From ER to Innovation: Building New Healthcare Paths with Dr. Kevin Baumlin

In this episode of Startup Physicians, Dr. Alison Curfman interviews Kevin Baumlin, an emergency physician and Chief Medical Affairs Officer at the Science Center. 

They discuss the evolving role of physicians in healthcare startups, the importance of clinical insight in product development, and the various pathways for aspiring founders and advisors in the healthcare space. 

Kevin shares his career journey, the resources available for startup founders, and the significance of connecting healthcare needs with innovative solutions. 

The conversation emphasizes the collaborative nature of healthcare innovation and the opportunities for physicians to contribute to this dynamic field.

Dr. Kevin Braumlin's LinkedIn Page

Science Center

NSF I-corps 

SBIR Funding

Episode Highlights
[00:00] - Introduction to Startup Physicians and Guest Background
[02:39] - Kevin Baumlin's Career Journey and Transition to Startups
[05:23] - Opportunities for Aspiring Founders in Healthcare
[08:19] - Understanding the Science Center and Its Programs
[10:54] - Navigating Grants and Funding for Startups
[13:55] - The Role of Physicians in Startups and Advisory Positions
[16:57] - Connecting Healthcare Needs with Startup Solutions
[19:37] - The Importance of Clinical Insight in Product Development
[22:36] - Innovative Approaches in Early Cancer Detection
[25:22] - Getting Involved: Pathways for Physicians in Startups
[28:19] - Conclusion and Resources for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:02.062)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Startup Physicians. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I'm excited to have a guest today who is an ER physician, Dr. Kevin Baumlin. Thanks, Kevin, for joining me today.

Kevin Baumlin (00:15.763)
Thanks for having me.

Alison Curfman (00:17.422)
So some of you have heard me talk about going to different industry conferences. And recently I attended the Health Conference, the HLTH Conference, which traditionally has not had a lot of physician involvement. But over the past couple of years, we've seen a lot of opportunities for physicians to get involved. And so one of the things that I was doing when I was at Health was connecting with people that had

you know booths on the floor that work with startups and have a number of portfolio companies and there's incubators and accelerators and other programs that have a number of companies that they support and so that's how Kevin and I first connected because of the work he does with a company called the Science Center and I'm gonna let him tell you more about that because I think what we can talk about today is going to be

all the ways that he sees there being value for physicians to work with these companies. Cause he certainly supports a number of portfolio companies and many, many more in his network. And here's a lot about the need. So Kevin, I would love if you could just start by telling us a little bit about your background and your career journey.

Kevin Baumlin (01:36.017)
Sure. My name's Kevin. I've been an emergency physician for more than 30 years. I practiced at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and then was chair of emergency medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital here in Philadelphia where I am now. Along the way, I also became board certified clinical informaticist and was the associate CMIO at Mount Sinai. But we've had an interest in information science and was like

go-to guy, so became the EHR implementation guy. That's kind of like where we have a lot of us got kind of pigeon-toed into. And then became very interested in all different areas of information and technology. Most recently I decided to run for US Senate in the 20s. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (02:25.474)
That's amazing. More doctors need to do that.

Kevin Baumlin (02:28.937)
Yeah, because I wanted to make a difference. Seeing patients is great. After doing for 30 years during COVID, it was a lot. It was a real lot. And a lot of us were thinking, what else can we do? What are the other things we can do? As many of I think you all who are listening are feeling right now, actually. Making a difference on a federal legislative level, I think is important. Making a difference here at the Science Center, which just happened because I gave a talk on the US health care system.

and the CEO of the Science Center came up to me afterwards, gave me her card, invited me to lunch and said, are you not running for Senate? Would you consider come working at the Science Center? And I was like, doing what? And I hadn't really entertained being a chief medical affairs officer at a not-for-profit working with startups. I was just trying to do a new career path and make a difference. a couple of months after dropping out of the race, I met with Tiff and...

