Why this website? What is it?

Every day, we make choices that directly affect our health, livelihood and quality of life. Problems abound yet making well-informed decisions – finding real solutions – is hard:

  • researching takes a long time;
  • information is difficult to find and might only makes sense to an expert;
  • the credibility of sources may be uncertain;
  • the solution might simply not exist;
  • things are almost universally not well evaluated for efficacy, toxicity, etc.; and
  •  we are frequently unaware of the lasting implications of our choices.

Careful choices can solve (or at least improve) many issues and, as a science Ph.D. dad, I’m constantly researching for our family. However, I find that the reasoning behind our family’s choices of products and approaches is not widely known and applied. So, I made this website.

Here you’ll find:

  • Information to make well-informed decisions. I’ll try to post videos too.
  • Products and approaches that just work. Some things I’ve made (usually for my own family or work); often I’ve turned these into companies. Other things I’ve found, tried and know work.
  • Suggestions of safe and reliable solutions to common problems. Often preventative measures, which are usually way easier than fixing problems.
  • There’s also technical information (useful only to a small audience).

I encourage you to submit problems or questions that you would like assistance on, but please know that:

  1. I’m not an MD, rather a curious entrepreneurial problem-solving science guy who’s learned a whole bunch and who applies that to my family, so ask your doctor on any medical issues; and
  2. I get many questions, so I may not be able to answer as quickly as I’d like.

Who is this guy?

My name is John and I’m a dad, innovator, entrepreneur and Ph.D. scientist. I love solving problems and have learned many different skills to do that: I apply leadership, innovation, vision, science, technology or education, depending on the problem. As solutions, I've started and lead new organizations and companies (NYC Bio or ProtiFi e.g.); invented or made: new proteins; new devices; new software; new chemistries; designed a new school; built a really cool play loft for my kids…

I think a lot about the future and how to solve the huge environmental and health problems our children will inherit. For that reason, I only make win-win, socially and commercially responsible solutions. Solving our big complex problems requires many smart people working together, in this generation and the next and I love working in those groups. I'm also passionate about knowledge and education: those are absolutely fundamental to lasting, effective solutions.

Raised in rural Oregon, I’m the son of two social workers. Resources were limited and we pretty much did everything ourselves from taking care of our water well to fixing vehicles to putting up buildings. I grew up in our workshop, playing with science stuff and forging new things from the broken and discarded. That explorative, do-it-yourself environment was a true blessing, fostering curiosity, creative thinking and the ability to make stuff out of pretty much anything. I recommend this for all kids. (We do this.)

My curiosity has never waned and, in college, I studied everything from biochemistry to international business to foreign languages, getting multiple degrees through study on three continents in as many languages. After undergrad, I joined a Silicon Valley biotech startup to develop new tests that identify cancer. I got a Ph.D. in the elite graduate program at The Rockefeller University where I used chemistry to understand how life works and how bacteria make you sick. After that, I joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (rated #1 in the world in molecular biology and genetics) for a postdoc, a research period after a Ph.D. There I developed technologies to study proteins, used those technologies to research differences in autism and established a biotech startup, ProtiFi. In my spare time, I solve problems in my basement workshop/lab, often by inventing new things.

Basically, I’m a super curious guy who’s experimented, read, studied and learned a whole bunch to be able to solve all sorts of problems. That experience guides my family and me to make well-informed choices of approaches and products and, when we can’t find one that works, to make new solutions. This website is about making that knowledge and those solutions available to everybody. For those science people out there, I officially do proteomics/mass spec/chemical biology and am pretty good at those, should that be of interest to you.

Thank you for visiting!