What we talked about
Tara Maddala, Founder & CEO of Pandora Bio, joins us to explore how smartphone signals, wearables, and emoji-simple check-ins can spot early shifts in student mental health and nudge the right next step. We talk privacy-first design (individual data stays with the student), campus-level insights, and why limiting recommendations to three clinically vetted options prevents overwhelm. Tara explains how a biostatistician’s rigor:study design, bias control, real-world evidence:translates from cancer diagnostics to digital mental health, and why catching changes “upstream” matters. We also unpack social-media incentives, cultural differences in support systems, and the power of small, hopeful actions.
Show notes
Tara Maddala spent years working on early cancer detection at Grail, where detecting cancer at stage one versus stage four is the difference between a 90 percent survival rate and a 10 percent survival rate. She is now applying that same upstream logic to student mental health, building a system that catches behavioral changes before they become crises, not after.
What we covered
- The scale of the problem Tara is targeting: 30 to 50 percent of college students screen positive for depression, anxiety, or loneliness, and 3.5 million students either drop out or take a leave of absence annually, alongside over 200,000 on-campus mental health crises and a thousand suicides per year.
- The Healthy Minds Survey data revealed something counterintuitive: the majority of students who do not seek mental health help avoid it not because of stigma, but because they believe their friends are worse off and they do not want to take up scarce resources. Pandora Bio’s nudge system is designed to address exactly that misperception by showing individuals where they actually stand.
- Pandora’s app collects a 360-degree behavioral map in under a minute per day on average, combining daily emoji-based check-ins, voice journaling (which surfaces 24 biomarkers including pitch variance and words per minute), GPS data to detect social isolation, and wearable integrations, along with environmental data like sunlight and weather, since factors like skin tone affect vitamin D processing even in sunny climates.
- The platform deliberately limits its nudged recommendations to three clinically vetted resources at a time, always including one campus-specific option, because presenting too many choices causes inaction. Users onboard by specifying whether they prefer a video, something to read, a peer support group, in-person or online meeting, and whether they want resources tailored to their race, gender identity, or religion.
- Individual data stays with the student and is never shared with parents or administration. Colleges receive only aggregated data that helps them allocate resources, understanding, for instance, what percentage of students are struggling with food insecurity so they can expand or create a food pantry.
- Tara names the name itself, Pandora, as carrying the core thesis: in the original myth, after all the evils escaped the box, what remained inside was hope. The company’s goal is to unlock that hope and prompt students to take the next step, even a small one, before they fall all the way into crisis.
About Tara
Dr. Tara Maddala is the founder and CEO of Pandora Bio and a biostatistician with 20 years of experience across drug development and genomic diagnostics, including work at Grail on early cancer detection. She founded Pandora Bio to apply that early-detection framework to the student mental health crisis.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-maddala-3851ab5
- Website: https://pandorabio.com
Episode 47 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the Priveted podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Our guest today is Dr. Tara Madala. She’s a founder and CEO of Pandora Bio. She’s focused on empowering young adults on their mental health journey. She’s a bio statistican, I hope to pronounce that correctly, and clinical development leader.
Tara Maddala (00:24) I just as session.
Federico Ramallo (00:26) Can you repeat that please?
Tara Maddala (00:27) Biostatistician.
Federico Ramallo (00:29) Biostatistician. Yes, there you go. She has 20 years across drug and genomic diagnostic programs. So she has a lot of experience she’s going to share with us today. How are you doing today, Tara?
Tara Maddala (00:31) Yeah.
I’m doing great. ⁓ Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I’m excited to talk about Pandora and maybe some biostatistics. So yeah.
Federico Ramallo (00:53) Great, great, yeah, thank you for being here today. So tell me what PandoraBio solves.
Tara Maddala (00:59) Yeah, so we are on a mission to empower students, as you said, on their mental health journey. We give them actionable insights and also personalized resources to help them to increase help seeking behavior and promote social connection. Our goal is to promote social connection. And the problem we’re trying to solve is, and you might know many of these statistics, 30 to 50 % of
students and young adults report being screened for having depression, anxiety, and or loneliness. And then in addition to that, many use malicid substances or alcohol as a coping mechanism. And then that results in three and a half million students either in colleges and secondary institutions either dropping out annually or taking leave. And worse, there are over ⁓
200,000 crises on campus every year and a thousand suicides. And so I threw a lot of statistics at you, but that just gives you a sense of the magnitude of the problem, the crisis. so really what what we’re, our hypothesis is that early detection of changes in mental health plus actionable personalized resources will lead to student success. So that’s ultimately.
the problem that we’re trying to solve.
Federico Ramallo (02:24) Very interesting. Yeah, I read the book from Abigail Schreer, Reversible Damage and she wrote another book called Bad Therapy ⁓ and I think she talks about this particular issue. The last one is Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren’t Growing ⁓ and basically, well, I haven’t read the last one, I read the first one and what she talks about is that since the iPhone was available for
Tara Maddala (02:31) Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Hmm.