Alison Curfman (03:04.942)
That's great!

Kevin Baumlin (03:24.721)
started working here as a consultant and then increased my portfolio and I love it. And it's a little different than being an entrepreneur. I worked in a software company. I wrote educational software early on in my career, 30 plus years ago. And you remember C, C++ and Pascal a long time ago. Anyway, during my professional career, I also opened up Urgent Care Sandwich Brick and Water Urgent Care Center. So I knew about

business and trying to make a business plan and building a building more business, which is different than a startup. And I also knew that doing that is very hard. Being here at the Science Center, I get to work with and mentor a lot of startups, a lot of great ideas, a lot of incredible scientists. But I don't have to worry about providing my own health insurance and benefits and salaries and managing people and

After managing people for 30 years, the one thing I knew the next phase of my career I didn't want to do is manage people. So it's a little different than those of you who thinking about being in startups. It's a different kind of angle and perspective.

Alison Curfman (04:33.442)
Very, very cool. And I can tell by your background that you're someone who just takes all the opportunities that come your way. It's interesting that it could just be thrown in there in your background. Like, yeah, and I ran for Senate. Like, that is a big deal. And I think that more doctors need to be willing to take action, even if it's not running for Senate. Don't just think about something. Go do it. And you might not.

succeed in the sense of getting what the thing was, but you learned so much through that experience and probably made a ton of connections that's just launching you into your next phase. So that's one takeaway I had from your intro.

Kevin Baumlin (05:18.025)
No, I think it's a great, you know, I always say to people, it's like riding waves. You paddle out and you ride the wave and sometimes you crash and sometimes it's a really good ride, you know? And running for Senate was great. I learned a lot, met a lot of people and here's where I am and I love what I do. And I'm so much happier and no one's dying, you know? It's great. You know, I work regular hours, no nights, no weekends. And birds always work at nights and weekends and having Christmas off the week between

Alison Curfman (05:39.085)
Yeah.

Kevin Baumlin (05:47.849)
The whole week between Christmas and New Year's, who has that? Who does that?

Alison Curfman (05:48.983)
Yeah. Well, you you certainly put in your time, so I think you definitely deserve that.

There are two things that I would love for people to get out of this conversation that we're having. One is for people that may be aspiring founders and maybe don't even know that they're an aspiring founder. They're someone who has a lot of ideas and then constantly has the idea or the mindset that like, I can do that. I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start. And then two, for physicians that want to be advisors and consultants to startup companies, what is the need in the space?

First, I'd love to start by talking about these aspiring founders because I remember being in that place where I was like, I know I have an idea, I know I have a concept that could be valuable. I wouldn't know the slightest bit about where to start. I don't have any connections even in startups at all. I don't understand the language they're using.

And so in my journey, one of my first steps was actually that we pitched to a local startup accelerator, which was a nonprofit. A lot of people don't know that these exist. And we were accepted into their coaching program. So I mean, it didn't cost us anything. We had to prove that we had a good idea and were good potential founders.

But they gave us resources and they gave us connections. And when this huge opportunity came to me, I had like a sounding board. had someone that I could like go to to talk about it. So can you describe a little bit about the Science Center and what you guys do?

Kevin Baumlin (07:29.545)
Yeah, we're at a university city area of Philadelphia in West Philadelphia. We're a six year old not for profit. We do programming from STEM education through founders files, which is for a PhD and MD students through what we call the capital readiness program, which is for founders that have already raised point five to one point five in capital. We don't really work with the early incubator stage companies. We work.

We encourage people to do NSF iCore if they have an idea and they really want to do their customer discovery work.

Alison Curfman (08:01.614)
Can you stop for second and describe that? Because that's a really interesting pathway too.

Kevin Baumlin (08:06.173)
Yeah, the NSF I-Corps program is for people like docs who have a great idea and really need to understand what is business planning and what is customer discovery. Meaning, what do people really want? What your idea is? And sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is no. And so if you can go through that journey and then maybe get grant funding around that. Or if you're coming out of academia, if you've already done the early work and you're writing grants, be it an SBIR.

