Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast
Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast
Curiosity, Teamwork, and Synthetic Biology: Building Solutions for Real-World Problems
In this inspiring episode of the BioBuilder Podcast, Dev and Joshua, co-founders of the startup AIVON, take listeners through their personal journeys of curiosity, innovation, and social impact. The conversation weaves through their formative experiences with science and technology, their time in the BioBuilderClub, and their ambitious venture into the world of AI-powered healthcare.
- Origins of Scientific Curiosity
Dev recounts how growing up in a science-loving household, with parents and an aunt deeply engaged in the subject, laid the groundwork for his fascination. From tinkering with technology alongside his dad to wondering about disease mechanisms, he developed an early love for biology and engineering. This curiosity eventually led him to Alliance Academy, where he joined the BioBuilder Club, a decision that would define much of his scientific identity.
- The BioBuilder Experience
As part of the BioBuilder program, Dev and his team designed a sustainable biofiltration system that uses genetically engineered bacteria (E. coli, Bacillus subtilis, and Pseudomonas putida) to remove heavy metals from water. The bacteria were enhanced with plasmids encoding metal-detoxifying enzymes and embedded in a biochar-based medium for stability and efficiency. Their modular, scalable filter design bridged biology and engineering in a way that was both educational and impactful. Dev credits BioBuilder for teaching him adaptability, technical rigor, and how to bring abstract ideas to life.
- Collaboration & Discovery
The episode explores how Dev collaborated with peers to develop their project, noting “aha!” moments when the science began to click. The iterative nature of their work, coupled with expert guidance from mentors like Dr. Grace Vezeau and Ms. Caroline Matarrese, helped deepen their understanding of real-world science. Soft skills like communication and teamwork were just as vital as technical prowess, a lesson Dev carries into his startup journey into career paths, possibly through an MD-PhD program.
- Building AIVON and Medisense
Shifting to the theme of innovation, Dev and Joshua introduce their startup AIVON, based in Atlanta. Their flagship product, MediSense, is an AI-powered diagnostic platform that allows users to input symptoms and receive real-time health assessments. The idea was born from the intersection of their scientific training and the urgent need for accessible, intelligent healthcare tools.
They share how conversations with patients, doctors, and mentors shaped MediSense’s design and functionality, emphasizing the importance of user feedback in product development. Their goal is to make fast, affordable, and intelligent diagnostics available to everyone, especially in underserved areas. Despite challenges—from building the tech to managing startup logistics—they remain focused on scaling the product and seeking potential partnerships with hospitals and schools.
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Hello and welcome to Life-Changing Science the BioBuilder podcast. My guest today is Dev Gupta, a rising junior at Alliance Academy and student innovator, who helped a breakthrough BioBuilder project to tackle heavy metal pollution using synthetic biology. Dev shares how curiosity, iteration and teamwork led to a functional biofilter design and how that experience ignited a passion for solving real-world problems. Now he has co-founded his own technology company, avon, developing AI devices to change the world. Dave's story shows what happens when young scientists dare to think big and take action, so let's learn more and dive right into this episode.
Dev:So let's learn more and dive right into this episode. I want to learn about, yeah, that first moment that sparked your curiosity in science and tech.
Joshue:Gotcha? Yeah, no, definitely, growing up I was very lucky to be surrounded by people who had like a really really strong passion for science. I'm talking about people from when they were younger. You know they would read books and you're like, oh, my mom's out of the family. Pretty much all of them are in medicine and I feel like that kind of support and encouragement really inspired me to take it upon myself to kind of figure out what in science I was interested in and kind of take that like first step of action. My dad in particular. He loves to tinker with technology, he loves building like PCs. He loves wires the whole nine yards. He loves building PCs. He loves wires the whole nine yards. And ever since I was like eight I guess I would always help him with the smaller projects.
Dev:my mom's side really influenced me to take part in science and it's kind of stuck with me ever since I was young and I'm so excited for what the future entails you know, I'm curious if there was, you know, maybe a moment where you're tinkering with your dad in your garage or you know, uh, your sort of mother's side of the family talking about some sort of like medical breakthrough or disease where you're like, wow, this is really really interesting. And I want to go deeper.