Federico Ramallo (02:54) the young people, the teenagers that the amount of kids with mental health issues skyrocketed because they feel even though we’re more connected they feel more isolated and the issue is that when you’re on social networks
Tara Maddala (02:55) Mm
Mm hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (03:18) anti-social behavior escalate because anybody can just say anything on the network and there’s no consequences. In real life, if I say something to somebody, if I insult somebody on the street, he’s going to…
he’s going to be violent at me, right? So there is this social regulator for, you know, on real life, right? But behind the keyboard, it’s easy to say whatever you want, right? And ⁓ there are no consequences is what I’m trying to say, right? And she was talking about a similar thing that you’re talking about. Although she then went and talked about the transgender issues on teenagers, right?
Tara Maddala (03:41) This is the end of the talk. Bye.
Yeah.
Yeah, so our our we’re trying to take that that phone usage, that smartphone usage and convert it to something that’s helpful to people. Right. And so there are so many biomarkers that are collected.
Federico Ramallo (04:10) Right.
Tara Maddala (04:12) Like in your everyday use right especially with young young people jen zgen alpha right there on their phones all the time these biomarkers are passive you can you can see if if if folks are socializing by looking at their location you can capture real time location you can capture real time app usage how much time like you’re talking about are they spending on social media versus gaming versus something you know.
Reading for education like you can see what they’re spending their time on on their phones and you know there’s all these passive metrics that you can capture along with. You know they a lot of the tools that we use to assess anxiety and depression and loneliness and all of these other these these clinical and subclinical conditions are old there are a couple of decades old and they’re.
Federico Ramallo (05:01) you
Tara Maddala (05:03) on paper or you know maybe there’s an electronic form but they’re not the way that that that that we all I mean I would say definitely Gen C and Gen Alpha think about processing their emotions right I mean we use emojis all the time why not use an emoji based type survey to you know like a daily check-in to assess how people are feeling so we take these passive data elements like I described like
location and app usage and voice biomarkers. do voice journaling, so changes in voice are indicative of have been shown to be indicative of depression and anxiety. taking these passive biomarkers along with the way that people interact with their phones to to process their moods and habits and behaviors through surveys like daily quick check ins, I would say. Take all that information and put it into
algorithms to help make sense of that data and then create these nudges to students. Like, you you seem like you’re more anxious than usual. You know, you might want to consider these resources. And then we pair that with resources that are clinically vetted, because also tied to what you were talking about is a lot of noise in terms of getting recommendations and getting help, right? And misinformation and bad information. So we pair that with clinically vetted resources.
that aren’t necessarily like a clinician, a therapist, but other resources that maybe will prompt someone to start to get help. Maybe it’s an Instagram support group that’s a clinically viable Instagram support group, or a peer support group that’s on their campus. Something that maybe that helps them take the next step that they feel is right for them.
Federico Ramallo (06:47) Right, because the issue with social networks and most apps is that the incentives that they have are negative for us as users Netflix doesn’t want you to do exercise, they want you to watch more TV Tinder doesn’t want you to find a long term relationship, they want you to date more often ⁓ and all the social networks want your attention
Tara Maddala (06:49) Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
I’m out.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (07:13) And
all means to that end. So that doesn’t want you to be emotionally healthy. Doesn’t care about your mental health. And I’m painting all the social networks with a white brush, but they don’t have the incentives to do that. Actually, when there is negative comments and people start arguing on the social networks,
That actually is beneficial for the social networks because they have more attention to it. And then on the other hand, when you see the parents, concerning parents, they have an unbalanced battle with these social networks because how many resources a parent could have versus
Tara Maddala (07:57) Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (08:02) the millions of dollars that social network would have to grab the attention of the teenagers, right? So, where does teenagers seek for advice on TikTok or whatever, and then what they get is not scientifically vetted, right?
Tara Maddala (08:17) many of those resources are not scientifically vetted. Yes.
Federico Ramallo (08:21) there is a losing battle for the parents because all these social networks companies, they are designed to grab the attention of the kids and they spend millions of dollars on research for that versus what tools do we have as parents to kind of fight this. what you’re describing Pandora Byo can do is, you know,
Tara Maddala (08:24) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (08:42) empower parents to have better tools, right?
Tara Maddala (08:47) Actually, it’s I was just about to say it’s to empower individuals. So we’re starting with young adults. So we’re starting with the users being students on on college campuses and the payers are the colleges themselves. They offer it as a subscription service like we offer as a subscription service and then they they offer it to all their students to use. And the goal is to empower the students themselves because they’re at a time in their lives when they are.
losing the social support connections they once had by going off to college. They’re also trying to empower their, there are a time when they’re learning about their identity in themselves and they’re wanting to make a mark for themselves, right? So they want to feel empowered and you oftentimes see a lot of students really focusing on their physical health and health is physical and mental health. So our hypothesis is that students will want to learn more about themselves and the changes in their own mental health.
And we would give them only this user, the information, the individual information, because a lot of this also relies on them self-reporting their moods and their behaviors. And they’re going to be much more honest about the moods and behaviors if they know that all this data is used only for them and we don’t share it with anybody else. We don’t share it with their parents. We don’t share it with administration on an individual basis.