NIH SBIR grant or other types of government funding or other types of funding, DARPA funding or ARPA-H funding. Once you're exploring the funding sources and starting to get government grants, then you're ready to come into one of our programs. There's lots of programs out there. We happen to be physically located in Philadelphia, but we accept companies from all over the country and all over the world. We also accept, I have a different program for companies, a U.S. market access program.

companies coming internationally. And what we do is we prepare them. We give them the toolkit, if you will, in order to do their next round of funding, be it their seed round or their A round, which is a whole language that you have to learn when you come into this space. was like, what? What's A, B, and C? And seed? like, what are those things? What does this all mean? And, you know, it really doesn't have anything to do whether this EKG is a subtle acute MI or not. You know what I mean? Like,

Alison Curfman (09:30.582)
Yeah, but we've learned jargon before. We all had to take pharmacology as med students and probably were totally overwhelmed, but now you could hear any drug class and you're like, that sounds like a nanobody, you know? So you learn the lingo.

Kevin Baumlin (09:33.673)
Yes.

Kevin Baumlin (09:44.669)
Yeah, I think the lingo learning was intense for me. Like the first year I was like, what?

Alison Curfman (09:52.889)
But people are nice, they'll explain it to you. mean, I think that, yeah, I think a lot of people have fear about entering a space that they don't have any experience because they don't want to be, they don't want to think they're dumb or, you know.

an intern again. But some of these things, like if you could just go in with humility and recognize that there's some things that you're really, really, really good at and very much an expert on, and there's others that you like don't know how to do at all, and it's fine, and you can learn.

Kevin Baumlin (10:23.005)
Yeah, you have to really eat a little humble pie. I I came out of being a chair of a department, running a large budget, a lot of prestige and power to being a consultant in this non-for-profit, being like, what? But I quickly realized that I have knowledge in places where other people did. I am the doc. I'm the doc in the house. So when there's a medical question, a science question, they come to me. And that feels good. You feel valued. And then

Alison Curfman (10:40.48)
Exactly.

Kevin Baumlin (10:52.433)
I get to value them and what they bring to the table, especially the capital team and the government team, because I knew research as a researcher getting American Heart Association funding, NIH funding, CMMI funding, but I didn't know anything about SBIRs or STTRs, the commercialization pathway.

Alison Curfman (11:11.118)
Can you, I'd love for you to even like describe that a little bit because I know this is a lot of acronyms. I too have been in academics. I have gotten NIH grants. I have been in the academic research pathway of getting grants, but can you tell me what SBIR is? And then the NSF, that's the National Science Foundation. And they have this I-Corps program. So these are things that would be,

before they would get to you at the Science Center, but look, they sound like good pathways for aspiring founders to consider.

Kevin Baumlin (11:48.68)
Yeah, NSF I-Corps is for early entrepreneurs. I run this fellowship program for five fellows that are in longevity science, healthy longevity actually. And we encourage them to do I-Corps before they come to us, even though they're in their PhD or master's program. It really does teach you the basic principles of small business. And it's free and you apply and you do your coursework and you come out of it thinking, yeah or no.

which is fine, you know? And then they come to a fellowship program like my program, there's other fellowship programs out there. Mine's unique because I pay people $50,000 a year, which is great. So they continue in their PhD program and get a little supplemental while we teach them not just healthy longevity, but also entrepreneurship. The SBIR, STTR are mechanisms for scientists mostly, for scientists to form their LLC and then get money to continue their science.

and explore the beginning of their business. And what the emphasis now, I think with this administration and the end of the last one is you really have to think about your commercialization plan. Think about the milestones you're going to meet and why and how you're going to meet them. And put that and think about that, include that in your grant. And there's, we do training in this here at the Science Center. So we help young scientists slash entrepreneurs apply for it right. And then help them administer these types of grants if that's.

