Making the Invisible, Visible: Monitoring Air and Surfaces for Pathogens with Elizabeth Caley and Sam Molyneux of Poppy

Elizabeth “EC” Caley and Sam Molyneux have both made a career of working with large, complex data sets, and deconvoluting them to ask simple questions. Whether researching the genetic drivers that cause normal tissues to become cancerous, analyzing vast amounts of scientific literature, or identifying the missing data preventing the next breakthrough, EC and Sam have been aligned in their goal to use information to make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.

A few years ago, EC and Sam began to ponder the health effects of pathogens in the indoor environment. EC’s background had exposed her to the business impacts of pathogens on organizations both large and small. And like all of us, they had both seen the impact the seasonal flu or the common cold could have on their teams. They remarked that there’s incredible biotechnology that allows for precise identification of organisms, plus methods to quantify, sample, and analyze data around them. They wondered why these technologies and techniques, so commonly available in clinical labs, research, and genomics, were not being deployed for the indoor environment. This gap became the next problem for Sam and EC to solve together, and Poppy was born.

On this episode, we talk with EC and Sam, Co-founders, and Co-CEOs of Poppy, about the importance of understanding indoor air quality. This, of course, is tremendously important and obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic (especially with the growing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 may be primarily transmitted by aerosols). However, it has always been this important and always will be. We spend much of our time indoors and the quality of those spaces has a dramatic impact on our health and wellbeing. We get into the why, the science and technology (which is fascinating), the potential for impact and scale (which is tremendous), and more including:

The obvious and not-so-obvious benefits of proactively managing your indoor air quality. It may even help you with staff recruiting!
The many COVID-related use cases.
Broader health benefits and how air quality might help us address some key Social Determinants of Health in our built environments.
The business benefits and ROI of indoor air quality.
The path from identification to quantification to mitigation to measurement
How to keep the public’s attention on air quality and other public health issues post-COVID
- See Episode 15: Using the COVID-19 Shared Experience to Make Public Health Communication More Effective with Vanessa Lamers for more on this.
The opportunity to (and importance of) developing science-based standards for mitigation strategies
- See Episode 16: How to Ensure We Are Ready for the Next Pandemic with Patty Olinger to learn how organizations like GBAC are doing just that.

“TIPS has talked about work on infection prevention in real-time for years. Whether that be through engineered infection prevention or analytic reporting tools to track the spread of infections in real-time, it always comes down to the data. How can you collect the necessary data and make it ready for analysis in real-time? That’s why we were thrilled to welcome Poppy into the TIPS Science to Market program. For the first time we are seeing a solution that can provide real-time data to help us understand a situation as it happens and put corrective action in place to mitigate risk and to have healthier facilities.”
Michael Diamond, Co-founder, Executive Director, TIPS

Elizabeth Caley

Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Poppy

An entrepreneur and experienced operator, Elizabeth Caley (EC) is Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Poppy. Poppy is the world’s first commercially available pathogen sensing and monitoring network that helps protect the places where we work, live, and visit by monitoring air and surfaces for the COVID-19 virus and 1,000+ other pathogens.

Prior to co-founding Poppy, EC was an executive at Chan Zuckerberg and COO of Meta. Over the last 20 years, she’s held executive roles at global technology companies such as Microsoft, Hummingbird, and Firmex. Multiply honored as one of the most inspiring women in STEM, EC is an active contributor to the Bay Area, Oxford, & Toronto technology communities as a mentor, advisor, and speaker. EC holds MBAs from the University of Toronto & University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, with multiple awards for leadership and academic achievement.

Sam Molyneux

Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Poppy

An entrepreneur and innovative scientist, Sam Molyneux is co-CEO and Co-Founder of Poppy. Poppy is the world’s first commercially available pathogen sensing and monitoring network that helps protect the places where we work, live, and visit by monitoring air and surfaces for the COVID-19 virus and 1,000+ other pathogens.

Prior to co-founding Poppy, Sam was an executive at Chan Zuckerberg, and CEO and Co-Founder of Meta. Sam is an experienced entrepreneur and scientist specializing in bringing mission-driven, science-forward ventures to market. Recently he’s been recognized as Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. Sam’s research has been published in Nature Genetics, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Cell and other leading journals, and he is a frequent speaker on the future of innovation, and science-based technology for good.

About Poppy

Poppy makes the invisible visible. As the world’s first commercial pathogen sensing and security system, Poppy provides industry-leading bioaerosol assessment and management for indoor environments.

Poppy’s end-to-end system of proprietary hardware, software, and biotechnology provides high-resolution molecular air mapping and collection, genomic sequencing and molecular assays, and expert operational support for bioaerosols that affect health and productivity.

Poppy maps and monitors the movement and identity of 1000+ health-related organisms in the air—including the COVID-19 virus and its variants, food-borne bacteria, multi-drug resistant bacteria, molds, and pests. Poppy’s early detection and response helps ensure business continuity [ALT: minimizes (avoid) potential disruptions to your business] with best-in-class action and communication plans and 24/7 access to infection prevention and control experts. Most of all, Poppy provides continuous peace-of-mind for everyone sharing Poppy Spaces™.