In this episode of Bizzy Scientist, Dr. Nora Safa sits with Dr. Elsie Ross, a surgeon and professor at UC San Diego who discusses her varied career that merges clinical practice, academic research, and medical device innovation.

Motivated by her family’s history with sickle cell disease, Dr. Ross balances her time between performing surgery and leading informatics research focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve outcomes for patients with peripheral artery disease.

Dr. Ross explains that effective treatment requires a holistic approach, often focusing on addressing the profound impact of psychological and socioeconomic factors, such as patient disempowerment, on health maintenance.

Additionally, Dr. Ross details her practical efforts in developing a new medical device designed to clear clots from dialysis access, driven by the goal of reducing costs and improving efficacy in outpatient procedures. Her narrative emphasizes that success stems from following interests and leveraging institutional resources, regardless of traditional academic metrics.

Last but not least, Dr. Safa and Dr. Ross also brainstorm ideas for protecting Dr. Ross' inventions and developing a startup to bring them to market. Listen to this episode and follow Bizzy Scientist to see how Dr. Ross' journey of commercializing her invention unfolds.

In this episode of Bizzy Scientist, host Dr. Nora Safa sits down with Dr. Jose Morachis and Dr. William Alaynick, co-founders of Phase 2 Ventures, a San Diego–based venture studio focused on early-stage innovations in the life sciences space.

Jose and William reflect on their journey from UC San Diego graduate students to founding Scholar Nexus—a student-driven consulting group at UC San Diego—to launching and scaling their own biotech startup, NanoCellect followed by other biotech companies, and now funding and mentoring the next wave of scientific entrepreneurs.

This episode explores:

• Their early bootstrapping days, including how they hauled prototypes to conferences in rental cars

• The transition from academic research to startup leadership

• How Phase 2 Ventures identifies promising biotech ideas and founders

• What they learned from startup setbacks and acquisition wins

• Why building community and surrounding yourself with good people is just as important as having a good idea

With stories that span grant writing, tech development, and investor pitches, Jose and William offer a rare and honest look into the evolution from first-time founders to venture studio leaders.

🎧 Whether you’re a researcher, student, or investor, this episode is filled with practical insights, candid experiences, and inspiration for anyone navigating the startup world from the lab bench to the boardroom.

Join us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Uri Manor, an assistant professor at UC San Diego and the director of the Goodell Family Technology Sandbox.

In this episode, Dr. Manor shares his deeply personal journey, revealing for the first time to his invention portfolio manager and host Dr. Nora Safa how being born with severe hearing loss shaped his life and career.

He discusses his early reliance on hearing aids, which sparked a lifelong passion for how technology can improve human lives. This journey took him from an initial interest in philosophy to physics and eventually to a fateful encounter with inner ear sensory hair cells—the very cells related to his condition. He shares the emotional moment he realized he had the opportunity to study the science behind his own hearing loss, a path he never anticipated.

The conversation then explores Dr. Manor's groundbreaking research, which sits at the intersection of microscopy, biology, and artificial intelligence (AI). Discover how his lab is developing superhuman deep learning models that can restore old, low quality images from outdated microscopes to the quality of a state-of-the-art, $10 million instrument, democratizing access to cutting-edge data for scientists everywhere.

Dr. Manor explains how this technology breaks the "triangle of compromise" in imaging—allowing for data that is simultaneously fast, sensitive, and high-resolution—which has powerful applications for everything from tracking live biological processes to accelerating gene therapy and drug discovery.

Finally, learn about the Goodell Family Technology Sandbox, a unique center at UC San Diego that brings together advanced technologies and experts from different fields to foster interdisciplinary innovation. Dr. Manor explains its mission to democratize access to these powerful tools for everyone, including students from local community colleges, and his vision for creating a world-class AI trained on multimodal biological data.

This episode is a powerful story of overcoming adversity and a fascinating look into the future of biomedical research, where AI promises to unlock discoveries beyond human capability.

This episode is brought to you by the UC San Diego Office of Innovation and Commercialization in collaboration with the Sullivan Center for Entrepreneurship at the Rady School of Management.