Show Notes & Links

Download DETICKT IT for your Apple devices (Android coming soon).

Episode Transcript

Antonia Kolb
So the ticks that typically used to die off and not be, as you know, infectious during the colder months are actually still living. And so this is causing so many more pathogens to be transmitted. And so in Connecticut alone, we’ve had a very bad tick season and a lot of – a lot of – infections…

Tan Deleon
On behalf of the members of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, welcome to this episode of Learning and Living STEMM in Connecticut, the podcast of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. My name is Tanimu Deleon I’m an elected member of the Academy and serve on its governing council. For more information about the Academy, please visit ctcase.org. Our topic today is ticks and tick-borne illnesses. Since Lyme Disease was first identified in Connecticut in 1975, there has been an alarming increase in the population of ticks and tick-borne illnesses. Here to discuss a new app for identifying tick species and assessing the risk of potential tick-borne diseases, are Antonia Kolb and Dr. Victoria Schulman, both from King’s School in Stamford. Antonia is a recent graduate and will attend Harvard University in the fall to study environmental science and engineering. Dr. Schulman is a member of the science faculty and director of science research at King School, and Antonia’s research advisor. Antonia will share her experience as a student researcher and talk about the app she created called DETICKT IT, an app for real-time tick identification and disease risk analysis. This project earned her first place in the Connecticut Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, for which she was recognized by the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and earned her a spot to compete at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in New Mexico, where she placed second in the mathematics and computer science categories. DETICKT IT is a machine learning based iOS app for instant identification of tick species and expedited risk assessment of potential tick-borne diseases, the app has more than 2000 downloads and identifies the 10 most common tick species in North and South America with 97% accuracy. Dr. Schulman will share a few important tips for navigating the student-advisor relationship and how high school research benefits students. Welcome to you both.

Antonia Kolb
Thank you for having us.

Tan Deleon
Antonia. Let’s start with you. How did you become interested in research?

Antonia Kolb
You know, from a very young age, I’d say it really started in middle school. Just small, everyday problems inspired me to come up with random solutions. And so in middle school, it manifested itself in, you know, I love to sail on the Long Island Sound. And so when I was sailing in my little optimist, I would always see the waves passing by, and I was always interested in, you know, clean energy. And so for my first science fair project, I decided to create this novel wave energy generator, which used this dual coupling, both the horizontal and vertical, you know, propagation of waves. And so it kind of just evolved from there. Interestingly enough, my second science fair, I actually created an infrared-based tick identification device, which was totally unrelated to, of course, you know, my DETICKT IT app, but, you know, living in Connecticut, the ticks are, you know, very prevalent, and so I always wanted a dog, and one of the things – my brother’s highly allergic to dogs – but one of the things with dogs is that they carry a lot of ticks. And so I really wanted, you know, to figure out a way. So just kind of, I don’t know, I looked at everyday problems and always wanted to solve them, and that’s still something I’m super passionate about, and that has still, you know, continued on.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, that’s very, and it’s a very interesting path that you’ve, that you’ve taken, and you know, the environmental piece of it is, is very important to, probably, the tick-borne illnesses and diseases that we have in Connecticut. So, so very, very good to hear your path and where you’d like to go. So I guess, as stated earlier in the preamble, you know, Lyme Disease was, you know, detected here in 1975, like how prevalent still are tick-borne diseases in Connecticut?

Antonia Kolb
Great question. So, actually, as you talked about with the rise of climate change and these warmer temperatures, the winter seasons, as we’ve mostly noticed, are actually becoming warmer. So the ticks that typically used to die off and not be, as you know, infectious during the colder months are actually still living. And so this is causing so many more pathogens to be transmitted. And so, in Connecticut alone, we’ve had a very bad tick season and a lot of a lot of infections. And another thing that the CDC is witnessing is different pathogens are starting to also appear from other countries. For example, you know, in recent years, other tick species from totally different continents are actually starting to come here, and somehow are popping up into, you know, they’re actually becoming infectious. And so people are having these rare – I mean, even Alpha-gal syndrome. It was recently, you know, the New York Times found that a lot of landscapers and even people who, you know, they were starting to have adversity to, you know, meat and red meat, and they couldn’t eat it. And so after discovering that, oh, it’s actually this Alpha-gal syndrome, which is transmitted by this certain type of tick, there’s been a lot more research. And, you know, it’s still a very prevalent issue in our community.

Tan Deleon
Oh, wow. I didn’t, did not even know that ticks could transmit diseases that cause you to have – you said an allergic reaction to red meat? Is that?

Antonia Kolb
Correct Alpha-gal syndrome.

Tan Deleon
Wow. Okay, well, so is that the reason why you created DETICKT IT?

Antonia Kolb
Great question. So actually, right now, about three years ago, I was diagnosed with two rare, systematic tick-borne infections, Babesia and Bartonella, and this was after a few months of misdiagnoses, just because a lot of the symptoms of tick-borne diseases, they mirror other infectious conditions, such as autoimmune conditions. And so it was kind of a medical mystery for a while until this one doctor, an immunologist, decided to run this whole panel of tick-borne, rare tick-borne infections, and I tested positive for the two most rare types. And from there, you know, I was on antibiotics, and normally I sail during the summer, and I’m as a competitive sailor, but you know, sometimes with antibiotics, you can have adverse reactions to sunlight just via photo reactions. And so I couldn’t normally sail just because of the exposure. And so I decided to take, I always was interested in machine learning, but I decided to take a machine learning crash, not a crash course, but more of a substantial course, and just to better my knowledge of it. And towards the end of the course, I was learning about how to, you know, diagnose diabetes, like all these different case studies that you could use of applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how it could be applied to all these different problems in the real world. And so, I had this idea of, oh, well, could machine learning be used for tick identification? And so I actually first started off with training a dog versus cat convolutional neural network, just to actually test out, because I wasn’t sure you know how this would manifest itself, you know, just using machine learning for tick identification. That didn’t come to me until the latter part. And so I first tested this dog versus cat, just to basically get, you know, how to build a neural network that could actually distinguish between, you know, something as basic as dogs versus cats. Because, I mean, I have a dog. I have a Shih Tzu, and you know, if you look online of dog and cat photos, there’s a lot, but if you look at tick photos, there’s not so many which, you know, I’d rather see a cute dog photo than a tick photo. And so this was a huge struggle, too, in machine learning and just computer science, because typically, you know, as I saw with my dog versus cat, just this proof of concept, you’re working with these highly, you know, these huge models where you have a plethora of photos and millions of photos to train these models on. And so for actual ticks, if you look up ticks, which I don’t recommend, and actually, you know, scrape all these photos of ticks to use for a neural network, there’s actually not that many clean photos. And this is partly, too, because when you search up, you know, the way Google works is when you search up an image, sometimes similar images will pop up, and it’s not what you want. And so this was really time-intensive too because I wanted to make sure that I was trying to use CDC photos, but also photos of ticks that were actually accurate to the species. So this was a large challenge in the beginning, but as I, you know, grew the platform, it became an easier endeavor.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, I mean just, just the fact that you said you took a crash course in machine learning. I mean that takes people years to get up to speed on so good on you for that. You mentioned that one of the major challenges was the database for images. Were there any other challenges beyond just the database for images that you encountered in developing this app?

Antonia Kolb
So, yeah, I would say the biggest challenge for this app, and that still remains to this day, is just data collection. The CDC, even this is going into the risk side of the app, so when the user takes a photo of a tick that they find on the app, after it identifies the species, utilizing the machine learning algorithm, it’ll then, based on the exact location of the user, it’ll give the user this risk assessment of potential tick-borne diseases. And this is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, their tick pathogen and spatiotemporal statistics. And so they have this huge database, but one thing I noticed was, you know, because of COVID, of course, you know, the CDC’s focus, they had, before COVID, the CDC actually had this robust tick testing program. But after COVID and the start of COVID, you know, their direction shifted, of course, their efforts shifted. But one of the things that remains current to this day is that the tick testing and pathogen surveillance is much lower than it should be. And there were even studies where, you know, there was a lot of underdiagnosis of certain tick-borne diseases that were not even tracked. And this is also, though, due to the asymptomatic, or, you know, often conflated nature of these diseases and how they overlay with other diseases. And so just one of the hardest parts of this project was just getting to that point of having this solid data foundation to base the app on because without the correct data, and, you know, having sound algorithms to actually, you know, understand, be able to interpret the data, there would be no accuracy margins. And so that was one of the hardest parts, was, how do I work with such a limited data set? And I did, you know, transfer learning, which is where you take a highly – r example, your dog versus cat – it’s highly accurate because there’s so many photos and to train a model on a very specific task that can be then applied to a more limited field of knowledge with tick photos. But later, as I accumulated more photos from the CDC and other health departments, which were basically serologically verified, I was actually able to build on the database, even though it is still very limited compared to other even machine learning-based apps.

Tan Deleon
Interesting. Okay, so I actually want to, want to jump over to Dr. Schulman really quickly, because, as an advisor, do you have anything that you would like to add on navigating some of these challenges that your advisee had, especially some of the the bigger challenges that she had.

Victoria Schulman
Sure. So one of the major challenges for me while advising Antonia is that I am a classically trained geneticist. I am not a computer science guru, I am not a physicist, I am not any of the things that she wants to be. So from there, it was a little bit challenging for me to guide her down the specific content path that she wanted to pursue. However, my role as the Director of Science Research at King’s School is, I will help any student who comes along who has a project that they want to pursue, and honestly, that’s one of the more fun parts of my job, is that I’m constantly learning with every new project that comes through my classroom door. So I always tell the students, if you don’t know and I don’t know, we’ll figure it out together. And so that’s what Antonia and I had to do a lot of because she didn’t come to me with a genetics project where I could say, oh, here’s how you do it. Step one, step two, step three. She came to me with something that blew my mind, that she even want to attempt to do, let alone succeed in doing it. And I honestly just sort of said, okay, well, you’re going to have to be the resident expert on the machine learning and the content and all that stuff that you took a course on, but I will help you with the process. And that’s truly what I teach my students is the process of science. So once she had data, she really came to me for “here’s what I have, here’s how it works, what do I do with it?” And so I helped her put it into a manuscript, and we got her published. And that gained some attention. And then she got the next accolade, and she got to be the congressional app winner, and she had to go speak with Jim Himes about this, and she was saying, “Well, how do I present this? How do I strategically position this in this context to make sure that I stand out amongst my peers? And, you know, oh, there’s such-and-such a student from a different school who’s got a similar project, how do I make mine stand out more than hers?” And so I really help with the strategy and what to do with the data, because I’m a published scientist from my yester years in my previous career, I’ve given hundreds of presentations. I, not to toot my own horn, but I’ve won a few awards myself. So really, the knowledge that I’m imparting onto the students is a) don’t be afraid of the unknown, no one knows this answer, so just try. And b)here’s the strategy of how you move to the next step. And I can recall some very late nights where she and I were emailing back and forth until one or two in the morning trying to get her paper in the right format for this manuscript she wanted to submit and putting together presentations for something the next day. So in terms of the challenges, my biggest challenge when dealing with Antonia and her interests is that her interests have zero overlap with my interests. So to really learn with her along the way. But that’s, again, one of the more fun things that I do with the students. They come to me with a challenge. We figure it out together. And then the other challenge is the same as any other project, where she had this great project, what does she do with it next? So then it’s really just a matter of me putting her in front of the right venues, the right avenues, the right people to get her noticed. And you know, sometimes that’s a lot of cold calls, which can be anxiety-inducing for some, but just got to do it. And so I’m willing to do that for my students. Sort of put myself out there, and it’s a little terrifying at times, but just to see, just to look back and see all the success that she’s had has been wonderful and makes it all worthwhile. So I’m fine to take that one for the team.

Tan Deleon
No, I mean that that is very important. And, you know, I and at the end of the day, it is, it is a team effort, right? So it’s, you know, it’s not only the student, but it’s also the advisor. You know, I’ve been in situations, or I’ve heard of situations where, you know, the advisor just puts everything on the student, and the student has to go and do everything themselves, right? So it’s nice to see this dynamic between the two of you, and it’s an exemplar of what and how it should be, right? So, thank you for sharing that perspective with us here. So, let’s jump back over to you Antonia. So, you know, you’ve talked about DETICKT IT a bit, and I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around like how it works and what you’re doing, and when are you supposed to, you know, take these pictures, etc. So, what makes DETICKT IT different from other apps and services that you can pick up at the iOS store presently?

Antonia Kolb
So currently, DETICKT IT is the only free machine learning-based app that is able to identify tick species via photo and also added with this risk assessment, which is totally novel in terms of what is available and what’s out there. DETICKT IT also does have 97% accuracy, which is one of the higher accuracies in literature. And so one of the things that is special about DETICKT IT, for example, you know, when someone takes a photo of the tick that they find, as opposed to, either, you know, sending it in via mail, which is the current route of many of these encounters. You know, people, they see a tick, they get scared, and then if it bites them, then they’re automatically, you know, inclined to send it in, which is important because they want to get it tested. But what I found is that it takes a while. And also, you know, many doctors are hesitant to prescribe antibiotics, which is understandable, but at the same time, if the tick that you get bitten by does carry Lyme, then it just poses more of a danger and more of a risk. And, you know, there have been a lot of studies published where, you know, time is of the essence, because a lot of Lyme disease and other infections can become chronic. And I’ve throughout the process, you know, now DETICKT IT, it has 3000 downloads on the Apple App Store. And one of the biggest things that I’ve heard from all these testimonials that I received, because I kind of created, DETICKT IT, as, you know, more of a personal like passion project, you could say, because, you know, I had this problem again, it goes back to the problem, but I had this problem. I wanted to figure out an innovative way to fix it, but then it sort of evolved into this bigger and larger project that I didn’t really anticipate myself. And so to actually hear how all these people are being either affected by tick-borne diseases. I mean, I’ve also just received all these, like, I mean, even heart-wrenching testimonials, how, oh, they saved my son. You know, of course, you know, it’s hard to actually measure what DETICKT IT, you know, how, like, what the role it actually has and that. But just to hear all these stories about or how, oh, my grandfather, he, you know, as chronic Lyme disease, or my aunt, or just like people around in our community and throughout the US, has just been really inspirational. And that kind of makes me, it kept me, you know, going because, you know, DETICKT IT, it started off as only a three species app, so it can only identify the three most prevalent species, and it only had 80% accuracy. But, you know, after receiving all these testimonials and just people who I was somewhat impacting, I actually wanted to, that kind of inspired me to expand it. And even though it was very hard, you know, lots of data collection and again, just figuring out different ways to just address all these, either data issues or even syntax, you know, with the actual code, infrastructure problems as well for the coding aspect of it, and just figure out a way how to provide this service. Because, you know, I saw that it was actually making an impact, which was really nice to see. And so I don’t know it’s been… and now DETICKT IT is able to identify the 10 most disease-causing species, which is also on the higher end of what current apps, there’s not many, there’s only three apps, and both of them you have to pay for. And so, yeah, I can identify all 10 of the most prevalent species. And these are – I would, again, I would expand to, you know, 100 if I could, even though there’s debates of how many ticks there actually are, because, again, it’s widely under-researched, but I would expand it to the actual number of ticks that there are, species that there are. But again, the data sets are very limited, and that’s probably the biggest factor in this.

Tan Deleon
Okay, yeah. So, yeah. I mean, it seems that you’re providing what they call hope, right? Like you’re giving people a bit of hope. Because, you know, just because no one’s really looking into this, as you mentioned, and the fact that they’re not looking into it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem that exists, right? So, so this is a way of instilling, hope in people and and hopefully this becomes, this becomes something really, really big, because, you know, Lyme disease is a very, is a very critical, and it’s a very, it’s an awful thing to get. And it seems like a lot of people, you know, more and more people, are getting it, as you mentioned, and and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. So, but so I guess, you know, you kind of mentioned a bit like now the apps got 3000 downloads. So what’s next for the app? And how do people get DETICKT IT, since you did say it was free…

Antonia Kolb
Yeah, so that was one of the things that I prioritized throughout this process, was just keeping it free. Because, you know, of course, people are like, oh, you’re gonna monetize it… And I really want this to be a free service, because otherwise, people, you know, they would resort to other services. And I also think that it should just be publicly available. And now, in this age, a lot of people have, you know, handheld you know, they have phones to their access. So just, you know, the option of using phones and using apps is something, you know, widely accessible. To your point about how to expand it, you know, as I mentioned, there are 10 species, and these are the species that are deemed as most infectious by, you know, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also the World Health Organization. But you know, this only includes, really, I would say, the United States and some parts of South America. But I would ideally like to expand it, you know, worldwide. You can download the DETICKT IT on the Apple App Store by just searching it, or by going to DETICKT.com. And also, one of the things that we have an email too, and I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from people who are inquiring about totally different countries. I’ve been getting a lot of Australia requests, Austria requests, just other countries where they’re like, we have ticks too. And, you know, in literature, maybe there’s not as much research for those countries. So that’s one of the issues, I would love to expand it to, you know, Austria or Australia, but if there’s no data there, then that’s very difficult to say, because you don’t want to, you know, give these false, not diagnoses, but false results for these ticks. And also just to have the actual ticks themselves, because the species do vary by continents and by countries. Some do, at least, and so to actually have it catered towards that specific country and also to provide this risk assessment, you need to have some sort of comparable entity of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create the risk.

Tan Deleon
Okay, so you mean in in Austria or Australia, they would have to have a similar body there in order to provide you that analysis. Is that what you mean?

Antonia Kolb
Yeah, they would have to have, you know, these tick surveillance programs, and some do, it’s just a matter of actually incorporating them. Another thing I’ve also gotten many requests for is an Android version of DETICKT IT, because it’s currently only Apple, and that was just because, when I was actually developing it and learning how to deploy an Apple app store app, basically it was just an easier infrastructure, Because to deploy it onto the Apple app Store, you can use Swift for native iOS development, and that’s what I knew at the time. So I just decided to go with that coding language. The actual back end was in Python, but recently I actually changed it over to Flutter, which can be used for both deployment onto the Apple app store and the Android – the Google Play Store. So an Android version is coming, but it’s going to take a little bit.

Tan Deleon
Okay, I was going to say you’re leaving out a large percentage of the market…

Antonia Kolb
I know…

Tan Deleon
Android phones, so yeah, so that can, that can help with your data gathering and and getting you more information for your research. So, so that’s fantastic news. So, folks, folks on the line, if you’re an Android user, stay tuned. Stay tuned. So, let’s pop over to some different questions here. You know, from more of a scientific perspective, Antonia, what advice do you have for students thinking about a STEM career and the possibility of doing research in high school?

Antonia Kolb
I would say, don’t be afraid to ask for help. When I went into this project, I kind of just wanted to do it on my own, but as I learned, it was very difficult to just, you know, chug, plug away at it on my own. And I ended up reaching out, of course, to my amazing advisor, Dr. Schulman. But also just to other professionals in the computer science field, but also, you know, infectious disease, to make sure that it was up to that standard too, you know, in terms of algorithms working, and making sure that it’s actually providing correct information for the public. And also reaching out to other professionals on the more, not marketing side, but sort of the public health and how to project that onto the public. And one of the things was when I was developing the app recently, and actually improving and updating the app, one of the biggest compromising factors for tick identification with cell phones, is that, you know, ticks are very small. They range from three to five millimeters, which is difficult to detect with the human eye, but even for some neural networks. And so when I was developing the app, you know, one of the biggest things was the app was not detecting a tick when it actually was present. And so how I addressed this was, I reached out to a local professor, Maximiliano Ermesto, and he, or he actually works in AI, and he actually was able… “I was like, I have this issue, how come it’s not working?” And so he and I kind of troubleshooted, and we ultimately found this solution, where it’s called the window algorithm. So basically, when you take a photo of a tick, it’ll automatically zoom into the photo until over 95% confidence is gained by another algorithm in regard to whether a tick is present. And so what this did was basically create this auto magnifying algorithm, and it totally boosted the accuracy of the model. And so I would say, you know, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s, you know, science, it’s a cumulative process. You know, you can’t just be the only one… and also just share your insights. And in regard to, you know, engaging in science research in high school, I would say, if there’s a problem that you’re really passionate about, you know, pursue it. Because, for example, nobody was working on… at least in the science fair, because I did a lot of science fairs in high school, with Dr. Schulman as my advisor, and during a lot of the science fairs, you see all these different projects, and a lot of them are in regard to cancer research and using machine learning for cancer. And so I saw all these projects, and I didn’t see anyone with ticks, and I was kind of discouraged. I was like, “wait, is nobody doing ticks?” But you know what? That turned out to be a good thing, because at first I got a lot of feedback – negative feedback – where they’re like, oh, just do cancer research. Like, we need it more than tick-borne diseases. Who gets tick-borne diseases? What are ticks? And that’s actually just made me want to pursue it even more. Because, you know, I wanted to pursue this passion of mine, and just I saw the under-diagnosis and the misinformation online, and I just really wanted to put ticks at the forefront. And you know, I still was the only one at the science fair, because I was recently at the International Science and Engineering Fair in LA, and I still was the only tick project. But you know what? I hope that, you know, future, there’s a lot of work being done on tick-borne diseases, and I think it’s about time.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, like, I said, it’s not going away, and, you know, unless they get a cure to all the different diseases that are that are present. I mean, it’s much needed and good for you for sticking to your guns and providing a service that is very necessary. So Victoria, just getting over to you here, what’s your perspective on the question I just asked Antonia, you know, like, what advice do you have from your perspective as the advisor for students interested in science or thinking about STEM careers and the possibility of doing research in high school?

Victoria Schulman
I think that they really should go for it. I have a colleague, former colleague, actually, he’s moved on to a different institution, who said a beautiful line that has always stuck with me. He said that “the point of high school is to find the thing that is your thing.” And so if students are a little bit interested in STEM – try it! And the worst case scenario is you find that you don’t like it, and that is still just as informative as realizing that you love it. And so any student that comes through King School has to go through the ninth-grade Introduction to Biology and Science, Science Fair. Now a lot of times these projects are very simple. Antonia took a slightly different route, but a lot of times kids who do that will find out that a) they really don’t like science, so they’ll move on to humanities or economics or something else. But a lot of times that is an eye-opening experience for students, and then my office is flooded with students wanting to do more and go higher, go bigger, and so anyone who’s maybe interested in doing STEM in high school, I would say, just try it. The worst thing that could happen is you just don’t enjoy it. But either way, you’ll still have a project to speak about. You’ll still have some sort of talking point, or your college applications or your job resume, your job interviews, things like that. But the other thing is, just like Antonio said – two things she said that I would echo a lot – is one, ask for help. No 15-year-old is nearly as knowledgeable as an almost 40-year-old who’s been down that same path before, and unfortunately, did it later than most of these high school students. What I love about my role is that I’m bringing an experience to high school students that I didn’t get until I was in graduate school after undergrad. And so to give these students that opportunity early, help them know a little bit more about where they want to go earlier on. We’ll just set them up for greater success in college. They can be a little bit more specific, a little bit more directed in their college studies. And so that’s one thing I love about my role, is bringing that to them earlier. I didn’t get there till later, a little wishy-washy for a while, but made the decision, the choices that I did. The second thing that Antonia said that I really want to echo, which I guess is my third piece of advice. So try it, ask for help. And the third thing is, don’t be afraid to be the only one. If everybody’s working on cancer, it makes it 10 times harder for you to stand out. But if you’re the only one working on ticks, you stand out by default. And honestly, I think that that has helped Antonia in all of her successes. I mean, she’s pretty much made it to every national and international stage that one could get to in all of these competitions. So in that sense, you know, she’s, if you follow golf, she’s, she’s completed the Grand Slam of science fairs, which is amazing, but I think that’s because she was not afraid to be the only one to sort of go down a niche path that was unexplored. Just because it’s unexplored doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pursuing. Just means no one has done it yet, and I think a lot of students will shy away from that because they see – students are inherently drawn to models they want to mimic what they see is successful. So if everyone’s doing a cancer project, oh, I’ll just do a cancer project. But as Antonio pointed out, then you sort of get drowned out in all of the cancer all over the place, and it’s hard. You know, this student’s project was just like this students. And how do you put one over the other? And the other thing is that, you know, a lot, a lot of times students want the quick and easy recipe to success. Well, Antonia basically carved her own path. And so I’m constantly telling my students, if you are afraid to take initiative, this may not be the path for you. You need to be able to just go for it, jump in the deep end and try something. Because if you’re waiting for someone to give you a to-do, list of what to do to make the next greatest discovery, it’ll never come to you. Because the reason that discovery hasn’t been made yet is because people don’t know how to get there. That’s part of the scientific process is paving the way to that answer. If we already had the answer to that thing and had a roadmap, you wouldn’t be discovering anything novel or creating anything novel. So not being afraid to take a leap of faith, not being afraid to be the only one doing a certain thing, asking for help. And bottom line, just give it a try. Give it a try. That’s what I would say to students. And odds are, just like Antonia, I’m not going to have any clue about what it is that you want to do. But one thing that I love, love, love that my students kind of have when they come to see me, they have this light bulb moment. I think there’s a fallacy out there that students believe all teachers have all the answers, particularly ones with a doctorate degree. And so when I say to a student, “oh, I don’t know,” they look at me like I’m crazy. Like, what? You don’t know the answer? Like, no, but I am a scientist. I know how to find the answer, so let’s do it together. It kind of puts me on the same playing field with them. And then they don’t feel like it’s student/teacher, they feel like it’s a teammate. And, you know, we move forward together as a team, as a pair, and that’s something that I think is really special about the relationship that I try to achieve with all of my research students, but particularly Antonia. You know, she gave me a wonderful card when she graduated. She said that not only was I her favorite teacher, I was her favorite friend in high school, and I think that that says a lot about the teamwork aspect that we sort of take when we’re both tackling these projects, where neither one of us knows the answer or how to get there, but we figured out together, and we we see what we can come up with. And I think me modeling that lack of fear of the unknown, like, let’s just try it. Let’s just do it. I think that that helps the students, too.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, no, that’s very well said, you know. And you know, standing alone, yeah, you never know. You know the cure for cancer might be in ticks, right? Who knows, right? You never know. But your point about, you know, trying something, and you know, staying, staying the course, and asking for help and being a team player. Would you say that these are characteristics that students should look for in an advisor or mentor? Or what would you say to that Victoria?

