In this episode, we welcome multi-faceted inventor and author, Dr. Arlyne Simon to the podcast. Arlyne is juggling three successful careers at the same time – as a biomedical engineer, an award-winning children’s book author, and the CEO of an invention education company, Abby Invents.
Arlyne works as a platform architect in the Health and Sciences Group of Intel Corporation. Prior to her work at Intel, she was a senior R&D engineer at Becton Dickinson. Arlyne received her BS in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in macromolecular Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.
In addition to her responsibilities at Intel, Arlyne is the author of a series of books chronicling the adventures of young inventor named Abby. The books also serve as the basis for the curriculum of the education training company, Abby Invents, that Arlyne founded and now helms as the CEO. The company aims to inspire kids everywhere – including those from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM – to use their imagination and see themselves as inventors.
Growing up on the Caribbean Island of Dominica, Arlyne was inspired by her father, who was an engineer, her mother, who was a teacher, and her stepmother, who had a deep and abiding love of reading and books. Her strong family support allowed her to dream big and believe that she could achieve anything. She credits her family – as well as her graduate school advisor and mentor – with having the fortitude to persevere through the ebbs and flows of her academic journey, when she sometimes was the only woman in the lab, and she was one of very few students of color in the whole department.
In this episode, Arlyne shares how the right role models and mentors have shown her the way to success and how critically important it was to see herself as they saw her – a brilliant engineer and inventor who can hold her own in a field that has been traditionally male and White. She also discusses how she is now carrying this torch forward, ensuring that the next generation of children, regardless of their backgrounds, have the representation they need to see themselves as curious adventurers and inventors.
Highlights include:
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**The opinions expressed are those of the attorneys and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm or its clients. This podcast is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
In this episode, we welcome multi-faceted inventor and author, Dr. Arlyne Simon to the podcast. Arlyne is juggling three successful careers at the same time – as a biomedical engineer, an award-winning children’s book author, and the CEO of an invention education company, Abby Invents.
Arlyne works as a platform architect in the Health and Sciences Group of Intel Corporation. Prior to her work at Intel, she was a senior R&D engineer at Becton Dickinson. Arlyne received her BS in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in macromolecular Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.
In addition to her responsibilities at Intel, Arlyne is the author of a series of books chronicling the adventures of young inventor named Abby. The books also serve as the basis for the curriculum of the education training company, Abby Invents, that Arlyne founded and now helms as the CEO. The company aims to inspire kids everywhere – including those from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM – to use their imagination and see themselves as inventors.
Growing up on the Caribbean Island of Dominica, Arlyne was inspired by her father, who was an engineer, her mother, who was a teacher, and her stepmother, who had a deep and abiding love of reading and books. Her strong family support allowed her to dream big and believe that she could achieve anything. She credits her family – as well as her graduate school advisor and mentor – with having the fortitude to persevere through the ebbs and flows of her academic journey, when she sometimes was the only woman in the lab, and she was one of very few students of color in the whole department.
In this episode, Arlyne shares how the right role models and mentors have shown her the way to success and how critically important it was to see herself as they saw her – a brilliant engineer and inventor who can hold her own in a field that has been traditionally male and White. She also discusses how she is now carrying this torch forward, ensuring that the next generation of children, regardless of their backgrounds, have the representation they need to see themselves as curious adventurers and inventors.
Highlights include:
Thanks for listening to Sidebars! Connect with us:
**The opinions expressed are those of the attorneys and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm or its clients. This podcast is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
Welcome to Sidebars, Kilpatrick Townsend's limited podcast series focused on women in patent law. I'm April Isaacson, a patent litigator and partner in the San Francisco office.
Kimberlynn Davis:And I'm Kim Davis, a patent prosecutor and partner in the Atlanta office. We're here to discuss the gender gap in the patent bar and have candid conversations with female patent practitioners on their career paths. Welcome back to Sidebars. Okay listeners, I'm extremely pleased, to introduce our guest, Dr. Arlyne Simon. Dr. Simon is how should we say this multi-talented for lack of a better word. She's the CEO of Abby Invents, which is a K to 12 invention education company, designed to inspire kids everywhere to continue to invent, to start the process and continue. She is also the author of a series of books also entitled Abby Invents. By way of training, Dr. Simon is a Biomedical Engineer. She obtained her BS in Chemical and Biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech right here in Atlanta, Georgia, and her PhD in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. Simon is currently a Platform Architect in the Health& Life Sciences group of Intel Corporation. Prior to that, she served as a Systems Engineer in Intel's Data Center, Engineering& Architecture group. She was also Senior R& D engineer at Becton Dickinson. Dr. Simon is actively engaged in her community, serving as an If/Then Ambassador with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In this role, she empowers middle school girls to pursue a STEM career, such valuable work. The list truly goes on, but I wanted to spend a minute, just a minute reading the first paragraph of your summary, Dr. Simon, which I think speaks perfectly to the heart of your work."Blessed to have three careers I love. One day, I'll figure out how to combine them all-Biomedical engineering, writing STEM children's books and teaching K-5 educators ways to bring invention education into the classroom." This is the part I love."My mission is to inspire kid inventors everywhere." Dr. Simon, welcome to Sidebars.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Thank you for this lovely introduction, Kim. It's always remarkable hearing somebody reading my bio. I'm like,"who is this person?" Thank you for inviting me to speak and share my story with your audience today.
Kimberlynn Davis:Absolutely. Thank you for accepting. First of all, so listeners, by way of background, Dr. Simon was kind enough to accept our invitation. We actually were fans of hers, right? We've heard her speak before the Patent Office[USPTO] receiving awards there and, and we were so thrilled, our wonderful marketing team, everyone here knows Kristina. You've heard Kristina before; Kristina found a way to make it happen. So thank you so much to everyone for doing what we needed to get you here with us.
April Abele Isaacson:I, I kinda feel like we're like Oprah. We got the big guest, right.<laugh>
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I don't know if i'm'Oprah-level' yet.
April Abele Isaacson:Well if you're not; you soon will be.<laugh>. I'm very confident In that.
Kimberlynn Davis:Absolutely. So the way we typically start these Dr. Simon, we ask this question, it's a teaser question of, well, what made you interested in patent law, but, but I'm gonna shift it because patents is only a small part of everything that you do, right? So you're super involved, of course, in the invention aspects of it. You are a trained engineer. Who's actually still practicing as an engineer and you're doing all of these great things in the community. So we're gonna open your question a little bit more, even more open-ended. I wanna hear your story, Dr. Simon, the story of starting out, what was your background and how did you get to where you are now?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Okay, well, I'm gonna try to keep it brief<laugh>. I grew up in a very small Caribbean island called Dominica and what I've been told by my parents and my extended family is that I was just a ball of insatiable curiosity, a true questionnaire, asking why and how. And there were three people who played an influential role in raising me. So my mom, my dad, and my stepmom. And when you learn about them, you realize that my talents and my personality is really a blend of all three of them. Now that I'm older, I have a deep appreciation on how they co-parented me so seamlessly. My dad is a civil engineer. And so from him, I was introduced to science and I have his analytical skills and engineering know-how. My stepmom has a deep, deep love for books and reading. So as a child, whenever we couldn't find her, we knew that she was on the balcony, curled up with a book or maybe falling asleep on the book, reading her, but she was usually with a book and she worked briefly as a medical transcriptionist when we moved to the United States. And that was probably how I got introduced to healthcare. And my mom from her, I have her compassion and her deep passion for educating. She's an elementary educator. Growing up, she was a preschool teacher, then she became a primary school teacher. And today she's a principal. And so from her, I just loved kids and loved teaching. And so when you think about it, it's almost as if the three of them circled around in a giant cauldron and poured all of these bits of them and then out popped me<laugh>. And so, so that is really my, my journey of beginning. I, I wanted to be a, a teacher for as long as I could remember following in my mom's footsteps and my paternal grandmother, cuz she's a Principal. And even, you know, remembering me as a little girl, the only game I ever played with my dolls was pretend school. I would come home from school and I would line up my dolls on the pedal, the foot pedal of my great grandmother's sewing machine. I don't know if you know these old school Singer machines where they're sitting on a table and you have the foot pedal, which is like, I don't know, 18 inches wide and 12 inches, I guess, long or something.<laugh>. So my dolls would be lined up on this foot pedal and my dolls, each of them had a backpack, because my great-grandmother taught me how to sell. And so my backpacks were made from old jeans, that I sort of designed my old backpacks and inside my backpacks were, handmade exercise books for my dolls, like labeled English and Math and Social Studies and Science, like the subjects I was learning at school and I would teach my dolls, what I learned at school that day. And so I always wanted to be a teacher. There's just this desire of when I learned something, I just, I just have to share it. I can't keep it inside. I, I don't know. I just, I just need to get it out<laugh>. And so that's why I'm so involved today in invention education and, and you know, talking to girls about STEM, as soon as I learn something, I, I just need to share it<laugh> and so that is, that's really how my, my journey started.
April Abele Isaacson:So the dolls were they receptive to the different lessons that you put in their backpacks?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I like to think so. You know, oddly and my mom thought that was hilarious, but oddly my, my pretend school, there were the bright students and the not so bright students. And my mission as a pretend teacher was to make sure that the not so bright students learned how to spell and learned how to do arithmetic<laugh>. I have no idea. I had a very vivid imagination and when I outgrew playing with dolls, there were days when I remember my primary school would end at 1:00 PM and my mom's school would end at 3:30 PM. So if I timed the bus ride perfectly, I could get home, change out of my school uniform and then run down the village to my mom's school when there was a break time, like an afternoon break. And I would tell her, you know, all the cool things I learned about my favorite teacher was Ms. Robinson in grade seven. So, Ms. Robinson would teach us how to do long division with a dance and a song. And my mom would say, well, why don't you go teach, you know, my students? And then I would teach them the song for long division and the dance. And you know, there was a song for how do you spell words with I before E and E before I, and so my mom would just let me just, you know, offload everything to her class. And so that's just how I fell in love with education. Yeah.
April Abele Isaacson:You're probably too young to remember schoolhouse rock, but it sounds like you almost made up your own version of school has rock to teach lessons it's really great,
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Maybe.<laugh>
Kimberlynn Davis:So Dr. Simon, I'm intrigued now. Tell me why the, and I'm calling it a shift, but I know it's not a shift because it came full circle, but the route of the Biomedical Engineering versus that of an education related major.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Well, so in Dominica, many of the people I met, of course my teachers, you know, my mom's a teacher, my dad's mom is a teacher. So my circle was educators. And so again, you know, if you can see it, you can be it. So that's what I saw and that's who I wanted to be. And when I moved to the United States, I became aware of just how many things you could be<laugh>. So when we, so Dominics basically gave me, or showed me that I could be anything that I wanted to. And when the United States basically introduced me to opportunities and gave me opportunities to be all that I can be. So, when I moved to the United States and now I'm deciding to be a chemistry major in chemistry, because in high school, I, I really loved chemistry. That was, that was my jam chemistry<laugh>. So I figured I would be a chemistry teacher. And then at Georgia State University, I joined the chemistry club. And one day a chemical engineer in my freshman year, he gives a seminar talk and he says, with a degree in chemical engineering, he could never be bored. He could work in cosmetics, he could work in pharma, he could work in automotive. And I'm thinking what, like one degree makes you do all these things. And I don't really know what I wanna be. I thought I could be a teacher, but now there's chemical engineering and pharma and cosmetics. What, I don't know. So I came home and I told my dad, I wanna be a Chemical Engineer. Now at this point, I think my dad was getting a bit tired of me because every month I learned something new about first, it was, I could do chemical biology, forensics, or biochemistry, or maybe I can go to pharmacy school. I don't know. I'm just seeing all these things and I just wanna be everything. And so I became a Chemical Engineer. I went to Georgia Tech and I got to do internships like at companies like Dow Corning in organic light-emitting diodes, you know, the displays and in televisions and computers. And, I got to do undergraduate something I never even considered doing before. And now I'm at Georgia Tech and the Biomedical Engineering building is right next to Chemical Engineering building. And every day I walk past it, I see these really vibrant images of the brain and cells and the cells are stained and colors of greens and reds. And I'm like, wow, this is really cool. And my classes, you know, I'm learning about healthcare applications for engineering. And I'm like, what? I didn't even know. There was such a thing as biomedical engineering. And my stepmom is working as a medical transcriptionist. I am working part-time at CVS as a pharmacy. And I'm just like, oh my God, this world there. So many cool things. And so I decide, okay, let me explore now, Biomedical Engineering. And so that's when I decided to get a doctorate in the biomedical engineering discipline.
