech is agnostic to petrochemical plastic, so it's like what I find exciting about this is that it's a drop-in solution that can be used right now to reduce waste in terms of chemical linkers and reduce the amount of stuff that needed for shipping for cold storage. But in addition to that, you could potentially use this on organic bioplastics or next-gen materials and it will still work now.
Speaker 1:So can you explain how that works, right? So I know you say cold plasma, but when I hear plasma I think the sun, the sun, yeah, like.
Speaker 4:A plasma cannon yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like oh halo, exactly that there is an inordinate amount of death or heat when I think of plasma. Yeah, no, this is a cold plasma.
Speaker 3:So theoretically you could stick your hand under it. In fact, there's a field in medicine called plasma medicine where they will use these cold plasmas on cancers of the skin head and neck cancers and they just kind of burn off the cancer cells and it's a it's a cold plasma, so if you feel it on your skin it it doesn't feel. It's not a thermal plasma, it doesn't feel hot.
Speaker 1:I just can't get my head around that.
Speaker 3:That's why we need the physicists. So it just it isn't reliant on using heat to generate the plasma, it's reliant on the power that we put through on the electric field. Though I may be corrected by the physicist there, I'm a biologist. That's all good, it's still, it's still. So, yeah, it's, um it's. It's not a hot plasma at all. It doesn't warp. The plastic, um it's. A pla seems to get a little bit warped.
Speaker 3:So we're still exploring that hmm, but no, it's um, it's not a problem at all in terms of temperature it's such a cool concept.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love it. Yeah, as we've said to you, like early on, if we had money to support something like this, we would, just because we can see how this can have such a positive impact. And it's it sounds like, after these you know this few years, it's like people are starting to realize, oh okay, like there really is something here yeah.
Speaker 3:So I mean first of all, yeah, you are actually offered us a huge amount of support just by saying this is not a stupid idea and we're gonna help you work out a few numbers for things. So right at the start, he helped with that it was. It was enormous because I was like I've got an idea that's.
Speaker 3:That's word for word, actually I can't guess exactly like that and yeah, you and andrew sat me down and just said yeah this is how you do things and what I found really interesting was um, business is really just a series of lists and you just work through the lists one by one. I'm a big list maker. I'm a big fan of that. Um, just work through, tick things off, get things done, then you can move on to the next things what do you reckon has been the like?
Speaker 1:I guess, what do you reckon has been your biggest personal learning on this journey? That business is a bunch of tick lists, or is there? Is there something else?
Speaker 3:business is nowhere near as horrendous and cutthroat as people portray unless you want it to be well, I don't.
Speaker 1:I'd rather just have a lot of business meetings where we laugh a lot and do amazing science and and solve problems for people and I think that's also another reason why we resonated with you as a being, because you know, we were all like I don't know if you do know this, but like I guess a big part of Co lives is it's all about business unusual, like not business as usual, and cultivating collaborative advantages rather than competitive advantages. And it's just nice to see that more and more businesses are coming along that are doing awesome things and also realizing, yeah, there's like enough room to play here together.
Speaker 3:So much room. There's a huge amount of room. There's no one who's going to do exactly the same as us. We're not doing exactly the same as us. We're not doing exactly the same as anyone else. If someone comes along with something even better, that sounds amazing. I can't even imagine what that is if it's better than what we're doing right now. So you know, kudos to them. But there's. We're expanding into so many fields.
Speaker 3:Um, one thing we've really started to branch into recently is that there's a big literature on if you treat seeds with cold plasma, you can actually A kill all the bugs on the outside and decontaminate them and, b you speed up germination. So basically it changes the surface, so more water gets in sooner and so you increase the germination yields and the rate. And we think we can also then stick on other great molecules like fertilizer and plant hormones and those kind of things. So it could be a very targeted seed package that would need less fertilizer on the fields, that could take on an antifungal molecule so that the plant isn't taken over. Um, and we're just.
Speaker 3:We only started exploring that at the start of this year and I am absolutely staggered at the number of people who have joined in all around australia super excitement. We got primary producers in Narrabri. We've got ag companies in Victoria. Loads of academics super excited, just struggling with basic things. And so we didn't even anticipate we're going into that and now we're probably going to actually spin off a company subsidiary because it's just becoming so big it makes sense to me, because what your tech is kind of doing is just like in evolution.
