S12 E30: Wastewater Guardians: Automating Biology to Protect Clean Water with Virginia Szepietowski, Co-Founder of Nyad AI

Virginia Szepietowski grew up in the UK outside of London, and now lives in Alabama. She's had a winding path to her current venture, including body building, triathlons, law, and entrepreneurship. She comes from a family of entrepreneurs, who are deeply ambitious, tenacious, and deeply humble. She finds the feeling of a deep safety net from her family, and she pursues her adventures. Outside of tech, she is married to her now co-founder. She is still a competitive body builder, and likes to push herself to the limit.Through a series of life events, Virginia got interested in water treatment. She started discovering the world of wastewater operators, and the fact that they were the last line of defense before toxic wastewater moved into our waterways (rivers and such). Using AI, her and her team started to build a platform for these operators to quickly detect organisms in these water streams.This is the creation story of Nyad AI.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://nyad.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginia-szepietowski/Timestamps0:00 Intro and episode teaser on automating biology in critical clean water infrastructure1:49 Guest introduction: Virginia Szepietowski's background and path to founding Nyad AI2:45 Understanding the hidden biology behind municipal and industrial wastewater treatment4:10 The core problem: Why manual microscope sampling creates dangerous operational blind spots6:05 Origin story: Translating computer vision research into industrial water automation8:30 How Nyad AI's automated hardware samples and analyzes live microorganisms in real time11:15 Overcoming physical hardware engineering hurdles in harsh, high-humidity environments14:00 Preventing biological plant crashes and saving millions in compliance penalties17:30 Addressing the labor shortage: Supporting the next generation of water operators with AI21:00 Scaling AI hardware deployments across municipal and industrial facilities24:15 The future of automated biology in global water security and environmental protection27:00 Closing thoughts and how to connect with Virginia Szepietowski and Nyad AICheckout our episode stacks on Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy