Written by Nicholas Truong
February 28, 2024
For my undergraduate education, I wanted to find ways to combine my interest in a career in medicine along with Silicon Valley’s atmosphere of innovation and creative problem-solving. In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I also just wanted to help people. So during my first several quarters at Santa Clara, I began reflecting on personal experiences that I could potentially build upon.
During the first few months of the pandemic in Spring 2020, together with close friends, I co-founded Uber Clean Planet to produce hand sanitizer, amidst an unprecedented shortage. I couldn’t don on a hazmat suit to help out at regional hospitals and testing centers in San Diego, so I thought the least I could do was help frontline workers return home safely to their families. Two months later in May 2020, Uber Clean Planet received emergency FDA approval for its isopropyl-based hand sanitizers that adhered to formulation guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and World Health Organization. By 2021, we had distributed approximately 550 bottles to medical and dental clinics in Southern California.
Leveraging our experience with FDA approvals and wanting to address wellness at home, we next launched Hello Crispy, a company producing nutritious Apple Chips. Our technology allowed us to dehydrate apple slices without using high-heat oils or freeze-drying, preserving a familiar “crunch” akin to potato chips, and we located a supplier in Ukraine that could help us bring our product to the United States. As a Santa Clara student, this venture led me to the Ciocca Center; Hello Crispy was one of several companies started by SCU students and alumni to join the inaugural “Idea School” (now Idea Lab) and Bronco Venture Accelerator Prep School.
"I wanted to reflect on these experiences, and sought to understand the step-by-step process of innovation."
In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced me to pause Hello Crispy. However, having launched two major projects within my first two years at SCU, I wanted to reflect on these experiences, and sought to understand the step-by-step process of innovation. After all, what was innovation? And how could I use these insights to tackle local challenges and apply them to other fields, particularly in healthcare as a pre-medical student?
Recruited as an Innovation Fellow (2021-2023), I discovered answers to my inquiries through focused design-thinking questions like “who are the stakeholders?”, “what are the specific pain points?”, and “how do you measure success?”. These questions were instrumental in clarifying the issues at hand, and captured the core of innovation.
A highlight of my experience as an Innovation Fellow was attending the international “UIF Meetup” conference at Stanford's d.school (design school). There, we explored design labs and spaces like the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab and discovered what the d.school called a “design thinking cart.” This cart, filled with constructivist and creative supplies, like foil, yarn, and wooden sticks, enabled quick physical prototyping and idea refinement, turning rough paper sketches into simple but visual 3D models. Impressed by how fast, and how simply, one could prototype their ideas, our team created a design thinking cart for Santa Clara’s Ciocca Center, faculty, and students to utilize on campus.
But beyond prototyping itself, there was a larger insight at hand – innovation could flourish anywhere, even with simple resources, and being able to physically shape ideas was invaluable. This was an insight I thought should be shared broadly with other students, and for the 2023 - 2024 academic year I returned as a program alumni and mentor for Ciocca’s current Innovation Fellows cohort, now expanded from four to twenty-five students.
I am grateful to the Ciocca Center, Dr. Sun, Dr. Yocam, Dr. Kitts, and program director Hallie Bodey for their incredible support and contributions towards refining the way I think critically and creatively. Insights learned were not only useful in creating on-campus opportunities for other students, but have also played into molecular biology research projects I have pursued, a medical volunteer project I launched, and community health initiatives I have been involved in, and on a broader scale align with current efforts to make healthcare solutions and therapeutics more personalized.
Nicholas Truong '24 studies Biology & Biotechnology at Santa Clara University and among his various projects along with the Innovation Fellows he created the Recipes for Relief Initiative at SCU and was nominated by Santa Clara University for the “Bucky Award” for student-led projects and university organization of the year.
Nicholas is a 2023 Healthcare Ethics Intern at SCU Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, a 2022 UCLA Bioscience Research Scholars REU, a 2021-2023 Innovation Fellow, and a 2021 Healthcare Innovation Fellow with the SCU Healthcare Innovation Lab.