Arash Adami

Arash Adami received his PhD in Neuroscience from UC Riverside, where he studied traumatic brain injury. After graduating, he worked as a manuscript reviewer as well as a consultant at the biopharmaceutical company PAREXEL. Currently, Arash is the founder and CEO of his own HealthTech startup Alpha Fiber, which combines neuroscience and AI to detect potential concussions in athletes using only cameras.

Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?

I've always loved teaching and neuroscience. I attended UC Riverside and was a neuroscience major and business minor. I went into undergrad knowing that I wanted to be a scientist, so I joined Andre Obenaus and Stephen Ashwal’s lab, a radiology lab that studies traumatic brain injury, through the advice of one of my professors. After a short time doing research, I realized I really loved it and decided to conduct my PhD in Neuroscience in the same lab. However, I am not the best writer. My mom is Salvadoran and my dad is a Kurdish Iranian and the primary language spoken in our house was broken English. Not feeling confident in my writing, I knew that I didn’t want to be a professor and write grants my whole life. However, one of my strengths in grad school was detecting flaws in other people's research. I became a manuscript reviewer for J Neurotrauma and became very good at breaking down people’s experimental design. A post-doc in the lab recognized this and suggested I look into whether a career in regulatory affairs would interest me. Regulatory affairs combines being a reviewer and science policy and I really liked it, so I joined a consulting group in Bethesda, Maryland. As a consultant, I got to work on a lot of different projects and was introduced to a variety of different drugs, devices, and pharmaceutical companies mainly focused on oncology. It was very interesting to see groundbreaking research going into the clinic and to defend drugs to the FDA, but it wasn't neuroscience. There are very few neuroscience pharmaceutical companies. So, I decided to change career paths, and came up with my idea to start my own company, and that's where I am now. It’s funny because at the beginning of my scientific career, I didn't want to write grants. Now, as Founder and CEO of my company, I am writing grants to keep my company alive. So, it came full circle.

What is like a typical day or week like as in your current role as a startup founder and CEO?

I think it's very similar to being a scientist. In a typical day I’ll be checking emails, making sure we have the right supplies, and planning experiments. I’ll often check in with the CTO and ask what data we need generated and what experiments need to get done. If we are writing a grant, we talk about what figures need to be made. It’s very similar to an academic lab. I also read a lot. I have a feed that I go through every day to see which articles are relevant to my company. My company, Alpha Fiber, focuses on identifying concussions during sports using computer vision technology, so I try to stay up to date on articles relating to these topics.

On the other hand, it's really a lot of networking. I’m constantly reaching out to people and meeting with people to share what we do and learn about what other people are doing. It’s a grind because a big part of running a startup is raising money and garnering interest for your company.

What is the fundraising process like for a startup?

I am at the very beginning stages of raising money for my company as we are at the beginning stages of showing scientific validation of our medical device. At this stage, you will want to apply for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. SBIRs are mainly given to companies that have some sort of prototype or proof of concept data. Additionally, you can raise money through a friends and family round, which I just started. Once your technology is more validated, then you would you go to an angel investment group or a VC group to raise the money you would need to take you to the next phase in product development.

I’m in a unique position as I am not a professor or post-doc at a 4-year University. Normally, you would do the early-stage prototyping of your technology in the lab, but my situation is different.

In your current role, what do you enjoy the most and what are some challenging aspects of the job?

My favorite part, honestly, is the science. I enjoyed my job as a regulatory affairs professional and defending drugs at the FDA, but a lot of things I was working on I really didn’t care about. Now, with my company, I get to be learning about the things I love. I love watching soccer, and the technology I am developing is aimed at tracking soccer players. I get to combine neuroscience, physics, and sports, which I absolutely love and am so passionate about. The science is by far the best part of my job and doesn’t get old. Applying technology to a scientific field is great.

I’m not very good at keeping up communication with people for a long period of time and therefore, cultivating relationships with investors and community members is challenging for me. Raising money in general is difficult. Convincing people who do not have a science background that the science we are doing is important for society is surprisingly challenging.

What are your professional plans for the future? Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?

Having the time to run a full-time multi-million dollar company and being the leader in concussion research. The word “research” is somewhat taboo in the entrepreneurship world. In entrepreneurship, you want to say you have a product and you're developing a solution, but in reality, it's understanding that we're going to know more about a certain topic. I want to create a company that becomes the expert in detecting, treating, and understanding brain injury and repetitive brain injury. That's my main goal, to have my company be the leader of concussion research and concussion-related medical device development for the advising of treatments.

In the startup world, are there any trends that we should be aware of?

It seems a lot easier. You don't need as much capital to develop an actual medical diagnostic or device. Wearables for example are becoming cheaper and cheaper to manufacture. You can get off the shelf stuff and create software. In the general finance world, everyone is talking about SaaS where you can create technology applications that, for example, make your phone faster, or creating technology to make your life more convenient. But this is also happening in the medical industry. There is a new field called Software as a Medical Device or SaMD. This is big. This sort of software will take a lot of data into account to make a diagnosis. A big part of this field is using artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is not a lot of FDA guidance so far on SaMD, so it’s somewhat of an open field.

What kind of activities, internships, or organizations do you recommend to anybody who's sort of like in my position is in a PhD program but interested in going? What are your final words of advice?

At UCSD, there are a bunch of different people that you can talk to, and different organizations to get involved in. I participated in the IGE Med Tech Accelerator this past winter and learned a lot. The advisors there are top notch. Outside of UCSD, if you want to get into entrepreneurship, there are great free online seminars through The Brink. That group also has free mentorship and a great network. I was introduced to CONNECT ALL through The Brink network. Being Salvadoran and a minority entrepreneur, I was able to join the CONNECT ALL @ the Jacobs Center Business Accelerator and they have amazing resources. It’s a great place to start your company. REC Innovation Lab is another great resource at Miramar College, where I am an adjunct professor. They post everything, every single video they've ever done, every single seminar, and all those seminars are free for anyone to join. Other great organizations are the Torrey Project and Blackstone Launchpad. I also recommend reading the book Lean Startup so that you understand how to start a company from scratch.

Any last words or any final things you want to say?

I started my company at 33 years old. I had no idea my path would lead me here. If you don't know what you want to do with your life, even in your early 30s, enjoy it, don't rush it. You'll find something you love eventually.

Edited by Desi Chu