Speaker 1:You can have something that comes along like a prime example might be you know, fish having lungs and then a little bit of water gets in it and then, oh well, you know, suddenly it's a buoyancy sack. Yeah right, but then what happens is that, through creating that, there is now an adjacent possible for an evolutionary niche for a bacteria or or something to be able to live in that lung fishes lung yeah you know so, in a way, what you've done.
Speaker 1:you've figured out that there is this, now this entire adjacent possible that's made available through this technology and it can be applied in so many different ways and it's kind of like a Cambrian explosion for plasma treated.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's a fantastic explanation. Maybe we avoid the word explosion and plasma facilities.
Speaker 4:We're trying to really dispel that um you know there's.
Speaker 3:There's now a kind of understanding that evolution can go in simple steps, but also that there's periods where there's huge jumps. Functions yeah, exactly, and I think we are a bit of a step function right now for surfaces, and that surface can be some plastic for the lab, or it could be a seed, or it could be electrical wiring to attach insulation better. Or we're interested in talking to some of the co-labs members for all of the different amazing products that they're making that we could maybe help out put on natural dyes or those kind of molecules and that's yeah, so many things.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I was going to say. Like you're starting in one place, right, but to your point before. Like the like, I can see instantly environmental remediation, something like a dendra systems that people who go out and use drones to plant seeds, like you're well, we're coming up with ways to do really simple carbon measurement in soil.
Speaker 3:Because you know the whole carbon credit thing it's based on how much carbon is in your soil and those tests are really complicated. You have to send off tons of core samples to labs. They spend about six months analysing the carbon and then you get some data back. It might cost the farmer $150,000. We're coming up with just a simple plate-based assay. There's a portable plate reader. It's about as big as a disc man.
Speaker 1:Come on, man. How old do you reckon I am? I'm sorry, a what it's about.
Speaker 4:as big as an iPad mini for those. An iPad mini, thank you.
Speaker 3:I'm aged, I guess we should say it's about as big as two iPhones next to each other that a farmer could have. We work on apps that the farmer can then interpret what the results mean and that could replace an industry. That's. I mean, it's been okay, but it's the same chemical assay since 1971 when I was born. So that's how old I am wondering with the disc man reference that's great.
Speaker 1:But again to your point, like it could be used, like I can already see, like you know, new year bio, other people looking at doing like bio dyes or more sustainable ways of doing that without having to use chemical linkers.
Speaker 1:It's not just you don't need any chemical linkers, it's just the carbon is the linker exactly so you can get rid of it in the petrochemical plastics as well as all these other places. So it's going to be really interesting seeing, like, where you get the funding and support for and your whole point about these subsidiaries like I can see that, this being a platform tech, you know you could spin out and license very niched down sort of projects in very certain areas and build teams around them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and in fact that's what we're really starting to do, because we can be accused of being too diffuse and covering, trying to cover too many things, when actually we're super focused. We're just making the best surfaces. It's just that there might be a surface on a seed or a surface in a plate or on a boat or something, but taking that surface further and then commercializing it into something that's being used immediately to solve people's problems is what we're really interested in and what probably the subsidiaries that we're going to spin off kind of focus on.
Speaker 3:and culture, and we'll just stick with its strong technology development and then they're collaborating with others to kind of create with experts yeah, and and and, with people who know exactly what they're talking about but don't realize that they can make life easier for themselves just through our surfaces. Yeah, so we, we, really. What we're really finding is we're getting companies from around the world that make amazing things, that want them stuck onto surfaces better, and we're proving to be the best in the world for that right now. So we we're getting a huge amount of interest from europe, in particular, a bunch of amazing biotech companies that we really love working with. Yeah, so exciting times. And then bailey's job is to do all the commercialization. Yeah, and ball it over the years.
Speaker 4:It's very, it's very big job. I think one of the powerful things is, every time we pitch, we're not, you know, not just to investors, but pitching to people we want to work with or with. We see a new technology, like, oh, maybe this could work for that. We explain the technology if we explain it well enough, like we do now.
Speaker 4:We probably didn't do it very well at the start yeah but now we've got so adept at explaining it that a light bulb moment just goes off in the head and they're like, oh, can you do this, can you treat this thing, and then we'll solve this problem.
Speaker 3:I'm like, yeah, yep, and what we hear all the time when we really know we got people. It's like I needed this five years ago you know, I wish I had that during my phd. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, well, your students can have it now for their PhD, so they cry less it's a tear alleviation so, if I'm hearing it right, the narrative storytelling element is something that you've been working on refining to really ensure that you're getting that story across and helping people be able to understand what it is that the tech does and why do you find that? Yeah, like people are starting to resonate more and more and more as you get more of those reps in yeah, I think one of the powerful things is it depends who you're talking to.