Dev:Yeah, so my aunt specializes in women's cardiology, heart research. Her name is Dr Pooja Giranmetha over at Emory, and you know I used to help her write some work, like I would like kind of transcribe for her. She would say out loud some report and I would help just type it out for her and I got to like learn and hear about so many words and phrases that I had no clue what meant. I mean, keep in mind, I was like like 10 when this was happening, right, and I was just hearing these huge words and I'm like what the heck does this mean? So I would go home research that on Wikipedia, you know.
Dev:I know it might not be the most reliable source in terms of the sciences, but when I was young I'd love to read up on that. And you know, at the end of my freshman year of high school this is just last year for me I got to like intern and shadow at a local clinic in my area. Being able to like shadow doctors and talk to patients firsthand, I could see like the real impact that health challenges had on people and it really made me want to like understand the science behind diseases specifically and find out ways to help. And so I think that overall experience kind of deepened my whole curiosity about biology and technology and kind of how they would could come together and improve people's lives and you know this translates directly to bio builder because I feel like that was the experience I needed to be able to combine those two very, very, you know, you know diverse fields and really make a difference and do something.
Dev:So for high school you went to Alliance Academy. Yes, sir, right Curious about. Is this like a science and tech high school? What is so? Yeah, I'm interested in learning more about the school itself yeah.
Dev:So, um, alliance academy is what's considered a public lottery school. It's pretty much a magnet school in the sense that it is kind of in the middle of forsath county, where you know I live, and pretty much it's application based um and it really helps students kind of focus in on a specific path they want to do. So we have like these things called pathways at Alliance. They're super cool and every single one of them, you know, has its own positives and it's honestly amazing. But we have, like healthcare, EMR, we have aerospace, international business, cybersecurity and stuff like that.
Dev:And I feel like being at Alliance really, really helped me because you know you're surrounded by people who are definitely trying to improve their lives and learn so much and it's honestly crazy, Like I could tell you every single day, just overhearing conversations in the hallway that other like freshmen, sophomore and juniors are making really really helps you learn more and be like, okay, this school, you know it's helping me so much and it's helping me move forward. And, yeah, it's just a great school. It is definitely STEM driven. You know, all of the AP science teachers are phenomenal and there's definitely emphasis on that sort of you know classes and experience. But, yeah, it's overall a wonderful school. I would recommend it to anyone in Forsyth, you know.
Dev:So, yeah, so you, you know, obviously have had that exposure to STEM growing up, as well as all of these opportunities in high school growing up, as well as all of these opportunities in high school. I'm curious was BioBuilder already a part of one of the pathways? It's like, hey, you could do the health path, you could possibly do BioBuilder. Or was this something sort of new when you were looking into BioBuilder at Alliance Academy?
Dev:No, it's funny you mention that because the year I joined was the very first year it existed. So one of the seniors in the healthcare pathway her name is Arushi, she's a super nice person, she started the club and you know there's always like a lot of excitement and hype around it. But for BioVoter it was honestly different because it was so new, right, we didn't have any program at Alliance that really combined the synthetic biology component alongside the technological component and there was a lot of excitement and hype around it. And you know, I saw the flyers in my honors biology classroom and their freshman year and I'm like, hey, why not give it a try? I'm so glad I did. It was a phenomenal experience throughout the year. I learned so much. Tell us a bit about.
Dev:So the goal here is to sort of understand, um, what the bible the club is about, what you learn, some of the projects you did. So drop us to, let's say, the first week at the bible the club.
Joshue:All right, so first week, um, brand new club, our, our team captain Arushi, was kind of organizing our team into different sections per se. We had like a biology team and engineering team and pretty much for our project she wanted those teams to correspond with our personal strengths. So if someone who's very, very science heavy could benefit more on the biology team than wasting not wasting, but, you know, spending their time on the engineering team, if you know what I mean. So we were all like learning about each other. You know the team building process, the ice breakers, because we had like a bunch of seniors, a bunch of juniors and a bunch of new sophomores who didn't really know each other yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense and cool.
