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Update September 2024

An eventful summer

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It’s been a while since I’ve written a life update, and a lot has changed since my last post. But, the dust has finally settled, and I am ready to report some updates.

Moving

This summer my family and I moved cross-country back to Phoenix. It more or less took a month to pack, a month to move, a month to unpack, and a month to settle in. We are living with my parents for a bit, while we sell our condo and look for a new place. But there are a lot of benefits to living at home, so we might stay for a while!

Startup

Big news for Saguaro AI: this summer we won an award at a startup competition! This past spring we were members of the Spring 2024 cohort of the Florida Nucleate Activator program. We won the Genentech DEI Award at the Demo Day pitch competition.

The pitch that got us a lot of positive feedback was for a new direction idea, using AI to optimize clinical trial patient selection. This is a completely new direction for us, and we came about it using a Build Backwards mindset, starting by identifying the best markets to enter and then working backwards to find the best product to build. The thing is, because this is a new direction for us, we essentially need to start from square zero to build up the technology, which we anticipated would take several years. However, this timeline got accelerated by a recent development.

Our venture is in talks to join forces with another venture run by good friends at ASU that have patents for technology that would be perfect for this new direction. They have incredible technology, but are lacking the time and manpower to push in a commercial direction. Meanwhile, we have a lot of connections and flexibility to push this technology into the market. This is still early stage, but is exciting!

For the past year I have been employed as staff in the lab, working on some projects for our grants and doing the startup on the side. This gave me a lot of flexibility to do work in both spaces at the same time. However, my grant funding is running out soon and I need to get a job outside the lab soon.

I have been applying to a lot of jobs, and am interviewing at a few places. My ideal job would be an AI / Data Science role in the healthcare space, but I am open to other opportunities. If you know anyone hiring in the Phoenix area, please let me know!

What’s Next

Now that I am finally settled into Phoenix, I want to get back into working on cool side projects. I have a few ideas for blog posts and projects that I want to work on, as well as a few new collaborations that I am excited about. Keep an eye out for new content soon!