Speaker 4:So if we're talking to someone who is in a completely different space, like they're in blue tech, then we talk about like biofouling and how we can help with that.
Speaker 4:Or if we're talking to research labs, then we talk about ELISA assays, and in ELISA assays you can use our plates instead of a 12, 24, 48-hour incubation. We can do it in two hours, little as 15 minutes. And it's just hitting those kind of points that makes a lot of sense to them and where they see that immediate benefit. Then they're like oh my god, this makes so much more sense and this is going to be really powerful for us but what bailey's really great at is actually finding the language to connect to people with.
Speaker 3:So I'm too deep in it. So when I design slides and show it to the rest of Coltrane they just roll their eyes and they go oh, another great background. And then Bailey does the same slide with a different background and slightly different words that are just friendlier to humans and the rest of the team like, yep, that one, that one, and I just sulk a little bit.
Speaker 1:I mean, your slides weren't horrible when we saw them.
Speaker 3:Just said you just oh, thanks, but they're far better now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is a really important point that I'm assuming that you must have got through that the masters of biotech potentially, or maybe it's just through getting the reps in but that figuring out the overton window for people, like what's within the realm of possibility and understanding, and meeting people where they're at with appropriate language for that discipline like that is, I feel like, such an important part um when trying to come up with an innovation and help people see how it can be used and imagine it in a context.
Speaker 1:So it's exciting to hear that that's something that you guys have done well and feeling like that's coming together because I think it's an key thing that so many people transitioning from research to innovation might not be able to nail. They would just want to give all the information, all the details, into the smallest amount of slides, yeah, and and if?
Speaker 3:when it was just me alone, it was like but the science is amazing, don't you get it?
Speaker 4:and now bailey's like no I think because early on I said I think we were producing new slides and we're producing new decks and graphics to explain it to people and I said all right, I understand the science, stewart understands the science. Let's dumb it down for all the other people. And that's wrong. You're not actually dumbing it down, you're explaining, smartening it up so that you can actually hit these different directions and explain it to people in a way that is actually understandable from their perspective yeah, you never dumb down, no, you explain up.
Speaker 3:Are you smart enough? Yeah, and. And once we clicked on that, then we I mean, I've had that for a long time as a an academic, but once we really fitted that into how we're trying to explain our products to people, then things started to click. But also we got some interesting feedback from our website, which is all pretty colors, but what can I buy and how, and we realized we weren't actually showing people what we were buying, so what they would could buy.
Speaker 4:So we just started making slides that had exactly what it is that we do, and that's when that intellectual hurdle became easier to get over and it's probably it's a blessing and a curse being a platform technology, because you can either explain the one thing that you're really good at straight away, but that only appeals to, you know, a certain audience, or we explain the overarching concept, which is plasma technology and coatings, but that doesn't explain what your actual product is and what you're going to sell.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because we can sell things from new diagnostics through to you know how to grow something that will stop someone's cancer spreading, and we have to be able to target our pitch to those different audiences and that they are very different and then again investors look at it and go, oh, you're very diverse and we're like no, we're not, we are spot on, we're the same thing all the time.
Speaker 1:It can just be applied in different directions, and so that's why we're working with individuals and companies that are really good at taking it to the next step, but they could only take it the next step with our tech no, it makes sense to me because I guess, if I'm hearing you correctly and let me know if not but it like something that we always talk about is the the need to, I guess, see things as like a dynamic network of relationships and like focusing on collaboration and all of this sort of stuff, and like what we were talking about before. I'm really curious just to loop back to that for a second and say, like, are there any examples of collaborative partnerships that we can talk about here? Yeah, I'd love to be able to like just go down into one of those sort of niches if possible just just trying to think about which ones we can talk about.
Speaker 3:Yep, you can you can? Yeah, so we're working with a, a company in Cambridge in the UK. They're probably the world's best growth factor manufacturers. They it's all animal free, so it's perfect for things like sell AG, stem cell research, those stem cell medicine, those kind of thing. So we're developing with their beautiful products. We're currently very strongly attaching them to our plates and then we've been able to come up with a whole slew of products, new products that neither of us had ever imagined, things that people have come along and told us oh, I'm tired of doing all of these steps for something. Can you just put all of these onto the plate and then I can do it all in one pot. Basically, you know a one pot solution. So that one's really emblematic of what we're doing about a dozen times right now, and it's just problem-solving and it's it's pushing the horizon, you know.
Speaker 1:So suddenly we've got a much broader horizon of oh, and then we can actually extend that to this and we can extend it to this yes, it sounds like, if I'm interpreting what you're saying, it's like through the process of co-design and helping other people out, you're also then figuring out oh wow, we didn't even know that that was part of this adjacent possible, yeah, and then that can be the seed, for it reminds me of, um, you know, david Deutsch, beginning of infinity. It's like every time there's a new discipline that starts, that's the beginning of another version of infinity where there's another whole thing that can keep going. It sounds like we're getting fractal about it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm always happy to go there there's a Mandelbrot.
Speaker 3:Yes, there's a Mandelbrot this metal buds everywhere.
Speaker 1:I forgot that. You're a bit of a of a fractally complexity science nerd as well, like the aesthetics of the patterns and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I very much am on an amateur basis. I wouldn't say that I understand it, I just acknowledge that that's part of the patterns of the universe. But every time we develop one thing, and this is happening. This happened this morning with collabs members.
Speaker 3:We came along with one thing that we'd done for one of your new members and I think we invented three or four different three or four, I think, it was about 20 new directions from it. That we could do was very exciting and also it's quite simple for us. We do the coating onto a material and hand it over to the expert, tell them how to put their molecules on a little bit of biochem, and then they go for it and they try it under their conditions, looking at their particular thing, and we there's a huge benefit for that because the partner company trying to develop something new is getting data. You know, getting runs on the board for them, but we're always getting a better understanding of what we can do with our surfaces. So it's always a win-win, which is a very kind of non business concept in a way it is.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a non-academic concept I love those lights that you keep throwing in there. I know how burnt I'm not bitter bullshit, but this is this is another key point that that we speak about all the time. I think we've spoken about this offline as well, but everything that we do it Co labs is trying to find win-win wins. So that's a winner us, it's a win for whoever we're collaborating with and it's a win for people in the planet. And I think, the more that you can strive to optimize multi win situations that are benefiting not just yourselves, not even just the other person, but like other people at large, those feel like they are just more likely to happen. Like if you, if you create an environment like that, rather than going out well, it has to be a binary win-lose or something like that. When you create those things, like business is actually easier, oh way easier.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't want to sound obnoxious about it, but business has not been. The transition from academia into the commercialization world has not been anywhere near as traumatic as I thought it would be, because I really have encountered the two things, which is super interesting.
Speaker 3:Not us, best of luck. This is really interesting. We want to talk more. It hasn't been other things. People in business don't have time to invest in other shenanigans. Right, we're so time poor that you've got to do the thing that your company needs you to do, and so that we're getting that, that binary response, and we're getting more and more towards the this. This can really help us, and as soon as they try their specific things with our stuff, we get more information about what we can do, and then we can go to our investors and say, well, look, we can not just the molecules we told you about, but all these families as well, and put on and they are useful for all of these things that we haven't even told you about. You know, nonstick cookware and all sorts of things now, that's an interesting thing, is like PFAS pollution.
Speaker 3:Yeah we think we've come up with a way to get rid of the need for Teflon, and this one we can't talk about much because there's possible IP stress.
Speaker 1:I mean I will, I will, I will hand you off air.
Speaker 3:But I was gonna say another area of interest would be like DWR, so water repellency and stuff like that, or clothing likes so we can very easily attach hydrophobic molecules like oils, so we can put on cholesterol onto a plate that we've treated, then wash it with the strongest detergent we know and the cholesterol still there. And no other plastic can do that, it's just without coatings so I haven't one more follow-up question from that.
Speaker 1:Hypothetically, could you then like so you can retreat again? Let's say you've got a raincoat that's been plasma coated and then treated. You could hypothetically retreat that garment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like a dry as a bone or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah you know, I'm just again like this, so I can see so many adjacent possibles with what could be done with this tech, and it's just really interesting how it could be used as a platform for creating more what you call like green chemistry solutions but so our chemistry is completely green.
Speaker 3:It's just carbon and the gases we use in the, in the plasma treatment, it's nitrogen, argon and acetylene, which is two carbons and two hydrogens. That's totally green. There's no toxic linker chemistry here at all. And then we can yeah, we can attach molecules that are biologically safe and healthy and then use them for water repulsion, for nonstick surfaces, for, yeah, a whole range of things, and every day we're experiencing new ideas and getting new inputs from people about oh, can you go in this direction?
Speaker 3:And when we have a good think about it, the answer has always been yes so far, which is really exciting. I love it. Yeah, actually, I love it too. I got to say I love Coltron.
Speaker 1:Especially the branding as well. Like, um, like, I think we spoke earlier, you being a word nerd a huge word nerd, it's just embarrassing absolute word, yeah, yeah, I feel you the kind of person who like wins at word all out of everyone that you would know. Talk me through the, the name, like the logo, all of that sort of stuff, because I think it is a really nice direction that you wanted to go in and I think it's definitely worth calling out, yes, or?
Speaker 3:I was trying to come up with all sorts of smart words, wordplay, things to come up with it, and it ended up being, as usual, me out on a hike, where I spend the first three hours grumbling about why on earth am I doing a hike and I hate this, and blah, blah, blah. And then an hour going oh it's pretty and then two hours thinking about things as I'm walking back to the train station. And so kultura means to grow in.
Speaker 3:Greek and it was originally because we were trying to come up with amazing surfaces for stem cells, which is what I've spent my life on. And then, if you put o n at the end of something, it means particle, so ion, electron, proton, neutron, and so because we're using ionized gas or plasma I just came up with a term on a hike coming into heathcote train station after hiking through Royal National Park, and it's just like culture on done.
Speaker 1:I love it for multiple reasons. One is the fact that it actually makes sense from a word perspective. Two, that you have figured this out on a hike, because that speaks to the importance of diffuse mode thinking, going out in nature and not necessarily thinking about or focusing on the thing, but allowing insights to sort of happen in the background as absolutely how my brain works.
Speaker 3:No, I'm not an honest on-the-spot person. I can do it for the things I'm really familiar with him really, that's like competent with but my brain likes to ponder on things for a couple of days and then it's when I'm out hiking. I'm like oh, yeah, well, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that'll do on the topic of hiking, I know you're a bit of a bird.
Speaker 3:I am a bit of a bird nerd. Yeah, I'm not a super bird nerd, not quite twitcher, just like a. Yeah, just I just think they're kind of amazing because they, when people say, what do you like birds? I'm like, well, they can fly. I would just like to fly. That would be really cool. Bailey can fly, so it requires a an engine and such yeah like a beautiful eye.
Speaker 3:He doesn't. He doesn't have several, he doesn't. He doesn't have wings, um, he doesn't actually have a pilot's license so he can fly that way. Um, no, I like. I like the evolutionary um selection that's led to their streamlined design, their ability to have rather small brains but do very complex things.
Speaker 3:And I love the austral Australian birds because they're just weird as people don't realize how we are they so weird, but they were awesome, yeah they're weird and I think like the way that Australians are kind of weird but awesome. You know we've. When I was doing my postdoc in Japan, my boss was very Western looking, which was, which was awesome, and he loved Australia because he said, yeah, you just go and do things like randomly by yourself on a large island that not many people notice, like you'll drink the bacteria that you think is causing a stomach ulcer, and then you'll give yourself antibiotics and you'll discover that stomach ulcers are not from stress, they're from, you know, a bacterium, and you win discover that stomach ulcers are not from stress, they're from you know a bacterium, and you win the nobel prize for that. And I think australians and australian birds are kind of like yep, we've just over here doing our thing and we've probably got a bit weird in a little bit of isolation, but it's a good weird I, I can resonate with that.
Speaker 1:That just makes me think of a kookaburra. It's kind of got a little bit of a mullet, a little bit aggressive, happy to eat a small bird every now and then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah or someone's sandwich like mine sitting at university of sydney by an oval, I'll have that something. Something swooped in front of me at great speed and then I realized I didn't have my sandwich they're so fascinating.
Speaker 1:I was chatting with someone, realized I didn't have my sandwich. They're so fascinating. I was chatting with someone, maybe tuesday night, um so a couple of days ago, about how, like some birds are just so insanely like, they're beautiful and they're just like a harbinger of death, like owls like you. Just they just take off, you don't even hear them and then they're just like and they still haven't figured out how that's possible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, you cannot hear?
Speaker 3:an hour. I think the funniest thing is when you stretch your nails legs out and you see how skinny they are. You're like what's what happened there?
Speaker 1:just this. Yeah, those who can't see that's a pinky thing, absolute chicken legs yeah in front of a killing machine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I. I remember when I was hiking when I was a teenager in Fentry Gully National Park and I heard a group of about four people coming on the path, around the corner on the gravel path, and there was children talking and there was parents talking and it took ages for this family to come around this little corner and then out walk this. I bird, that was just mimicking every sound of a family of four walking on a gravel path and I thought your brain's tiny, how are you doing that?
Speaker 1:they're so fast, like yeah. So I grew up like nothing, yeah, right I grew up around um, so I was born in upper ventricle. So like listening to lyrebirds, having wombats and echidnas in my backyard, or wombat wombats my spirit animal.
Speaker 3:They're short, chunky and they kill kill things with their butt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the best thing really good at crushing skulls with my butt. Isn't that spectacular, such a fascinating evolutionary adaptation.
Speaker 3:And then you look at a and the amazing thing you know, a wombat's pouch. It's the other way around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they don't put dirt in it, so you don't get dirt going into the yeah, how did that evolve?
Speaker 3:That must have been just one master gene that flipped around and you suddenly get a backwards facing pouch. Or is the pouch in the same spot and it's just the skin flap? We should check. But I think it's back to front compared to every other marsupial, because if a koala had that, because basically wombats are koalas in the ground right, koalas are wombats up trees they're very closely related.
Speaker 1:All of them were they. They kind of feel the niche that, um, that they, like marsupials, are a strength. Again to your point around australia being strange when you get isolated on an island, weird things happen with evolution, um. But yeah, there's so many of them, they're all related and you look at them and you would not pick it from just looking at them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but they're going around crushing foxes heads against the, the roof of their tunnels with their, their backsides or being mildly drunk.
Speaker 1:At all times you only eat eucalyptus. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I completely agree with you about the diffuse thinking thing it is. For me, it's a critical element. I need that time away from everything and I struggle with constant online presence. Yeah, interfering with that. I'm glad you do thinking it's a huge problem for me because it's, you know, the little dopamine bursts, and I'll just stay online a bit longer and, yeah, have a look at the New York Times again. Oh no, why did I do that?
Speaker 1:I, especially lately I can. I can really resonate with this like for me. I know that I actually work better if I have less time working and that it's more productive and that I need those diffuse moments in nature. But our culture just it's like a tractor beam or vortex that just pulls you into this basin of attraction that is very hard to get out of, even though you know it's relevant. Other people around you know that you need that time. It's just so hard because we live in this always on, constantly getting pinged yeah the other thing I love about getting out and hiking is perspective.
Speaker 3:I am perfectly happy with looking across a eucalyptus forest and seeing that I'm irrelevant to the whole thing, that it's just gonna keep existing until some idiot tries to drop it down paper yeah, to that point.
Speaker 1:I think that's a. Again, a really important point is that, like, our thinking is shaped by our environment, so that's why we try and make our spaces as nice as we possibly can. But when a human being's brain perceives the infinite of the horizon or a forest where there's just so much going on like, that actually does something to us. It calms us down, it changes our way of thinking. If you're up on a mountain, you get an elevated sense of perspective. Time actually goes quicker when you're looking at things from a broader perspective than if you're focusing in on something narrowly. Time is passed out into smaller proportions.
Speaker 3:It's like all of that shapes your thinking yeah, and I think that's what I've been lucky to have with Coltron is that because I did time travel into the future of the possibilities and it was a very broad horizon, and then I worked out a way to come back to right now with it. I think if I was just trying to work it out step by step without having an idea or a concept of what we can become, then it wouldn't work for me. I just find it overwhelming. Yeah, I think business and science are just enormously creative. You are bringing something into existence and you're shaping it in the way that you want it to be, and then there's some external forces on it, of course. But if those external forces are for good, if we can make a test for the next pandemic pathogen, that we can make in the morning and start screening samples in the afternoon, which we can we do instead of it taking three months to build something?
Speaker 1:I think that's a good thing for for humans, yeah, and that to bring in that arts thing again, or maybe a philosophical concept, I think, like the good, the true, the beautiful, all of that can be woven into the way in which you do business, because business is just, in a way, like it's a way of being and doing in the world. So if you, if you bring that perspective and you try and do beautiful business and you try and do it from a place of truth and you try and make beautiful things like I think.
Speaker 3:I think we are Bailey. We might have intended to be beautiful, but I think we are in a logo is beautiful the logo, which is a funny story.
Speaker 3:I had to create a letterhead for an official document. I remember this document and I quite literally made it in, I think, seven minutes and it's just the Coltrane, you know font that I like, and then there's a superscript, magenta solid dot, over the end and that's chemical notation for radical species and that's what we we have on our surfaces. And then we just went through a big branding exercise with our fantastic brand officer and in the end we came back to the one I made in seven minutes. I was happy to try other things and we did.
Speaker 3:We came up with a few other ones, but it just didn't and we showed them to like kind of third parties and they're like no we had a similar experience.
Speaker 1:Working with our friends made an amazing website for us. You know love your website. It's beautiful. We had our original logo was made by us for a friend who did it with one of his designers on the house, and then we went through this whole design exercise exploring new brand directions, and we're like we're gonna use that one so it is fun, these things, these things happen but what we actually learned going through the whole branding exercise was who we are actually as a company.
Speaker 3:It was unbelievably valuable absolutely, yeah, I think it's important and something I've never shirk away from, something you know it was. It was a, an investment, but it was an investment that has changed us to the core and even if it's made us stronger yeah and even if it is looping back to the same place, it's the same place from new eyes, with a shared experience of the direction.
Speaker 1:You can walk together, right. Yeah, that this is something that Andrew and I were just going for through between before, because, um, we obviously now we have another site, we're not seeing each other every day and it's so easy to to drift apart and not have those strategy sessions like, okay, where are we, where are we going, are we in alignment?
Speaker 1:so yeah, I guess, just echoing that it's such an important thing and it's not a thing that's done once, it's a constant iteration and having to check and see, and that allows for that dynamic sort of flexible, adaptable way of being in the world which you kind of need to have as a startup.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and it's it's really exciting to actually you know. So we've created this thing, but then to actually explore what it is mmm with the branding exercise was really quite remarkable.
Speaker 4:I loved it yeah, and we kind of got to, I guess, switch off from the science, from, yeah, the business part of it for it, and just focus on what the company we want it to look like, what the culture is and they've perceived as now branding officer is just so good at moderating the discussion mmm that we it just turned into kind of a fun chat and a little bit competitive between us and and trying different things and the archetypes and all of this kind of thing and it was, it was, it was awesome oh, it's a serious play, right?
Speaker 1:you need to be able to get into that state rather than just focusing on being in the like, let's get things on left brain mode of mode of thought. So no, that checks out for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, branding. I think some people I think it's a bit of a waste of time no, not at all.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, that's.
Speaker 3:I mean, maybe that was my naive perspective. I was like, oh okay, well, I know we need this, let's go through it.
Speaker 1:But actually it was just unbelievably helpful and I think that's one of the biggest learnings that quite a lot of people from the science space, when they come in to the startup world, they realize that, like almost all of the most successful companies not the best have incredible branding and know how to position it to people to get the funding that they need. They might not even have the best tech. A lot of the time they actually probably don't. They don't but they have an amazing person who understands psyche and how to position and how to storytell. So, yes, it can also be hard to get people embrace it, but I'm glad that you've come to that point where you're like, okay, this is needed yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:I did my undergraduate at Monash and then I got a scholarship to do my PhD at the University of Hong Kong in the early 90s, when Australia's was having a bit of a recession, and I'd been there about a year and a really good friend of mine from Melbourne came and visited me and she said you know what? I was just looking at you and you're just now more you know, which I thought was just a really, really complimentary thing to say. She said you haven't changed, you've just become more you. And I think when we went through that branding exercise, we became more culture on we. We suddenly understood why we existed in a way that we hadn't crystallized before.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's, it's really valuable hmm, and as well as having that person who might be a part of the team but is separate from, and that additional perspective, I think really helps.
Speaker 3:oh yeah, he was. Brian comes in with just so much knowledge and and such a very calm way of directing and moderating the discussion you hardly even notice. You know he wasn't like first we're going to do this and then we're going to do this. No, he was just leading a discussion and we did it. He was really quite manipulative In a good way In a good way.
Speaker 1:Clever. Yeah, it's a facilitating role, right? Um, yeah, that the whole concept of like manipulation. If it's in service to the good, it's like it wasn't.
Speaker 3:It wasn't emotional manipulation, it was. It was manipulation in terms of the, the etymology of the original word, man. I've been, you know, by hand, so, yeah, he directed it really beautifully hmm, love it.
Speaker 1:Is there any other final things we'd like to, to include any, any exciting updates that you know we might not be able to say exactly like. Is there any funding things happening on the horizon, any exciting things that you're looking forward to?