Dev:You get to know each other, you find out each other's strengths, um, and then you're like, okay, cool, let's. There's a lot of projects to tackle in synthetic biology. So how was the process of um trying to come up, that brainstorming process, coming of with a project idea, like, where do you start with that?
Joshue:yeah, so I think, you know, in forsyth county itself, there are a lot of like conservation efforts to help preserve, like the environment and stuff like that, and I do think we were heavily influenced by those things and, um, at the start of the year, our team just decided that the environment was something that we wanted to put, you know, our full focus on, because it's something that's really tangible for us and I think that's super important for any scientist trying to do something. You have to keep it tangible with your resources, with your timeline. Metal pollution in water sources in our area and around the world is a super, super serious and growing problem, affecting both like ecosystems and human health worldwide. Um, and this inspired us to, you know, take action with our project. You know we designed a biofilter that could effectively remove toxic metals from contaminated water sources using synthetic biology.
Dev:Biochem is always about, you know, looking at, yeah, the challenge is taking on big problems. So I love that you know you're in high schools, are like, hey, what's the biggest problem that affects us locally? What can we kind of build? Nice, how do you start? Okay, so you talked about a biofilter, you talk about heavy metals. Let's get a bit more into the science of the project itself and I think we'll definitely focus on, yeah, a bit of it. I mean, you gave a bit of an overview but we'd love like a bit more sort of, yeah, a bit of an overview is deeper as well, but also a bit more into your role. So we'll start off with, I know that you know you were using a lot of different bacterial species and they add actually, I'll let you sort of go about that. I think we know the problem you're tackling. What was sort of the engineering design phase was. So how did you select? You know how are we going to do this?
Joshue:Yeah. So actually my friend Shreyanch was super into computer-aided design and he led the engineering team. We started off with determining the kind of framework of how our filter is going to work. So I guess I'll start there with the design of the filter. So we pretty much made a component based modular filtration system, um, that has placeholders built into it for the actual filtration process. So pretty much you would direct water in through one end of the filter and it would pass through a series of filters, um, and you know permeable barriers and all that, and as it comes out of the filter it would be heavy metal free.
Dev:Yeah, yeah, awesome. So you had different filters within the main filter, and what was the filter itself? Was it different? Bacteria forming like a uh, we call it biofilm. What was sort of yeah, interested in that, the genetic engineering side of things?
Joshue:so, um, it was designed to obviously remove heavy metal pollutants from the water sources through bioengineering. So, um, we noticed, through our studies and lit reviews and all that stuff, that heavy metal breakdown and removal are significantly enhanced by using genetically modified bacteria. So we had three main filter chambers in our filter and they each contained genetically engineered E coli, b, subtilis and P putida to target specific heavy metal contaminants. And then we had plasmids that contained genetic codes for metal detoxifying enzymes, which were manipulated and then inserted into the bacteria, which enhanced the overall bioabsorptionaccumulation and bioprecipitation. Um, the modified bacteria were cultured and immobilized within a bio car filter medium, which provided a stable environment for microbial activity, because, I'm sure, as you know, bacteria are very, very specific in the range of tolerance that they have in their environment, and that was definitely a super, super important part of our filter. And you know, as water flows through the filter, the heavy metals are captured and removed, improving the water quality and safety.
Dev:Awesome. So you had just to sort of make sure I understand you had different bacteria and you were as you said. The plasmid design was for genetically engineering and the bacteria just sort of express enzymes and protein that allow for you to match in your bioabsorption or bioaccumulation. So either you know you've had the water with heavy metals pass through and the enzymes the genetically engineered bacteria would either bind to or bind and sequester the metals inside the cells or just have them absorb onto bioabsorption is the term, yeah, or you'd bioabsorption. Bioabsorption is the yeah, yeah. Or you, you know the you'd engineer some of the bacteria, just maybe convert some of the toxic metal ions into, like, let, toxic forms that would be, you know, then stored inside the cell and stuff like that.