Victoria Schulman
I would say absolutely, if you have, if you are reaching out to someone to be your potential mentor or advisor, and they have sort of a, “I’m up here, you’re down there” attitude, it’s not going to go well, that, to me, sounds more like a dictatorship, not necessarily a leader who’s truly going to guide their followers. You know, naturally, in the classroom, I’m the teacher, so by default, I’m the leader. But I read something somewhere that a true leader teaches others to lead, not orders people around. And so I do think that in guiding Antonia over these past four years, I have taught her how to be a trailblazer, and she is now a leader in her own right, particularly in this particular field. I mean, she’s had countless interviews with major institutions and governing bodies, and Pet MD reached out to her wanting to buy her app. She had to kind of politely say no thank you and make it better. So she has navigated some things as a 15, 16, 17, year-old that some adults have never had to encounter, and I take pride in that, knowing that I played at least a small part in helping her get there, but I think that that embodies the whole point of what an advisor should do. An advisor or a leader should be teaching others to lead their own project, their own path, their own passion, as opposed to just barking out commands and orders and things like that. So if a student is looking for an advisor, look for someone who has a true team spirit, because they’re the ones who are going to help you get the farthest. Sometimes, students are drawn to the fancier labs where the really cutting-edge science is happening. But sometimes, and I’ve experienced this in my own life, sometimes those fancier labs have a leader who’s a bit more selfish and is not there for your gain, but rather for their gain. And it just it doesn’t end well for the person who’s not leading the lab. And so I, you know, having had both experiences where I had, you know, in graduate school, I had a leader who helped me become a leader, and then I had another experience where my leader was a bit more selfish and was not there to help me accomplish any of my goals. I appreciate that I had both of those experiences so that now I can say, okay, I’m gonna be the former and make sure that I, as a leader, teach others to lead. And you know, one thing that a lot of my administrators have said to me is, “How did you get all these students to get to all of these great heights?” And I say, you know what, I give them some guidance, and then I just get out of their way. That’s what I do. Whereas I think if someone who was a little bit more selfish about it, would want the spotlight, and would always want to be the one to get credit for Antonia’s successes, or my other students’ successes. But you know, when I was asked to come on here and sort of play a back burner role, that’s fine, that’s what I normally do. I would rather sit back and watch my students shine, and I think that that is a characteristic that students should look for in a mentor or advisor, not someone who’s going to steal your limelight, but someone who’s going to uplift you and put you in positions to be in the limelight or on the pedestal or have those opportunities. I think it’s important for all advisors and teachers to provide students with the opportunities that would have made a difference for them when they were younger, to give them the chances that they could have, you know, capitalized on when they were younger to make a difference. And so that’s what I try to do with my students, particularly, you know, as you see here with Antonia, it seemed to work.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, yeah. Congratulations to both of you. I mean, you guys have, you as an advisor, have, have done a remarkable job, and Antonia, you know, as as a, as a student and researcher, you’ve, you’ve done a remarkable job as well. And you know, next year, going over to Boston, and you know, going to be doing some big things there, I’m expecting as well. So, you know, between now and, you know, the start of the school year. You know, what are you guys both doing with your time this summer? Is anything fun, any travel, or anything that you guys are gonna partake in?