They want our help. We're here to help. And we do that service for free as well. So we're not the only ones, but we're probably the best. No, I don't know. like that we're the best. I don't know if we're the best or not. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (13:27.768)
Hahaha

You certainly had a great team that I met at the conference. And there's so many resources like this because there's huge value in creating successful entrepreneurs, right? And I know that we're in a phase where research funding is kind of questionable, but it is good for the country and the economy to have

successful entrepreneurs, right? I mean, it expands the economy.

Kevin Baumlin (14:03.483)
Absolutely, and what we do here at the Science Center is not just have the programs, but we're the connector. So we connect to payers, we connect to regulatory, we connect to health systems, because I come from health systems. These are my peeps, you know, and I know them and can talk their doctor language and their administrator language, which. And they will. Yeah, let's cut a lot. And that's a different thing, because people in the.

Alison Curfman (14:20.556)
and they'll respond to emails from you if you reach out. They'll be like, hey, Kevin. Yeah, I'll totally talk to Kevin.

Kevin Baumlin (14:30.313)
along the administrative track, it becomes a really kind of small and lonely space, actually. And your circle becomes narrower and smaller. But innovators think they may want to talk to the CEO, the COO, but really they don't. They really need a champion. And then that champion needs to talk to their chair. And then they need to go up the ladder to have an administrative champion. So there's a series of champions along the way in the health care system.

if that's what you need. And sometimes that's not what you need. Sometimes you need to go get a sale. Like in every startup is different and what their exact needs set are. And that's what we help sort out. And that's what I do. And I also work with a lot of docs who say, hmm, I think I want to be in that space a little bit maybe and explore what that means to them. And some of the things you do are similar to some of the things I do and sometimes different.

Alison Curfman (15:27.042)
Yeah, absolutely. now that we're, so that's a lot of good information for people that could be interested in starting their own startup. sounds like there's many resources out there to start exploring, see if your concept has any good viability, and then could work with a nonprofit like yours or many, many others to get additional support so that you're not doing this on your own.

Like I think that entrepreneurship can feel very lonely and overwhelming. I often feel like there are some things that like, just don't know. Like I don't have the slightest idea. And, and I actually feel like I'm really well equipped to go get help because of my background as an emergency physician. It's like, we know what we handle in the ER and then everything else we know who to consult. Like we know who to call to get help. I don't need to know everything about every specialty, but, um,

to know how to escalate and how to get help. So that is one takeaway that I want people to have is that there are pathways, there are countless of these nonprofits that exist solely to help promising entrepreneurs be successful. And it doesn't always mean investing like $100,000 of your own money to get an idea off the ground.

Kevin Baumlin (16:48.585)
No, I think that's an important message too. These programs are free. That's why we exist. The Science Center in particular is unique that we have, we were a real estate play in Philadelphia, so we built buildings and we have commercial revenue. And then we sold the buildings, so we have a fund, so we're stable. So which is kind of unique in this world. So we're not dependent on fees for our startups to pay us when they come in. So it allows us to be a bit more flexible and address the needs as

as the climate changes, which is, you when I was looking for a place to work and have my next career was like important to me. I didn't want to be like at a place and then another place and then another place, you know, kind of thing. I wanted a background and surround myself with experts who can fill in the gaps of knowledge that I do that I don't have. It's like when you choose to work with emergency physician, when you choose to work in a hospital, you want to know you have good specialty backup, right? It's the same kind of thing. You know, like you want to

Alison Curfman (17:30.563)
Yeah.

Kevin Baumlin (17:47.432)
If you're going to engage in a not-for-profit, it's going to help your entrepreneurial journey, you want to engage in a that has a stable foundation, that's surrounded by experts, that has really good connections to not just the health systems, but also to the payers and the business entrepreneurial experts that you'll need along the way in your journey. And that's what we do. We're the intermediary in holding all those pieces together.

Alison Curfman (18:10.285)
Yeah.

That makes sense. And so in your role, supporting all these different entrepreneurs, I know you also talked about being able to be a connector and navigate the healthcare system for people that have no idea how it might work on the inside, but you also have visibility to other needs of all of these different portfolio companies. And the fact that you work with a lot of scientists and not necessarily always with physicians. I think you have a really unique viewpoint on what these companies

need from doctors. And I know we started our conversation earlier before we recorded about things like fractional CMO roles and advisors and advisory boards. And I'd love if you could elaborate a little bit on where you see the greatest needs. Cause I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast have an interest in maybe just

expanding a little bit of what they do, keeping their job, but doing some advisory work on the side, but they might not know what that looks like or if they're qualified. So I'd love with your great perspective on all these portfolio companies you support to hear your thoughts on that.

Kevin Baumlin (19:22.727)
Yeah, there's lots of different ways. I come from large academic places where you didn't really talk to vendors and you didn't really talk to entrepreneurs. It was kind of discouraged, in fact. But times have changed. And two major ways you can think about it. You could be, as a scientist, you could stay in academia behind the wall, if you will, and engage entrepreneurs who have a new product and do a clinical trial and be a site for that clinical trial.

And therefore, how does that work? You could write a grant and you could write the funding for that product into that grant. So you get exposure to the entrepreneurial world, something you're thinking about, but it's somebody else's idea. That's a great way to start. And then you could, if it's your idea, you can explore writing, just being an R01 or a CMMI grant, you can explore into SBIR and explore that way. The other ways you can think about your talents and your knowledge and the science that you have in your head.

is to work with a company and be a fractional CMO or a clinical advisor. Because what the scientists who's doing the biomarker work or the device work is they're engineers and they're smart and they're really fun to work with, but they don't know medicine, right? And they don't know the healthcare system. The other problem is that a lot of docs don't know the healthcare system either. So if you are an administrative director or an administrative role in the healthcare system,

Your needs set is unique and different that you provide to startups as well. And it's valued because it's complicated. know, to explain.

Alison Curfman (20:57.696)
Yeah, like how do you get to the right person? Who is the decision maker? What are all the layers? That's definitely complicated.

Kevin Baumlin (21:05.417)
Yeah, like who's the COO of a large department in the healthcare system? What role do they play? What's revenue cycle management and how does it actually work? And what's the difference between revenue and reimbursement? Like all these complex things that I know just because I've done it for all these years, startups have no idea. They really don't. And they kind of quote this knowledge about a CPT code and you're like, no, that's not how it works.

Alison Curfman (21:26.466)
Yeah.

Kevin Baumlin (21:31.817)
You know, you know what mean? Just because you have a code doesn't mean a payer is going to pay against that, right?

Alison Curfman (21:37.615)
Right, right. And it's funny because there's certain things that I feel like we think are common knowledge and they're really not. Like I was working with a company recently that has a physical product and they hadn't really explored marketing directly to emergency departments. And when I described to them what, it means to go through like a triage process and then like how a patient moves through the ER to either disposition of home or inpatient, they were like, Whoa, I had no idea that's how that works. And they could all of a sudden see what

Kevin Baumlin (21:43.721)
We're not.

Kevin Baumlin (22:06.31)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (22:07.568)
ways that their products could support different needs in the healthcare system. And things that we think are obvious, they don't necessarily know.

Kevin Baumlin (22:17.085)
Yeah, and the question is how do we as docs be a better part of it? You know, I think one thing about health, circling back to your message about health, was there are more docs there and more nurses there. You know, I engage with the clinical community more and we all need to contribute. So all this money being spent trying to make money off the healthcare system, not only can we be a part of it, but we can decrease the cycle times, right? We can decrease the cycle time from idea to fully commercialized product.

to a company making money. Why? Because they're not going to mistakes that we know they're making along the road because they never asked us. Right? Go ask clinicians. Go ask a frontline nurse. They'll tell you. And how can we be a part of putting those clinical teams together to advise along the way? Because the goal is to improve health care. The goal is the same as when we were seeing patients on the floor and the tens of thousands of patients I've seen in my career.