Dev:That's, that's a sick project. That's really really cool. That's really really cool. Oh, cool, yeah. And of course it's what I'm sure you've mentioned with science coming up with a, you know, finding a problem, coming up with a solution, doing the planning side of things, the ideation phase, the engineering design, all of that it can take sometimes up to months before you step into the lab. Yeah, right, so I know that right now, at this moment, you haven't been able to, you know, go into the lab and do some, maybe prototypes or tests. Um, but I'm what I want to learn is some of the skills that you picked up, like was it the literature review, was it a new software to learn about plasmid design? Or even, like you know, I didn't do plasmid design until the first year of college. So just understanding how plasmids work and how you can sort of, you know, take it, use like restriction enzymes and that entire process is you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Dev:It's all in some field of biology in a way right, so curious about the skills and also some of the new biology that you learned.
Joshue:Yeah, so I learned a lot about enzymes. I guess my role in the team was definitely on the biology side. I would research like bacterium that we could use in the chambers of our filter, and I got really good with organisms and enzymes like E coli and nitrate reductase. You know, I learned about like the range of tolerance, the nutrient availability, the metal concentration tolerance, because that's very important you can't have too much or something going through or else it won't work. Um and yeah, and we learned about, like what enzymes can be uptaken by e coli and yeah, yeah, nice, awesome.
Dev:And how was? How did you sort of conduct a literature review? Now that you have all of these ai tools that at your disposal, you know I could have used that in undergrad. Hey, chachi bt, oh yeah, no, uh.
Joshue:Our team captain arushi was very good about not mitigating but using chachi bt usefully, um, and not overusing it, because then you won't really learn anything, um. So what she did is she was like pretty much every month or every quarter of the year she would assign us um. You know, hey, complete x amount of lit reviews on google scholar and give me a two to three sentence summary for each. I think you know, not skipping the eye but reading it yourself and searching things up really helped you understand the more like baseline level of it and I think that really helped to our overall team success yeah, yeah, yeah, and of course that makes sense.
Dev:Then how, how was that like being part of the bio builder program getting to you know? Um, I'm sure you read over 20, 30 papers. Um, that is definitely challenging.
Joshue:Yeah, that's something I wouldn't have got if it wasn't for BioBuilder, if I'm being completely honest with you. And other skills I learned was, like you know, adaptability, time management. I was heavily involved in HOSA throughout all this. What's HOSA? It's a healthcare occupational Okay, other club oh yeah, okay, cool. What's that? Uh, it's a health care occupational okay, other club oh yeah, okay, cool. Pretty much.
Joshue:What baubert really really helped me with was helping me understand the importance of getting down to the nitty-gritty parts of science, you know, really learning and building up from the baseline and taking what you've already known and experienced throughout your life and adding to something bigger to make it more impactful, if, if you know what I mean, right, because BioBitter got me to combine my two.
Joshue:Well, it got me to combine technology and biology, technology being my, you know, more dominant part of me and biology being a little bit more of the, you know, weaker. I need to develop more, and that really combining those two really helped me propel forward as a scientist and it really got me to experience new things that I wouldn't have gotten to experience if it wasn't for it and you know my mom she always preaches, right, you are nothing without your network and obviously I would not be here today if it wasn't for a bio builder. I'm super grateful for all of that and I feel like it was probably one of the more um, influential, influential experiences of my sophomore year and I'm so excited for next year.
Dev:You know we're gonna do bigger stuff and yeah of course you've had, uh, such a great experience, uh, with this project. I'm curious were there any aha moments, you know, during the project, like you know, times when the science started to click or when the ideas you know sort of started coming together, because that takes a really long time? I remember when I was doing my own, my first like protein engineering project, it took us six months to express and purify our first protein. What do you ask? So I know it's a, it's a patient game you need to play.
Joshue:Yes, thankfully, our team was very, very smart on the biology side, but we did face some issues on the technological side when designing the actual filter and incorporating those biological components into that. So I would say, as our understanding deepened throughout the year, our ideas kept evolving and coming together. That naturally made the science click. But one moment I specifically remember was when my teammate and friend Shrayansh was designing the physical filter model. He kept bringing up how we encountered issues with the sedimentation flow through the chambers, because one of the parts of the filter is where we would have um water flow through a barrier and the sedimentation would kind of drop and collect itself, um. And so once he figured out that, once he jumped over that um hurdle, the rest of the project kind of took off. Because that was the main component where we could be like okay, here, here's how big everything needs to be. Now we can add things into the filter.
Joshue:And another kind of moment where the science clicked was in around December. Our team hit like a kind of like a slow period. You know we had midterms and all that stuff. You know it kind of got in the way. But we reached out to our amazing mentor, dr Grace Vizizzo for guidance and she kind of helped us to refocus our efforts and identified areas where we were doing not unnecessary but um over complicated work and helped kind of streamline our efforts on our main goal and that really helped get us back on track and helped everything kind of come together and lead us to success.
Dev:Yeah, yeah, it's a team game for sure. So it's great that you had this network of mentors who could sort of yeah, we all need guidance, whether you're 15 or 25 or 50, there's always, you know, mentorship is always important. Yes, um, and what did um sort of you know, there was so many things in bodybuilder I feel you did for the first time, right, well, what did bible to teach you about building something from from scratch?
Joshue:um, it taught me, like, how to adapt and stay flexible with new ideas, because you know, know, in science you're almost never going to be alone.
Joshue:You're going to be forced to be in environments where you're going to have to work with other people, and I feel like being open to feedback from mentors and teammates is super, super important, and also acknowledging the fact that everyone brought something different to the table is just important, because you know you can combine people's different strengths. You know, we saw that in our project where we had a whole technological team and a whole biology team. At the very end, we combined everyone's strengths into one amazing project and that was a super rewarding part of the bio-builder experience as a a whole, because it got to really teach you how to work with others. You know, innovate innovate on your own, but then still learn how to ask for help and just seek advice from other people who might be smarter than you, but they still always have something very, very useful to give you yeah, no, that's, that's amazing, and you know you sort of can can carry this forward and forward in your next endeavor and in that scientific project.
Dev:What would you say to a student who's passionate about science but sort of doesn't know where to start?
Joshue:So freshman year I did not do that well in honors biology, so I had a high B in the class. I'm not very proud of it. I made some mistakes. I was to in a new school, but what I will say is that if anyone is looking to join BioBilder and they have any doubts about themselves, I feel like that just gives you more of a reason to join, because if it wasn't for my experience with BioBilder, I probably wouldn't be the scientist I was today and I feel like it really, really helps you because it gives you a whole timeline, it gives you an end goal and it gives you stuff and it gives you the opportunity to research and kind of figure out your own place in this huge, fascinating field. I had a blast and learned so many cool things along the way and you know I'm still, to this day, not the strongest in biology. It's still. I still have to read back on my work and make sure I'm, you know, thinking things thoroughly. But I feel like the bio builder.
Dev:a part of the bio builder experience is learning, growing, changing and ultimately innovating with yourself and with your peers very well said, and I don't know if I believe in the um you have to be the strongest, or you have to have an a, or you have to, you know, have the perfect grades because, at the end of the day, you're using science to solve a problem, or dare? You just need good mentors, you need good work. I think it also did it feel like a bit like while you were doing the Bible Club. The project felt like a little bit of like a, like a startup in a way.
Joshue:Right, honestly, yeah, you know, um, we had like some talks about how they would turn it into some like science fair project and another thing, right, barbader, it's endless. You can take these ideas and the experiences that you've learned and then carry them on to every other aspect of your life.
Dev:You know what I mean and I feel like that's also really, really cool and I'm sure you had to do like some sort of presentation towards the end. You're like selling on your idea and I know that that sort of must have brought up a little bit of a startup bug. I know you and this is where you know to our listeners we're going to take a bit going on, not a tangent but we're going to shift the conversation to um how dave and his um co-founder, um joshua, are actually looking to sort of launch their own startup. So what we're going to do now is, in the next few minutes, just talk about that a bit, and I'm going to get joshua on call as well. Joshua, lick, you give yourself a brief introduction and then we'll talk about how you guys came up with the idea and then we'll take it from there yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4:Um, so basically I'm an 11th grader in westverside high school. I I've been really interested in like entrepreneurship since probably this um eighth grade and I. We were trying to find a way to start a business me and dev and we decided to go upon healthcare, which is how we came up with the idea of Yvonne.