Speaker 3:yeah, we're, um, we're actually looking at being fully based in Victoria. Hey, oh yeah, yo yo coming down from coming. Yeah, I grew up here but live in Sydney and we're looking at coming down where we're getting a lot of support from the Victorian government. None from the New South Wales government heads up.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's why we're here as well, yeah, yeah there's really a different mindset in Victoria, so we're very keen to come down, set up a big, big manufacturing base. Employee Victorians in really skilled jobs export globally. We do have companies all around the world that want our products. We've got some companies that want to work with us so closely that they've opened Australian subsidiaries and want to be co-located with us so we can just wheel things across the hallway. So that's tremendously exciting, and so for that, we, we are on our next investment journey, which is daunting but exciting what would you call this one?
Speaker 1:so where?
Speaker 4:you, do you yeah.
Speaker 4:I guess, series a series. Yeah, I think we've been a bit different. There's all those labels for investment rounds. I've never really believed in them at all because I think every company is completely different and you've got different ways that they're founded. So some of them will come out of uni and they'll have a uni seed followed by a scale-up, and then a bridging and then a series A and whatever, and for us it was redundancy seeding and then it was, I guess, kind of company seeding, like we go from idea and steward and then now we're a company, we've got people working with us and we've got a product, and now we're going this would be, I guess, kind of our capability funding round.
Speaker 4:And scale up and I've just come up with that and I'm going to use it Capability Capability round Catalytic funding. Catalytic funding.
Speaker 3:Catalytic funding. Yes, wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 4:Because we think we're now at a point where we've got products, we've proven that they work, and every day we come up with a new one or a new system, and the only thing that's holding us back is that we don't have the capability and manufacture it ourselves we know how to get there yeah, I feel like that's been a very clear thing for you guys.
Speaker 1:Most of the time it's not being that it's been. You have to go out and prove that there's demand and through doing that then you can get enough interest from funders, from the government, to be able to back and support the I guess, the infrastructure developments that'll be needed. So, yeah, we look forward to seeing how that goes.
Speaker 1:You know, obviously we're doing our best in the background as well to try and facilitate and support in a huge support from the start yeah, so we look forward to seeing how we can continue to support in the future and, yeah, hopefully the next time we get you guys down here and onto a call there's a big announcement or something amazing happening. I feel like there's something in the works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we're right on the cusp of something pretty great awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, any final words from either of you oh, just thanks to collapse.
Speaker 3:For for what you're doing, it's a unique model in Australia. Yeah, no one else is doing it, urgently needed across the whole country hmm, and and it's the win-win concept is is revolutionary actually in this country, unfortunately, but it's um, it's a great model and we're we're super excited to see your success and how you've grown. The new facilities, amazing, um, and yeah, more power to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, stop it, thank you I appreciate it put it on a t-shirt and I'll wear it.
Speaker 4:Yes, the t-shirts actually look great it's just like amazing well, there's a merch store yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'll show you what sorts. I'm sure we've got a girl lying around, but yeah, thanks so much for your time, lads, and for making it work, even though we only have two and a half microphones. Yeah, I feel like we managed to get that connected, which I'm pretty stoked. I think it was a nothing happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Lovely, lovely addition. So in there, how do I? I'm gonna try and loop this back to something. I'm just trying to see how I can word it in. It was in the spirit of what did you say about the particles? Something about radicals? Now I've completely lost it. Radical, now it's gone.
Speaker 4:Optimism Do. A Leapers world tour starts tonight.
Speaker 3:What a segue? Probably the best segue ever.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm fine with that.
Speaker 3:I'm fine with that segue cultron is all about radical optimism yeah, you're both looking at me like that is brilliant yeah, we'll keep it.
Speaker 1:We'll keep it. Um. Well, thanks so much, thank you. Thank you really appreciate it. See you later. Bye, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the strange attractor, uh, with the team from culture on. We hope you enjoyed it and, as always, if you have any thoughts, comments, feedback, if there's anyone you'd like us to have a chat with or anything you'd like us, the collabs team, to have a chat on the podcast about, uh, let us know.
Speaker 1:Um, we're looking at getting a couple more episodes out that we've had on the backlog for a while now around, I guess, biomaterials, and there'll probably be a bit more of a focus on, I guess, the regenerative bioeconomy as well and exploring elements of regenerative development and design. Yeah, as I said before, biomaterials, but just, I guess, exploring, I guess a bit more broader than just what's happening within our lab, but what's happening and what is needed to help bring about a more circular, bio-based and regenerative, place-based economies. So there's going to be some work we're collaborating with others on that will be coming out soon. So if that's something of interest, or if you're someone who wants to explore complexity-informed, challenge-led bio design and innovation, drop us a line. We'd love to have a chat and find out if we can support or help in any way. Yeah, adios amigos.