We want to improve the lives of others, but can we do it in a different way? By helping entrepreneurs, is this a gratifying career path? It's funny because someone was telling me the other day, you didn't make it to the Senate, but you're actually helping. You're putting forth a company that's doing cancer screening called Spotted Early. I don't know if I'll have to mention names, they're doing this called Spotted Early. They're a company from Tel Aviv.

Alison Curfman (23:38.02)
yeah, no, that's fine.

Kevin Baumlin (23:41.449)
and they breathe into a mask and they process it and these beagles smell cancer, 97 % of the time. For us, the dogs.

Alison Curfman (23:47.266)
Wait, who smells cancer? You said, I thought you said beagles. I was like, wait, did I, is that what he really said? That's crazy.

Kevin Baumlin (23:53.908)
Yeah, yeah. And they just had $20 raise. They're doing that. They're going to be full commercial as a product probably 26 by the end of 2026.

Alison Curfman (24:00.739)
Wait, so they just have like a fleet of beagles as the core of their product? Well, that's very interesting.

Kevin Baumlin (24:03.783)
Yeah

It's they went viral. They're all over the Internet now. It's great. And they and I read their application when I first started here at the Science Center. I'm like, this is so cool. I want to work with this company because how many times as an ER doc have we all diagnosed cancer stage four cancer inpatient? I want that to never happen again. I have like four companies I'm working with right now that are in early cancer detection. And I feel like I'm making a difference, not just I wonder.

Alison Curfman (24:24.62)
Yeah. Yep.

Alison Curfman (24:35.16)
That's amazing. mean, I just feel like so much of what we hear, I would have expected like early cancer detection, like we're going to use AI to get like biomarkers or gene, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But it's like, this is a totally different approach. We're just going to use some dogs. Like that's, that's a totally different approach.

Kevin Baumlin (24:51.933)
Well, think about it. Then we're going to use the dogs and their PET scans to train the AI. Right? So it's a different way of thinking how to use large language models and how to use the power of AI next generation. Like, I love the way we can think of different angles of problems. And now I get to talk to people from all different backgrounds, from chemo-sensory people to engineers to like all these different people. And it's fun, you know, because your brain thinks and...

Alison Curfman (24:57.878)
Yeah.

Kevin Baumlin (25:19.849)
I'm old now, so I gotta work my brain and also be like, not able to use it, right? The muscles you have to use like any other, right?

Alison Curfman (25:25.645)
Ha ha.

Alison Curfman (25:29.142)
Yeah. So what would you say to people that, you you're, talking about ways to get involved in things that you see as needs for the companies that you support and companies in your network. And you, one of the first things you said was fractional CMO. Most people who are like in a more traditional environment are like in a, in a super hierarchical place where like there are so many rungs away from a C anything that they're probably,

accustomed to think like there is no way I could ever be a C-suite anything and obviously these startups only have a few people so it's not like you have all that hierarchy and bureaucracy but what would you say to people that are like well I wouldn't know how to be a CMO or a fractional CMO.

Kevin Baumlin (26:13.545)
Go see Alison Curfman to take her court. I will tell him. Or be a clinical advisor to a company. Reach out to someone like me or you and say, are any companies looking for a practicing ER doc or looking for a practicing neurologist that are working on products in that space? And maybe I could.

Alison Curfman (26:20.33)
I tell you to say that.

Kevin Baumlin (26:40.339)
do free advisory role or for a little bit of equity or for a little bit of side gig money. And explore. It's like exploring any other new profession. Don't expect you're going to get high payment for it first, but you're going to learn and then see where you can gain the learning from. If you're someone who spent 30 years in academic medicine and been on an executive level, I spent on hospital executive team two years as well, you offer

Alison Curfman (26:55.426)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Baumlin (27:08.925)
different sets of talents and different sets of skills, but companies need frontline docs too. They offer frontline information. And you could also start by, you know, letting yourself known to people who put together events, like advisory committees and advisory groups. I'm sure you do some of this stuff, you source people for this. Be an advisor to an event where drug companies or others come in and ask you questions.

There's all kinds of these things happening, and you have to decide if it's a place where you feel comfortable. If it's an avenue gig, a side gig, different than reviewing cases for lawyers, for instance. Some people, that's their side gig, and they can do that. I tried that, I have a really hard time criticizing my colleagues, even when I read the case and I know they're wrong. That's a side gig.

Alison Curfman (28:02.432)
Right. It's just not, not the path you want to take. And I agree with you that, being an advisor first is, is a great way to get started. And I have never, moved into more of like a fractional CMO role without doing advisory work first. That's what I pretty much always, suggest to people is yeah, lay the foundation and the groundwork for like, yeah, I'd love to escalate to that if, if, if it's a good working relationship, but get started as an advisor and,

Kevin Baumlin (28:06.185)
Thank

Alison Curfman (28:30.806)
and it's very low risk and it's low stakes. You don't have to put your name on the company. And there is a lot of need. So I think that.

There's so many opportunities. You've given a lot of really concrete examples of the sorts of things that companies need. You're on the inside. You're somebody who sees what people are asking for and what industry wants and needs. And I feel like sometimes people don't believe me when I'm like, no, there are so many companies that...

could use advisors. And then a bunch of people that actually did come to health, walked around, were like, oh wow, like everyone wants advisors. So they just need to believe us that there's a ton of opportunity out there.

Kevin Baumlin (29:16.201)
Yeah, they don't necessarily want to pay for them.

Alison Curfman (29:19.022)
It's true, and I think that the mechanism that you're talking about that for a really early stage, if you've never done this before and it's a really early stage company, there is a definite opportunity to create a pathway for more of a knowledge exchange and then you're equipped in your experience, you can go find the ones that can pay you.

Kevin Baumlin (29:38.548)
Yeah, advice I would give too is be careful of the time commitment. know, set up your guardrails. Do an initial 30 minutes for the sake of... I say yes to everybody on LinkedIn just because that's our ethos here is someone reaches out to you, take the 30 minute call. You never know if it's a connection you might need or want for something else. And if it's an ask for further engagement, either work with someone like you, work someone like me, or do it on your own.

Careful there, there's some pitfalls you can run into there. But go for it and you can negotiate an equity position and a consultation fee and see if it's something you want to do. It might not be, it could be.

Alison Curfman (30:19.308)
Yeah, it's true. And there's different types of consulting that I used to do that I just don't do anymore because I didn't like it. But you learn a lot about what you do like and where you can really add value. So as we're wrapping up, I would love for everyone to be able to reach out to you, Kevin. I know we will put your LinkedIn in the show notes and then the Science Center. Can you tell us what your web page is if people want to check that out?

Kevin Baumlin (30:27.205)
Right.

Kevin Baumlin (30:48.965)
it's sciencecenter.org and it's a great resource, all one word. We put up all of our applications for all of our programs there. We also have great work we do with middle school and high school kids in STEM education, which I think is so important that we expose our kids and our youth to the world of STEM so that they will be scientists. We physically are in West Philadelphia, so we are in the middle of an underserved community.

And we can't forget that we can give back in other ways as most of my murder and smear and colleagues have a really do good thing that they're all about. So think about that too and how you can give back to education programs for middle school and high school kids, because that work is rewarding as well.

Alison Curfman (31:37.583)
That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Kevin, for joining me and giving all of this great knowledge. And for those listening, we'll see you next time.

Kevin Baumlin (31:46.751)
Thanks a