April Abele Isaacson:Well, you said earlier that it was in Dominica that you realized that you could pretty much do anything. What was it other than, and your father, your stepmother and your mother that made you believe that that was the case.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:That's a great question. So I went to an all girls high school and there's something about an all girls school. Girls are the center stage, you know. We are the class prefects, we are the athletes. We are the science rock stars, our teachers are primarily women. Our principal is female. So there is never a feeling that I can't do something. All my friends are girls and, Dominica in fact made it special too, because we have the first female prime minister in the Caribbean- Dame[Mary] Eugenia Charles. And so when you have such a role model that people call her the Iron Lady, I mean, there's no ceiling of what you can be. And plus, Dominica is a predominantly black nation. We also have indigenous population, the Carib Indians, but predominantly black. And so I grew up knowing that, you know, whatever it is I wanna do, I, I can do. It's just a matter of exposure of what else can I do. But there was never a feeling of doubt of my potential. It's just not knowing what path to Take.
April Abele Isaacson:I went to a women's college so I very much completely understand with you of the women in every role, um, and how much it empowers really is what it is is that. And it goes to your, if then, right, if you, you can see it, you can be it. And that is a mantra that we have on the podcast. I know Kim and I talk about it all the time.
Kimberlynn Davis:Absolutely.
April Abele Isaacson:I think that's really wonderful.
Kimberlynn Davis:Absolutely.
April Abele Isaacson:And one more question too about Dominica. I read that you were inspired to do some of your first experiments with your mom and that you loved, uh, being out in nature. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Yes. So Dominica is called the Nature Isle of the Caribbean. So, you know, think lush green forest, the bluest of the blue ocean and the Caribbean sea. And my mom always has, has had a flower garden. It just keeps getting better and better every year. And in the garden there was this species of caterpillar, called the frangipani caterpillar, it has black and neon yellow stripes. It looks really beautiful. And as a kid, I mean, it's just so pretty, how can a caterpillar be so pretty? And so, I just wanted to know more about this caterpillar. Does it turn into a moth, does it turn to a butterfly? And I would just put it in a jar with leaf and, you know, some droplets of water cover that with saran wrap and, you know, wait for it to turn to whatever it would turn to. So I was very disappointed because it turned into a moth, but that was, that was my introduction to different species. And, um, you know, just learning from observation, learning from doing, uh, the phase where the caterpillar is in the pupa phase is very boring. Nothing happens. And as a child, you know, those days feel very long and weeks and I'm like,"is it dead? Like what is happening?"<laugh> so that I think was the hardest part was just waiting for something to happen. And then imagine my disappointment, I was expecting a multicolored butterfly, and then it's like a brown moth that emerges<laugh>.
Kimberlynn Davis:So, so a question for you, similar to April, I guess if you put April and me together, we would come up with you. She went to an all women's college. I went to an HBCU, right. So I, all of my friend set of course is full of Xavier was really big. I went to Xavier University of Louisiana, really big on science degrees. So tons of pharmacists and medical doctors and researchers in, in my, network. But then that culture shock happened when I moved to Atlanta, went to Emory for my PhD. You went from a country with everyone looking like you, right. And then you moved to Atlanta, maybe not as big of a shock there somewhat though. I'm sure there was knowing, the schools that you went to and then[ University of] Michigan tell us about you see, I'm going with this...tell us about any, I'll just leave it at that. Tell us about it.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:<laugh> That's a good question. Yeah, moving from Dominica to Atlanta was easier because Atlanta has a very big Black population and even more so the path felt easier or, or at least, you know, gradual for me because I went to Georgia State University and that is, you know, very diverse. Yes, Georgia Tech, not so much. So that, that was my beginning of, of culture shock, uh, because now I was in engineering and so there are less women in the class, less minorities, um, and there was Georgia Tech was hard for me. Let's, let's say it that way. The, the work was difficult. First of all, I loved chemistry and I did not realize that chemical engineering did not have as much chemistry as I envisioned. And so I almost felt tricked a little bit by this chemical engineer who sold me on the magic of chemical engineering<laugh> It was the, a first time in my life where, um, I really, really had to study to make sure that I got a good grade and, you know, I had to learn about teachers grading on curves. And that concept was very foreign to me. How is it that a 60 is a B, like, what, what does that mean? What, why are you making a class so difficult? So, so that, that was, that was challenging.[Univeristy of] Michigan also tricked me a little bit when they recruited me because Michigan plans their recruiting in March. And I think they choose the, the one warm March weekend<laugh> and so, and so I go to Michigan for a grad school visit it, and I'm like, what? Like, this looks great. What's already talking about snow. There's there's snow on the ground, but it's melted. And if I have a winter coat, of course I can be warm. I mean, it's warm inside. I have a scarf and then I get to Michigan and we have polar vortex with negative 36 degrees. And I'm like, that was not on the brochure. But I, I really did love<laugh> my, I loved my University of Michigan experience, you know,"Go Blue." I think I found my way into a great lab. My lab was very inclusive, very diverse. My advisor was truly a, a mentor. He was the one who sought me out to join his lab. I would in, in my first semester at University of Michigan, you have a semester before you choose who you're a PhD advisor is going to be. And I'm the first person in my family to have a PhD, so I didn't really know the process. I just knew that this was the next step, because again, I was curious about biomedical engineering and what it had to offer. And my professor, Dr. Takayama would see me on campus and say,"when are you gonna join my lab? You know, I have a place for you." And I'm like, why, why this guy just keep asking me this thing about at joining his lab? Does he, has he seen my resume? Like, what does he think I can do? And then I would meet all these other professors, but nobody sort of had so much joy of wanting me to join the lab. It was just like normal. Like, yeah, this is what we do. Tissue engineering; but, Dr. Takayama would see me and wave and say,"Hey, Arlyne. I haven't seen you by the lab. When are you gonna come?" I'm like,"Okay, I guess I'll give it a try." And I go join his lab. And, I mean, he just took me under my, under his wings. I mean, he was the first inventor I ever met. And, he, I mean, you know, before him, I never thought about inventing. I thought an inventor was just, you know, an old white guy with the lab code and glasses like Albert Einstein. And here is this young Japanese professor with patents telling me that my work is patentable, that I'm creative, that he's giving me freedom to read this book and figure out what research path I wanna take. I'm being open and vulnerable to him that I don't really know how to start. I haven't really done that much, um, mammalian cell research, I've done stuff at Georgia Tech with plants and corn<laugh> um, um, I, but if you think I can do it, um, then sure, I will give it a go. And he made sure to give me postdoctoral mentors who, um, could, who I could shadow. When my first project wasn't working and I thought I was a complete utter failure, and I thought he was gonna be so disappointed in choosing me. He, I don't know, he just flipped it around. And I sat in his office near to tears thinking that this man was gonna tell me, he made a mistake, you need to leave. And instead he says, well, you know, it's research the first project. I never really know if that's gonna work. I just wanted to try it to see if that was feasible, but I think you've done enough. And it shows that what your, what your results have shown is that, you know, my idea, wasn't, wasn't gonna work. So we'll just try something else. And I'm like, what? Okay.<laugh> and then, and then we try something else and, you know, experiments never work the first time I go back and I'm like, this one looks promising, but I don't know why I can't figure out this piece. And he goes, you know, maybe you're asking the wrong question. Maybe, maybe we spin the question around, like follow the data. If the data is telling you do X, then Y are you trying to force fit it into Y let's just, we can change the research question and just follow the data, whatever the data is showing you. That's where we go. And I'm like, man, this guy is amazing. So, so yes, there was culture shock in University of Michigan. Yes, there were students who said that I only got accepted because of affirmative action, but having an advisor like Dr. Takayama, that just, I dunno, that trumped, everything, everything negative that I encountered, it was just like, huh, it's all good. My advisor loves me and I'm doing great work. So you can take your comments and do whatever you want with it. But I have a good mentor. I don't know about you. So it's all good.<laugh>.
Kimberlynn Davis:Oh, I love that. Love it. Love it. The power of having someone who affirms you, who believes in you. I know that resonates in you because I've read your books and we'll get to that later, but you definitely believe in, in affirming, before we jump to the i nventor p art, b ecause now I'm curious about your first invention and how you got there April. I know you had a b urning question there.
April Abele Isaacson:Oh, what I was thinking is, did you feel like you had imposter syndrome? Because we talk about these dialogues we have in our own heads that we make up things and we're sometimes our own worst enemy. Just curious if that was some, a path that you went through.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I definitely had imposter syndrome. Um, and I honestly didn't know that was a thing until a seminar talk at University of Michigan. I thought it was just me and then it was just, it was, it was, it felt good knowing that I wasn't alone in that feeling, that feeling of less than that, you're not good enough because in graduate school, you know, one of the success factors is getting publications and not, I don't really hear people talking about patents really. And so I felt like an imposter because I didn't have publications and I didn't get my first publication until my very last year, but I had filed a provisional well two provisional patents before, but I never spoke about it because I didn't, I didn't understand how important or just as good that was I thought a publication, was it because you always hear,"Publish or perish." You never hear,"patent or something." And so I, I think most of my friends in grad school didn't even know that I had patents. It was only after I left Michigan that I started, you know, being proud of becoming a patented inventor before that it was just, oh, I don't have a paper yet. I don't know what I'm gonna get published. You know, my last two years in my research lab, I was the only woman and I was the only Black person. So even then you're like, huh, all guys have publications. I don't have one yet. What am I gonna graduate? I don't know. Maybe I am a failure, but then I had patents and I didn't even know that was such a great deal.<laugh>
April Abele Isaacson:Well, and it's interesting because it goes to the point of the"publish or perish" as opposed to focusing on the value of commercializing inventions and scientific research, which I know that Kim runs into because she does patent prosecution. Another question I had as well, we had a guest, on our last podcast and he grew up on a reservation. So he is native and then went from there to MIT. And he talked about just feeling like, you know, he was definitely an outsider and sometimes feeling like, uh, he didn't belong and wanted to quit. Did you ever feel that way?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I did. My third year of grad school was the hardest. Yeah. That that year was really hard. It was a year of your qualifying exams and not passing the first time, not passing the second time. And that has never happened to me in my entire academic career of, of failing at that level. And I remember calling my dad at and I feel like, you know, I'm sorry if, if I, if I fail a third time, you know, that that's it. And I hope you don't feel disappointed that you've sacrificed so much for me. And I may not be able to finish, but what really helped me, I guess, come out of that dark period was, again, my dad, I remember calling him one night. It was late. It was late in the lab. Um, it was April or may I think Memorial Day weekend, maybe just before that, I had spent very long hours in the lab, maybe like 8:00 AM to like 10 or 11:00 PM or something; I really wanted this experiment to work and just get some good data. And it's like, nothing I tried felt like was working. And my dad, he, I called him really late. I didn't think he was gonna answer the phone. And then he said, you know, why don't you come home tomorrow? I'm like, are you crazy? Like I'm supposed to drive from Michigan to Atlanta. And he goes, no, just, just buy a ticket and just come home tomorrow. And I'm like, do you know how expensive it is to buy a last minute ticket from Ann Arbor to Atlanta? And he goes, Arlyne, just buy the ticket and just come home. So I came home for a week and it was, it was so good to get away from the lab and, and see, you know, Black people<laugh> see my family and sort of get, you know, reminded that I am loved and I can do it. And I remember that weekend, you know, my dad he's really good at cooking. So he made me omelets and cocoa tea and it just brought me back to my childhood. And, and I came back to Michigan, you know, arrested and I mean, it wouldn't believe it, but that was all I needed because maybe the following weeks afterwards then suddenly it clicked, what wasn't working, it was, I had the wrong reagent and I think I just needed, I just needed some time to get away and, you know, remind myself of who I was and I passed my qualifying exams on, on the third try. But I did it, but yeah, there were times that it was, it was lonely. I mean, it's cold. You miss your family. You lose family members and you get the call when you're in the lab. And so yeah, it, it is challenging, especially being the first in your family because nobody really understands. They're supportive. I have no doubt that they're, but they don't. Um, they try to understand and they send you prayers and, you know, words of affirmation. And that keeps you going and their friends who check in on you, God bless them.<laugh> and yeah, you just have to, I guess, push on through and you come out from the other side, uh, stronger and better than you were when you started. Yeah.