Joshue:Yeah, so we were brainstorming business ideas and we kept coming back to healthcare because we both felt that it was a very, very vast field that had a lot of room for improvement and, given how AI has been integral in modern life, we thought why not combine healthcare and artificial intelligence? That's where our main product came from. It's called MediSense and it's pretty much like an AI diagnosing device where users can input their symptoms and get like a diagnostic report so they have a little bit more peace of mind when they're dealing with their health care awesome.
Dev:So this is, you know, fantastic. I think everyone should get into the startup world because it challenges you in ways that you know. You may have an existential crisis, but it's good, it's all part of the journey. But I'm going to um, I know you sort of I mean that was sort of the elevator pitch but you mentioned many cents. But I'll let you both do another elevator pitch, like because we haven't mentioned the company name yet.
Joshue:So um, I guess, um, speaking of innovation, I want to take a moment to talk about something joshua and I are really proud of. Ivon spelled A-I-V-O-N. Joshua and I co-founded this tech company right here in Atlanta and we're working to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence. Our flagship device, medisense, uses artificial intelligence to diagnose patients in real time based on the symptoms they input. It's designed to give people smarter decision-making tools, and it's already been featured on Forsyth County News. What started as just an idea between two high schoolers is now turning into something that I really hope can make a difference.
Speaker 4:But me and Dev were just trying to figure out a way to both help the world and make a pretty successful company awesome.
Dev:So I think, yeah, the key about any good product is it it solves a big, big problem, solves a need within the community. Um, now I'm going to play a bit of devil's advocate here. How is this sort of different to you know webmd or? Uh, I don't know if you're both familiar with WebMD, because that was a big thing when I was in school. It may not exist anymore, but how does this take? You know you can technically, you know fine-tune ChatGPT or any other language model on. You know a general, feed it some more healthcare data, feed it some more diagnostic data and whatnot fine-tune a model and it can work the same way. So I'm curious about how Avon is a bit different to that.
Speaker 4:So, with Avon, we have decided to add things such as the in-depth analysis, and if you were to ask ChachiBT something that has to do with your symptoms or use any other source, it would just be as simple give you an answer. But our in-depth analysis will ask you questions about your past experiences in the past six weeks, or ask you if you're feeling any of these other symptoms, and it will narrow down the analysis from 20 different illnesses to five or even one.
Dev:It's a skill set, learning something new, building something from scratch and you sort of done this before in BioBuilder.
Joshue:So how has sort of that BioBuild my ideas and kind of put ideas into action? Because, you know, throughout the year I've been, you know you can research all you want, you can think of ideas all you want, but at the end of the day, if you're not executing those ideas, I mean what's the point? So, you know, over the course of the whole year, you know learning and growing with my team. Over the course of the whole year, you know learning and growing with my team, I've learned how to put ideas into action and really make use of everything that we're doing. And I feel like those heavily translated into my work with Ivan, because I need to work together, we need to be open to other advice from people. We need to really, you know, make sure we're not missing anything. We need to work from the ground up, step by step. You know, I feel like that just really helped me overall.
Zeeshan:Thanks once again to Dave for joining me today. Really really exciting to see young scientists take on big challenges. What really stood out to me in his comments was how deeply he understood the scientific process, you know, not just as a set of facts, but as something dynamic and iterative. He talked about, you know, coming up with ideas, testing them, evolving them and allowing his understanding to deepen over time. That ability to stay flexible, let ideas change and embrace uncertainty is such a core part of doing real science, and I feel this episode would be really useful to anyone interested in learning more about the science that Biobuilder students get to do, as well as any aspiring Biobuilder students who are looking to get into the program. If you'd like to learn about anything else Dave and I discussed today, please refer to the show notes. Join me for the next Biobuilder podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by BioBuilder's life-changing science. See you next time.