Antonia Kolb
This summer, I have been working a little bit on, you know, the next steps on DETICKT IT, and just making sure that customer satisfaction, but also, I’ve been working as an AI intern for this animation, like AI animation company, which was super cool. And I’ve also been traveling and getting ready for college,

Tan Deleon
Anywhere fun, traveling? Where have you gone?

Antonia Kolb
I went to Vienna in Austria because I’m Austrian. So hopefully I can expand the app to Austria.

Tan Deleon
I see the connection to Austria. You talked about it earlier. So good on you. Good on you. Victoria. How about you?

Victoria Schulman
Well, I am working on the up and coming cohort of new-age rock stars, the students who come through my advanced research program. I have nicknamed them my rock stars. So Antonio just graduated from my program. It’s about two years. And so this summer, I’ve got my incoming cohort, who are all scattered around the East Coast, doing their internships, and I’m helping them through their challenges. In fact, just this morning, I had a meeting with a student who was having some trouble with his project, getting it up and off the ground. So we brainstormed a bit. I also read a proposal from a different student a couple of students a couple of days ago. So for someone, for someone in my role the summer, doesn’t mean that teachers are off duty. I may not be physically in the built the school building. I am actually currently on vacation with my children and family at the beach, but I still am ever present. Students reach out to me constantly. Throughout the summer, I’m in constant contact with them, just trying to keep the program alive for the next cohort of of “Antonias” coming through so helping them troubleshoot their problems, getting their project off the ground, and hopefully they will be, you know, the next Antonia. We’ll see how that goes.

Tan Deleon
That sounds good. It sounds like you guys both have your summers cut out for you, and good, good things are coming your way. And you know, hopefully, you will have lots of success in the fall and future successes for you both. I’d like to thank you both for coming on this podcast. We really appreciate uplifting local Connecticut folks, and we are very much appreciative of your time and and the folks listening, I’m sure, are going to gain a lot of new insights from what you’ve had to share today. So thank you so much for that.

Antonia Kolb
Thank you so much for having us both.

Victoria Schulman
Yes, thank you so much for having us.

Tan Deleon
On behalf of all of us living in Connecticut and others tuning in from other states, thank you, Antonia and Victoria for sharing your research experiences, encouraging others to engage in science and technology, and for inspiring all of us with your achievements. You’ve both given us a lot to think about. Listeners. I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube, and visit the Academy’s website at ctcase.org to learn more about our guests, read the episode transcript, and access additional resources, as well as sign up for the CASE bulletin. Thanks again, Antonia and Dr Shulman for being our guests.