Kimberlynn Davis:Absolutely. Absolutely. You said we wouldn't believe it when you returned everything just turned around and, and we absolutely believe it because I think we've all lived exactly that, that moment where you just have to stop and refresh and be surrounded by the people who really love you and care for you. And, and so it's all making sense now, Dr. Simon, your book, where you actually talk about taking that rest, Abby takes a rest with your, but we'll get there. We'll get listeners. I promise. I know I keep bringing up the book, but we will absolutely get there. Before we get there, uh, you touched on the provisionals that you had that were filed while you were still a grad student, which I think is absolutely phenomenal. Do you wanna share with us any of those inventions, maybe how, how that research turned into a patentable invention, how you even thought that, okay, maybe I need to reach out to the commercialization and see what we can do with this,
Dr. Arlyne Simon:All my advisor, I'm just letting you know<laugh>. Um, yeah. So the research that I did in grad school was all about something based on aqueous two-phase system[ ATPS]. So just as how you have oil and water, that don't mix where the oil is less dense so it floats on the surface of the water. We worked with these two polymer solutions that dissolve in water, but they're admissible in each other. And so we learned that we could sort of confine biomolecules in different phases and maybe around my second or third year, we were searching for applications for this technology. And my advisor happened to attend a meeting where a cancer expert was speaking about a different problem that she had, which is, you know, she is a medical doctor doing research and she's focused on bone marrow transplant rejection. So she explains that, you know, when a patient has cancer, they get chemotherapy. The chemotherapy may not just damage the cancer cell, but also the healthy cell. And then if the chemo damage is the healthy cells, the physician requires for the patient to get something called a bone marrow transplant so that you can sort of replenish your, your healthy cells, but sometimes that bone marrow rejects your body, usually we think of your body rejecting something, but sometimes the bone marrow is the one actually rejecting your body. And it, it, the outcome is this disease called Graft Versus Host Disease [GVsD]. So she was presenting and saying, you know, it's, it's a challenge to then go have to give somebody an invasive biopsy that we have to wait a 100 days for us to know whether a person has Graft Versus Host Disease or not. Um, her work was all about identifying these different proteins in the patient's body that gets elevated when that rejection is taking place. But traditionally how these, um, proteins are measured is through a very long process, that may take like eight hours or so before you get the, the result. And it uses a lot of the patient's blood. You use a lot of reagents and antibodies are really expensive in research. And here we are in a biomedical engineering lab focused on microfluidic. So very tiny volumes. And so my advisor, after that talk, he's says, "Hey, you know, I think I found a cool application." But you know, again, given that I had a first project that didn't work <laugh>, he's giving me this other idea. And so he is like, okay, I don't know if it's gonna work, but it'd be really cool if it could, um, could you go, you know, try to figure it out <laugh>. And so I try, I, I tried, you know, I started working with different collaborators across University and, and yeah, we were able to figure it out after a couple years. And, but along that we are figuring it out, then we had a discussion. He said, you know, the work that you're doing is really good, but if we're gonna have you talk about this at conferences and, um, we should we should protect, um, your work. And that's when he started the conversation about filing a provisional application. I didn't know what that meant an imposter syndrome. Me didn't wanna be like, what is a provisional application? So I just went back to Google and said, Google, what is a provisional patent? < laugh>, and, u m, and then he connected us to the commercialization office at University o f Michigan, where they have, u h, patent attorneys who are skilled in that application of writing the provisional p atent. So yeah, my first patent application was learning experience. You know, what figures do you, you write? Because again, and t hen again, you know, it's also part of my journey of not knowing. So I didn't know that you could file a provisional without for sure having your test working perfectly yet. And so my advisor i s a ll, u m, again, in the mentoring role. Okay. Just draw, you know, the method that we're hypothesizing is gonna work, use the photos that you've generated showing, you know, the partitioning of the two different polymers use the preliminary, u h, results that you've gotten, where you see the light, u m, the signal, you know, showing that, you know, something did bind i nto something in a phase. So it's possible that you could have a reaction happening in the droplet. And so he sort of guided me through t he process of what figures to add. And then when we sent i nto the patent attorney and they sent h im back, you know, the language is now very legal < laugh> legalese. A nd I'm like, a nd I'm like, t hat's so I'm so cool. Like they j ust m ade my work. So I'm so complicated. A nd I'm like, that is amazing. So, so that was my first provisional patent, I think. And then the second provisional happened maybe less than a year later, because now again, you know, once you w ere exposed to something a nd you know how to do it, you know what to look for the next one. And t hen the second one was really just, you know, a n improvement on, on the first provisional where now we're exploring different, u h, applications for the technology. And again, if we're gonna publish or talk a t conferences, w e w anna protect it. And so now that I'm thinking from what my professor said, i t's like, o h, o kay, well, this is another application. Should we protect that too? <laugh>. And so that's what led to the second provisional, u h, which happened, you know, just a few months after the first <laugh>.
April Abele Isaacson:Sounds like your advisor in graduate school, was very much of an influence in your life and a tremendous mentor. What do you think it was that he saw in you?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I don't know,<laugh> I, I promise, I need to ask him one day, but I'm pretty sure if I ask him, he'll tell me I'm overthinking. I think knowing him, that's just his personality he's he sees that, he sees your potential, or maybe he does. He knows that you have potential. You don't know it yet. And I think it's similar to what I do today with, you know, my work invention education, somebody, you need somebody in your life to, to speak something into you for you to start believing that you can do it. And I think that was his role in my life was really just to, to speak to me, first of all, and say, join my lab and then speak to me multiple times. And, you know, we still keep in touch today. He's a big supporter of Abby Invents, which I did not even know that he wouldn't buy children's books, even that he has no kids, but<laugh>, but he continues to support me even, you know, last February, I was invited to University of Michigan to deliver a keynote address. And I mentioned it to him by email. And he joined and he's so busy and he joined and he had his entire lab call in. And I, I did not know he did that. I mean, I, he told me he was gonna join. I thought it was just him. But after my talk, then one of the students forwarded me the email that he sent to the lab. And that was my first time seeing how highly he spoke about me and the fact that he, he didn't just call, but he had a student's call and I've graduated so many years ago that just highlights to you how good of a mentor he is. He is the deaf of what it means to be a mentor.
April Abele Isaacson:Do you think he has any idea how much influence he had in your life?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:<laugh> I hope so. I mean, I talk about him in every interview that I give<laugh>. This is my way of giving him his flowers, just so he knows how much he's done for me. Um<affirmative> so I, I hope he does.
Kimberlynn Davis:Yeah. I love what you just said, giving, giving the flowers now. You know what, to be honest, Dr. Simon people are actually calling April's name, right?<laugh> at this point, we've shifted to that point. I'm proud to announce, oh, I should have done this at the beginning. April is now our Office Managing Partner of the second largest office within the firm. And we have some really, really large offices. She is now OMP of the San Francisco Office. I feel like I've teased our audience long enough with the Abby Invents line. I feel like I keep touching on it. I'm like, Nope, we're saving that for later. So, so tell us how you came up with the idea of Abby Invents.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Well, okay. So when I, the day after I defended my dissertation at University Michigan, I invited my dad to my lab. It would be my last lab meeting that I would attend and, you know, all the guys were cheering me on. They loved my thesis presentation and, you know, it was, it was a very heartwarming, uh, event. And we took a photo on that day. I am very short and in that photo, you'll see me standing with 15 men<laugh>[ in the] background. Um, that was the first time that we took a photo with just us. Usually it would be a picnic where we have family and friends, but I had never seen a photo of how short I was compared to all the guys. And that I'm the only Black person of all the guys, the only girl at the front<laugh> with all the guys. Um, anyway, we're walking back to my car and my dad says,"wait, are there other women in the lab?" Cause there were some guys who were still missing. Okay. So he goes,"are you the only woman in the lab?" And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure. I told you when the last woman left, that was two years ago and he goes, huh, I didn't realize that you, you must have said it, but I probably didn't really realize that you were. So that conversation sort of stuck with me for a few years. Um, and then I always, again, you know, going back to my childhood, wanting to be a teacher, right. You know, I'm now a biomedical engineer. I'm not thinking of becoming a professor, but I still have that desire to share the knowledge that I've learned. And I decided to write a children's book and I wanted a little, I wanted to basically write a letter or a story for my younger self. And that's why in the first title, Abby Invents Unbreakable Crayons, you see Abby, the very first image is that she is, she's in her class. And her teacher introduces the class to inventor Maya Smart, who is a black woman inventor and Abby gasped, because she says, she looks like me<laugh>. And, and that for me was important. Representation matters at all levels. Right? And now, because of that Abby meeting inventor Maya Smart, it has planted a seed in who she is. So when now she's trying to color with her crayons and they keep breaking. She knows that she's identified a problem and what's left is to figure out how to solve that problem. And now she knows she can be an inventor like inventor Maya Smart. And so Abby invents the world's first and breakable crayons and gets her first patent. And then in the second book, I wanted to introduce the theme of collaboration because many people think inventors work alone. And also I invented a boy character Miko because many parents were asking me,"where is the boy?" To which I usually responded that I read Harry Potter. And he's a boy. So I don't know why, yo, oh boy, can't read about Abby, but sure. Black boys need some love too. So here comes Miko<laugh> and Miko is Abby's cousin. And I, you know, I wanted to, this is the themes of my stories are really to show kids, okay, first we make a crayon. It's small, it's a kid invention, but I want Abby to grow technically through my stories. So my mission is really in every story, her inventions get more complicated, but it's simplified in such a way that kids can understand similar to how I talked to my dolls, who I spoke to kids in my mom's classroom that desire to teach is still there. And so Abby and Miko come home from school. They see Abby's mom taking forever to full laundry. And in the minds of a child, there are washing machines to wash the clothes, their dryer is to dry the clothes. So surely there should be folding machines to fold the clothes. And so Abby and Miko invent the world's first at home laundry folding machine, and she gets her second patent. Now the, the name Abby and events also has meaning. So Abby means"gives joy" and invents comes from the Latin word inventus, to discover. So put it together and Abby Invents really means that there is joy in discovery. And so that's all that I want to show kids really is the magic of inventing the joy of discovery and that, you know, whatever problem that you see in the world, whether it be small like crayons or a folding machine or whatever Abby invents next, it's possible, and you don't have to wait until you're 20-something like I was to know that you can be an inventor, you can invent at your young age and, you know, in my stories, I call kids future inventor. Again, affirmations, you know, for me, one of my earliest affirmations in, um, undergrad was when I became a McNair Scholar. So the Ronald E. McNair program is, you know, named after Dr. McNair, who is the second African American to go to space and his legacy lives on in McNair Scholars. So that program was what led me to get a doctorate degree before that. I mean, why would I wanna get a doctorate degree? I didn't even know I could do that. So the program, every time I entered into that office, the admin assistant, the program directors, they all called me future Dr. Simon for three years, they called me future Dr. Simon. And that is the power of affirmation and manifestation. Like you hear it enough, you believe it. And the only thing left for you to do is just make it real. And so by calling kids future inventor in the books, whenever I sign the book it's hello, future inventor. Whenever I speak to students, it's hello, future inventors. When I call my niece and nephew, I say, hello, future inventor Sari. And you know, my niece Sari, like now she calls me. And she says, Hey aunt. And, you know, I had an idea for this invention for a face mask, cuz I can't breathe with the mask. And I'm thinking maybe we can do that, that, that, and I'm like, do you realize how powerful that is? She's eight. And she's already thinking about inventing or my nephew will say like, Hey, I invented this anti-itch cream. And I'm like, what is an anti itch? Cream turns out, all he did was go in the yard, you know, crush out some hibiscus leaves and pour some mentholate solution and mix some of my mom's lotion, which he didn't ask permission to do and called it his anti-itch cream. But I mean that is that all you have to do is just call kids future inventor. And just see how much they sit up and they start seeing themselves as future inventors.
April Abele Isaacson:I know you won awards for Abby Invents The Foldibot. Can you talk about some of those awards?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Uh, sure. Purdue University in their 2021 Engineering Gift guide, they ranked Abby invents The Foldibot as one of their top 10 engineering gifts for kids. The Smithsonian Magazine also rated it as one of the top, uh, toys or gifts for, for kids in 2021. And most recently, Abby Invents The Foldibot is a finalist for the 2022 AAAS/Subaru SB&F best children science picture book. So AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And so I am like super jazzed because I I'm just amazed because you know, Abby Invents The Foldibot is self-published and uh, to be on a short list of four<laugh>, uh, for this prestigious national award and you know, to have a review of Abby Invents The Foldibot in science magazine, you know, a top academic journal, it, it feels like maybe elements of my life are finally finding a way to connect<laugh>. Because I never expected a children's book getting a review in a scientific journal. So yes, the feedback has been and continues to be overwhelmingly positive. And so I'm happy the story has resonated with so many parents and educators and, and kids, you know, always about reaching the kids. So I'm happy. The awards means that more kids will get to be introduced to Abby's character and more kids will learn about inventing.
April Abele Isaacson:And it was self-published because it was actually rejected by publishers isn't that accurate, which really goes to your perseverance and ability to just move past adversity.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:That Is correct. Yeah. That is true.<laugh>.
Kimberlynn Davis:And the joke's on them, so there you go.<laugh>
April Abele Isaacson:Well, one of the things that resonated with me when I read the books was how important it is to have adult support and encouragement and empowerment. I know that you were fortunate to have that with your family and obviously had an excellent mentor in your advisor in graduate school, but can you talk a little bit more about how incredibly important that is for kids.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:So important? Um, I mean your childhood is your formative years. Whatever you hear as a child, good or bad is what you remember through your entire grown up or adulthood. For me, I mean I always heard stuff like you're so bright to a bright future such potential and these are things that all kids should hear. And so I am very intentional on making sure that with Abby Invents, I have affirmations like you are a problem solver, you're an inventor, you of problems big and small. You have great ideas. I mean that is a dumbed down version of what my advisor told me in grad school, but that's literally how he made me feel that no question I asked him was silly that I have great ideas. And so I just want kids to know no matter their income, no matter their race, that they have great ideas and it's up to them to share it and whatever ideas they have, it is a great idea and they can make it become reality.
April Abele Isaacson:When I loved that they had I ideation meetings in the book and then also, um, were crowdsourcing to get feedback. I just thought that was absolutely fabulous. Oh yeah.
Kimberlynn Davis:They were definitely next level<laugh> they were, they were, oh this is great. Well, speaking of the next generation, Kristina, I tell you she's always the thinker. She's the true inventor and mastermind. She thinks of everything, but she partnered with our department at the firm who has established a great partnership I'll call her by name. We are calling everyone out and giving them their flowers, Katie Beacham. She is our. Director of community relations and all things I'm butchering her title right now. Mind you, I think she's like chief filling the blank. So she she's a<laugh> but she's established or helped us to continue a partnership with the local school, Barack and Michelle Obama Academy, not too far, not too far from Georgia state actually<laugh> um, so, so books were put into the hands. Your books were put into the hands of each of these babies and what they were able to do was come up with a list of questions and we have the pleasure to read a few of their questions so that you can answer them live for them. April. Do you wanna kick those questions off?
April Abele Isaacson:Sure. The first question is from Khalia who's in fifth grade and had a question about Foldibots. The question is, is Foldibots a real thing in real life.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Hello, future inventor, Khalia, thank you for asking this question. That is a very common question I get. Foldibots do not exist today, but the beautiful thing with Abby Invents The Foldibot is A bby shows you the process that she went through to create her Foldibot. And what I challenge you to do is come up with your idea of how you would make your own Foldibot because everybody's idea of how to solve a problem is different and your idea m ay b e different from Abby's b ut it m ay be just a s feasible. And so I challenge you to create your Foldibot.
Kimberlynn Davis:So the next question that we're gonna read comes from Kali, or maybe Cayleah has Abby created any other items other than the crayons and the Foldibot?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Hi future inventor, Cayleah. So Abby is currently working on her third invention and Abby's third invention is all about tackling accessibility, making sure that, you know, some of us don't have all our limbs, are not born with all our limbs. And so Abby wants to make everybody feel seen and appreciated in Abby's next invention tackles accessibility.
April Abele Isaacson:The next question is from McKinsey in fifth grade, also about unbreakable crayons, her question, his or her question is where does the story take place?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Wow, future inventor McKinsey. I have never been asked this question before. I try not to say which country Abby is from, because I want kids from all over the world to identify with elements of Abby's character. But I do believe in Abby's in the third book, I will make Abby have Caribbean roots. So let's pretend that unbreakable crayons is not set in the Caribbean, but the third book more than likely will be based in the Caribbean. Maybe Abby travels there, I don't know yet. Um, but Abby doesn't have a country per se that she belongs to. But that's a great question.
April Abele Isaacson:And then I think I'll tee up the next one, but um, I'll let Kim ask it. So we have a very precocious young man named Stevie who's a third grader in Fayetteville, Georgia. And he had a question that his mother will ask you.
Kimberlynn Davis:So I had the absolute pleasure of reading both books to the boys last night, Stevie, I had his full attention. He asked so many questions. I jotted them all down. To my dismay, this was the first question, but I've spoken with people, Kristina in part and others told me, Kim, this is not a mom failure. That this was his first question. So brace yourself, Stevie, mommy loves you. How much money did Abby get for making the unbreakable crayons?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:<laugh>
April Abele Isaacson:Oh, I told you he was precocious.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Okay, Future Inventor, Stevie. You are definitely on the road to be an entrepreneur. Wow. Um, Abby, you know, I don't know how much Abby has made. I haven't.
April Abele Isaacson:Does she have a running royalty? Is that what it is?
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Let's just say she has licensed the technology to Crayola and for every crayon, every unbreakable crayon that Crayola sells Abby gets 50 cents.<laugh>
Kimberlynn Davis:There you go. There you go. That's that's gonna be great. No, it definitely opened up a great discussion between the two of us about monetizing invention and the like it took our discussion next level.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:I can imagine actually, because I have gotten asked from other educators, whether I would take it the next step and show Abby being an entrepreneur and not just ending at patenting. And so a few educators and I have actually launched a program, um, that's funded by the Lemelson Foundation called Invention Lit where it's a free professional development workshop for K-5 educators. It's so free that we actually pay them up to$500 to attend the purpose is to show educators how they can use any children's book. It doesn't have to be STEM related to bring invention and entrepreneurship to the classroom. And so we leverage, you know, the engineering design process and you know what I've shown with Abby Invents and show. Even if you're reading a child, a book like Cinderella, you can still guide the child to identify problems, to solve in a story. And by problems, I don't mean grammatical problems, but you know, Cinderella loses her glass slipper, she's on a carriage...are there things in the story that kids can relate to that maybe can, you know, garner like a brainstorming discussion. Some teachers are not comfortable teaching science and invention and entrepreneurship in the classroom, because they're not formally trained in those disciplines, but they teach English. And so we're trying to show them that even if they teach English, you can still teach science in an open-ended fashion. So yeah, so Stevie's is onto something here<laugh>
April Abele Isaacson:And, and I don't wanna, you know, try to tell you what you could potentially do, but it sounds like there might be a character name, Stevie that could be in the entrepreneurship book and I'm just throwing it out there. Just throwing it out there. I don't have any personal, yeah. I don't have any personal interest in that at all. I know earlier you said that you wrote the Abby Invents and it's a story to your younger self. I'd like to ask you. If you could talk to your younger self and give advice about what it's like to be a first or an only that we could pass on to the next generation, if you could do that for us.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Well, I would tell my younger self that, you know, you have a bright future. There may be challenges along the way where you are alone or you feel lonely, but you're never, you may be lonely, but you're never alone because you carry with you all the lessons that you learned from your childhood, you carry with you all the love from your family and your teachers. And that love and that curiosity is really what sort of motivates you to keep pressing on, even if at times you may feel alone. And I would also tell my younger self, the same thing that Abby's mom told her in the Foldibot, everyone starts off as a beginner. You can do it, just start because many times, many of us are so afraid of starting a new, starting a new chapter, trying a new field. We're afraid of failure. We're afraid of rejection, but we forget that everybody starts off from a place of not knowing. And you have to trust yourself that you can learn, it may take you six months. It may take you a year, but you're gonna learn. And then you're gonna look back and just be completely amazed at how much you learned in that time. And once you expose yourself to a new opportunity, the new learning, then now the world is your oyster and now you wanna learn something new. It just keeps growing and growing. So follow your curiosity and don't be afraid to start even if you are alone.
April Abele Isaacson:I think that would be great advice for adults as well. Really, really appreciate it. It was an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing everything with us and our listeners.
Dr. Arlyne Simon:Thank you for inviting me. This was, this was good.<laugh>. Thank you.
April Abele Isaacson:Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed Sidebars, we invite you to check out the Kilpatrick Townsend's Medicine and Molecules blog at kilpatricktownsend.com to read, watch, and listen to other related insight on patent law. We'll also put that information in the show notes. The opinions expressed on this podcast are our own and are not those of Kilpatrick Townsend.
Kimberlynn Davis:Also, we would love it if you would rate us or leave a review, it helps others find the show. See you next time.