Team:NYU New York/Human Practices
New York University
Human Practices
While our team knew that flavonoids could be used for a wide range of purposes, we needed to talk to people in various industries to pinpoint a specific application. We entered the InnoVention Competition at NYU to learn how to think critically about the applications of our technology. This was a semester-long startup competition that was hosted by the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute. Through the competition, we were able to participate in programs that taught us how to approach and solve problems by talking to people. We learned ways to interact with people and learn valuable information from them, without asking leading or biased questions. This was an incredibly important lesson for us to learn, as we applied this knowledge to our future interviews and encounters.
Being a part of the InnoVention Competition also exposed us to the entrepreneurial mindset. We began to think about other aspects of our project that we had not before, such as whom our project would specifically benefit, our competitive landscape, and what made our project unique. Using the new skills that we learned, we interviewed many professionals across different industries to identify an unmet need that we could satisfy.
Integrated Human Practices
The first industry that we explored was the dyes industry. We chose to delve into this field because we had seen the work of iGEM Team NUS Singapore 2018, which created flavonoids for use as dyes. This seemed to be a great place to start, as conventional dyes pollute waters and require high amounts of water and energy to produce. We interviewed small artisanal clothing shops in New York City to understand where they get their dyes from; we quickly learned that the dye industry was much more complex than it seemed. Our interviews took us two hours upstate of New York City, where we interviewed Craig and John, who worked at a dyehouse. We learned that although using flavonoids as dyes could benefit them, the dye industry in the United States was not large enough for our work to be able to make a big impact.
Next, we interviewed professionals in the cosmetics industry. Flavonoids have anti-aging properties that make them valuable to skincare and makeup brands; we had an insightful conversation with Dr. Amber O. Evans, a cosmetic chemist at BASF. We learned that large chemical companies come up with formulations for cosmetic products made using various natural products, which are then sold in bulk to the chemical companies’ clients. We also spoke to Dr. Russell Grandis, a cosmetics chemist and managing partner at Architectural Beauty, a company that formulates cosmetics for small cosmetics businesses. Dr. Grandis told us that companies starting a cosmetics line may prefer a certain ‘theme’, and thus select natural extracts of various plants to fit their theme. These extracts can include antioxidant chemicals such as flavonoids. Taking it further, we interviewed scientists and researchers who might know about the viability of the idea of creating a flavonoid ointment.
We spoke to Dr. Shankar, a research scientist at Case Western Reserve University. He is a distinguished researcher who has written many publications about the health benefits of flavonoids, such as their anti-cancer or antioxidant properties. His research focuses on the activity of flavonoids on certain pathways in the human body that can prevent the emergence of cancer. Through our conversations with Dr. Shankar, we learned about the importance of producing high concentrations of flavonoids in order for them to have potent effects on the human body; he suggested that the topical application of flavonoids may improve their absorption within the body. This is because the highly lipophilic nature of flavonoids makes them difficult to absorb orally.