YouSaid · the spoken record

Mariana Matus

lines on the record: 24
first: 2023-02-09
most recent: 2023-02-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Hopefully, it will be a force that brings together not only regions within a country, but also continents to be able to facilitate the exchange of data, but also I think that ultimately we are giving wastewater infrastructure a new function. And my dream is that one day this data is so necessary, so critical to operate a country that this will encourage the development of more sanitation in the developing world. Just to give you one data point, Mexico, where I'm from, originally discharges a lot of the wastewater straight into the environment without treatment. There isn't enough investment in sanitation. And one day my dream is that this data will just add another reason for us to build sewers and infrastructure everywhere. And maybe it will even be designed to make this type of data collection easier.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we'll be able to better understand not just infectious diseases or drug use, we'll be able to understand chronic diseases, cancer, wellness type indicators to understand mental health and stress levels we can look at hormones like cortisol. To understand how stressed a population is, we can look at dietary data to understand if their social determinants of health, food deserts, and better inform just a design of our public health systems and cities, I think that in 10 years, if I look out 10 years, I think that the world will have adopted this type of data collection by large. I think most places will be online, if you will.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have the responsibility to think about these questions and to think about how we can position the technology and inform public opinion, engage experts in ethics, in data privacy, legislators in order to put in place guidelines that allow us to get benefits from the technology without needing to cross into privacy concerns. We want to be the ethics first option in the marketplace, the one that is being a thought leader, that is engaging the public in these tough questions, that is thinking about how to do it right by people.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is possible, as you say, there are traces of human genetic material in the wastewater that are coming from the cells that our body is shedding when we shower or when we go to the bathroom. So it's technically possible, it's technically very difficult. So basically you just take all of the DNA present in the wastewater and you sequence it. You're not targeting precisely any one group. You just get all of the genetic data. And we found that much less than 1% of the genetic data we got back was coming from people. So if somebody wanted to build that application, it would be a very tough one, technically, which is great because the system is naturally protective. But I do agree that as leaders in this”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And accessible to everyone because we're all contributing to it. And we're already seeing such great engagement with our data, with our platform, just through social media. We have our fan base and we want to do more of that.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's a great question. I think that besides the very compelling applications of the platform in the space of infectious diseases, we also absolutely believe that the drug use data that we can collect from wastewater, so use of substances like opioids, meth, cocaine, and other emerging substances will just transform our ability to understand and to tackle that other crisis that is happening, not only here in the US but internationally. So I think that there's a huge other area of opportunity to use the platform to improve health outcomes and to increase national security. But also, I think ultimately what this platform is about is about empowering people Empowering government leaders, business leaders, but also just citizens, everyday people.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is something that I always like to tell other scientists or technical people who are interested in starting companies is that it's okay to not know those pieces and that the best way to learn is actually just to do it.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been a learning curve. I think that when we both decided to start the company, we both had moments to express our interest to grow into becoming a founder, an entrepreneur, an executive, knowing that it would be a wild ride, right? And that we would be learning on the job.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by working with BioBot, they were able to understand that number one, opioid use was happening everywhere in their town. So that's already huge, right? It's already helping them understand that this is widespread everywhere. And also second, they were able to see that it was mostly about prescription opioids rather than heroin or other illicit opioids. In their town, so they were able to design an educational campaign and to bring to their town safe disposal boxes for people to get rid of any excess prescription opiates they may have at home. It was a massive success. The message was embraced by the community and they saw a 40% decrease in overdoses Which was also the first ever decrease they'd seen in overdoses in their town in almost a decade.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They look at deaths. And that's tough, not only because that data is heavily delayed, but also because it only represents a very, very tiny portion of the people who are suffering from substance use disorder So that data keeps making them look back rather than be able to respond to the people who are alive and can get help now. So a very big value proposition of our data is that it reflects consumption from people who are alive, who can get help. And more importantly, it also gives them intelligence on what are the type of substances that are driving consumption. Is it mostly prescription opioids? Is it street or illicit opioids that are getting consumed in their city or town? And that necessitates a different intervention. So just to give you an example, our very first customer for this work was the town of Carey in North Carolina.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, with opioid, that's a very valuable proposition for our government customers because right now the best data they have to understand the opioid crisis in their community is to look at over those deaths. That's the gold standard.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we've seen is a lot of intellectual curiosity about the company and the potential here. But indeed, it's been a challenge for many investors to wrap their heads around these new type of business model and a startup that is proposing to work with government as the target customer, as the core customer from day one. That's not common at all.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right now, we cannot measure more complex population characteristics like obesity or cancer rates or diabetes rates. We are only measuring things where there's a direct one-to-one kind of biomarker and something that we want to report on. But I absolutely see the future where we will have enough data to start to learn kind of predictive components of data to then be able to look at those other more chronic diseases. And ultimately, of course, be able to flag a new threat before anybody else knows about it.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, based on our research to date and that of other groups, we actually end up excreting most of the infectious diseases that infect our bodies.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, it is possible to look at influenza, RSV, other respiratory viruses, to look at gastrointestinal diseases like neurovirus, to look at sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea or chlamydia, to look at bloodborne pathogens like hepatitis C.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the most important applications of the platform right now is to look at infectious diseases that are circulating in a community, starting with the analysis of wastewater for COVID-19 levels. COVID 19 variants. We sequence the wastewater and we know which variants, which mutations are circulating in a community as well. We are doing analysis for monkeypox as well, like an outbreak that surprised everybody. Actually, you can look at influenza now with the benefit of having done this work for many years. It was actually one of the toughest applications to build on the platform. Influenza is more sensitive to degradation in the wastewater.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, and that this was a very data rich source. It wasn't noise. And I think that when I saw that data for me being a scientist, that's what to this day gave me the conviction that there was something really interesting and important here.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We saw that 8 a.m. seems to be the peak book time, at least for that neighborhood that we were looking at. And we collected sequencing data to see what types of bacteria are present in the wastewater and if they are coming from people's poop or if they are bacteria that live in the sewer. And we also collected metabolite data, basically chemicals that we excrete in our pee that can be maybe medications or hormones. So we collected both. And what we found was really impressive. We were able to see that most of the data in the wastewater was coming from people.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is it the time of the day that we are getting the sample out? We already know that flu was tough, but there are so many other biomarkers, potential biomarkers in the wastewater. What can we see? And at the core, is it all just noise or will we be able to extract epidemiologic data that is reflective of what's happening in people?”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the question Would it be possible to track the influencer season and see not only the level of disease happening in the city, but also the types of strains that are circulating? Is it flu A, flu B, H1N1? And how is the vaccine matching with what we're seeing in real time from people? That was our vision. We actually, in our very first experiment when I was very early in my PhD, we miserably failed running that six-month experiment. So there was a moment there where I could have sort of like stopped working on it and said, this doesn't work. But instead, I decided to dig into it and to try to understand, okay, why didn't it work? Was it a problem of our methods, of which sites we selected to get wastewater from? Because we couldn't collect some of the samples during wintertime when there's snow on the ground.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. That's how we think about it. It's like bytes of data flowing our feet through pipes in the city. And I think once you realize that, it's kind of impossible to go back and ignore it.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, over time, people have been studying samples that are more easy to collect. Like serum or blood samples, saliva swabs. But not many people like to collect and give poop for research. So It's definitely more of a newer thing and in particular wastewater had been massively overlooked as a critical source of data to understand population health. And I think that the beauty of tapping into pe-poo or wastewater as a data source is that we naturally are excreting it out. So rather than needing to be invasive and need to be poked or swapped in order to get data, we naturally are producing this data every day and actually disposing it and collecting it into our wastewater infrastructure.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. A love where we would get poop samples from people, from mice and other animals and sequence the community of bacteria that live in the poop, in the gut to better understand the health of that individual. So we had begun to look at the collective biome, our wastewater, our collective poop. A source of data, particularly in collaboration with another lab that specializes in smart city technologies.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we met back in 2014. So I was at MIT. I was doing a PhD in computational biology. And I was working in a pub lab.”
2023-02-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT