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Audrey Lippert:
Welcome back to the podcast. This week, we interviewed an ASU alum making waves with an innovative new search and rescue startup.
Trent Ashdown:
We also learned about the exciting new technology behind ASU's award-winning iGem team, who sat down with Sic-tech Editor Kate Gore.
Audrey Lippert:
I'm Audrey Lippert.
Trent Ashdown:
I'm Trent Ashdown, and this is State Press Play.
Trent Ashdown:
Hello, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Trent Ashdown, and I'm here with Anupam Vivek, an ASU alumni in aerospace engineering with a role in an exciting new tech startup. Anyu, thanks for coming on to the show.
Anupam Vivek:
Thank you, Trenton.
Trent Ashdown:
Can you introduce yourself in your position at Clearcast?
Anupam Vivek:
Definitely. So my name is Anupam Vivek. I'm an aerospace engineering graduate. I'm working for Clearcast as their hardware integration and test engineer. My role is multifaceted because it is a startup. It is fast -paced. I do a little bit of getting hardware into drones and ensuring that that hardware executes and works as it should.
Trent Ashdown:
So you mention drones. In your own words, can you tell me what Clearcast is?
Anupam Vivek:
We're in the field of search and rescue. So by search and rescue, I mean like, let's say you're in a boat party, right? And you're having your time, having drinks, music's playing, and suddenly all you hear is, help, help. Somebody save her, somebody save her. And you're sitting there in kind of this fight or flight situation, not knowing what to do, and no one's really doing anything about it. So the scenario is this lady is drowning and gasping for air trying to come up to the water in the ocean or lake and nobody's helping her, like a bystander effect. So then what you do, you being somewhat of an initiative person or a person with civic sense, if you will, you jump in and you save her. The second you grab a hold of her, she's instantly trying to drown you and trying to gasp for air and somehow you make it to a surface and boom, that's a life save…
To hear more from Anupam, please tune in to State Press Play.
Kate Gore:
Hi, welcome back to the state press play. Today I am here with the 2025 ASU IGM leadership team. Today we've got Michelle Kim, the wet lab, and software lead, Nicole Salazar, the human practices lead, and Ryan Crane, the hardware lead. Thank you all so much for being here today. And to get started, Could one of you talk a little bit about what IGEM is and the work that students do with the program?
Nicole Salazar:
So IGEM is a global competition, mainly undergraduate, and each team builds a system of biological parts using synthetic biology to solve kind of the world's pressing problems.
Kate Gore:
And then could you go around and kind of say how you originally got involved with IGEM?
Ryan Crane:
Yeah, so I originally got involved in IGEM because of the Synthetic Biology Club at ASU called DIY Bio. During my freshman year, I went to those meetings and learned a lot more about what synthetic biology is and the potential it has in the world. And eventually that led me to joining the IGM team.
Michelle Kim:
Shout out to DIY Bio because that's also where I learned about IGM. So like DIY Bio has this program called OpenLab and they essentially have a project. So like one of the years we engineered bacteria bacteria to produce different color pigments. And then this year we worked on spider silk. So all these cool projects like showed me what synthetic biology can do to solve the world's problems and that's what made me interested in IGEM too
Nicole Salazar:
Yeah same thing with me i first joined DIY Bio my second year because i wanted to get more research experience and DIY Bio is great for that um so that kind of introduced me to this world of synthetic biology i wanted to get more involved so i joined the high gym team
To hear more from Nicole, Ryan and Michelle, please tune in to State Press Play.
Audrey Lippert:
And that's all for this week's State Press Play. I'm Audrey Lippert.
Trent Ashdown:
And I'm Trent Ashdown. State Press Play is produced by our podcast desk editor, Audrey Lippert. Our original music is by Ellie Willard and Jake Leroux.
Audrey Lippert:
Special thanks to our multimedia editor, Matthew Marengo.
Trent Ashdown:
You can check out all these stories and more on statepress.com. See you next week.