Ideally in the future, and this is our plan in the future, is to go to the younger ages, high school and middle school. And that way, the goal is still to empower the individual because a lot of times when, like in high school, a lot of, I would say most high schoolers will want to keep many things private, right? And they don’t want their parents to know.
And so that’s one reason we’re starting with the young adult college space. And I will say that the administration, through this model, the school administration also does get value beyond helping to improve the mental health of their student body and avoid crisis on campus. They also get aggregated data to help them make decisions about programming.
Right. So let’s say they find that, you know, a certain, you know, they understand how many, you what percentage of their students have depression or anxiety or are utilizing the campus resources, or maybe they want to have additional types of resources that have to do with social determinants of health, like maybe a food pantry, if they know that their students are struggling. So this is a way to help the administration also with their, you know,
deploy their resources more effectively. And then I think the other thing that the administration or the college also gets value in that we’ve heard from counselors is that for the college counselors, like you when you’re talking about like community colleges, for example, they have breaks in between their semesters where they don’t have services. So something like Meet Pandora could be used to.
reinforce the tools and techniques that were recommended by a therapist on campus during those breaks. Or even if there isn’t a break, if someone’s not being very compliant and they’re like, I know for me, for example, when I get my physical therapy for my elbow and I don’t do the exercises they tell me to do, I don’t make that next appointment to go see the therapist again. And I’m sure a lot of
Federico Ramallo (12:13) you
Tara Maddala (12:14) All of us do that, right? And so this is a way to like nudge an individual with, well, you know, have you done those different therapies or tools? Have you used the tool that they’ve suggested for you? So there’s a lot of value to having this be initially used in a college population. Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (12:36) Right, right, I see what you’re saying. and
because the, this is something that I’ve seen in the US and it’s different in Latin America that college kids, they, most of them move out of the home into college, right? So they are, they are outside of the family core, right? So they don’t have that support that they, you know, that,
Tara Maddala (13:02) they once had,
yeah, with their family and friends, And friends are huge.
Federico Ramallo (13:03) that the ones have. Right, right. they
move to a college in another state and now they are completely alone trying to figure out how to become adults while they’re studying, while they’re, know, and it’s a difficult stage, right? In Latin America, families are more attached to kids so they don’t let them go into adventure, you know?
Tara Maddala (13:25) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (13:29) in a way, they do more, you know, continuous checkups and it’s an exception kids going out of college to another state. Most of them they stayed at home, right? ⁓ And that provides them a more…
Tara Maddala (13:29) Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
⁓ okay.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (13:48) you know, more support, right? There’s also the fact that there is no college campuses or not as many as in the US. basically, if they move to another state, they have to get rent, you know, they have to rent a house, they have to, there’s so many things that they need that the dependency, you know, not only on the economical, but on the emotional side remains. they, even though they’re far away from the,
Tara Maddala (13:50) Okay.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (14:13) home, they’re still very deeply connected emotionally, and they still have that level of support. And I could argue that sometimes Latino mothers would overstep. The issue for these young adults would be more to set boundaries for their parents, because they would be overly involved on their kids. ⁓
Tara Maddala (14:15) Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (14:36) you
know life which you know at actual point is good but you know eventually they need to you know be able to be be by themselves right so anyway it’s a different dynamic yeah
Tara Maddala (14:48) Yeah, so that is the
goal. So here in the US, a large portion of people move away for school. And so it’s an opportunity to empower them to take things as they come.
Federico Ramallo (15:06) Right, right, so I can see how Pandora By would help them have that level of support, right? Yeah. The other thing that I’ve in young adults now is that it is more common for them to kind of…
Tara Maddala (15:11) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (15:22) ⁓ exchange mental mental issues right it’s like they more openly talk about that in you know in in my generation was very rare for somebody to say says or i’m depressed or i’m you know or whatever it was it was more of a
more of a private matter, right? People would be more ashamed to share that. And now people are more open to share those type of things. And it’s kind of like they collect mental health issues, right? I have two, you have three, ⁓ know. It’s kind of like, you know, Pokemon, you gotta catch them all, right? Which is a sad, you know, it’s a sad picture.
Tara Maddala (15:57) Yeah, you know, that was one of the surprising things that we found as we were deploying, well, researching and then deploying Meat Pandora at colleges. You know, there always is this idea that there’s stigma around mental health and that’s why. So there’s a statistic that I think it’s about 60 % of those who have one or more mental health conditions don’t seek help.
That statistic is quite high and you know, there’s a healthy minds. It’s called the healthy mind survey that surveys colleges, college students. And from that, it said that ⁓ the majority of those students don’t seek help, not because of stigma, but because they feel like their friends are worse off than they are. And they don’t want to take the resources up for someone who needs them, the resources more than they do.
And so again, that’s another way that we feel like we can help at Neat Pandora because we’re identifying for them. We’re giving them those nudges because we are seeing through all this data collection and the, and the algorithms, we can give them a nudge to say that, you know, in fact, maybe it is time for you to take that next step, right? The next step doesn’t have to be the scarce resource of a, you know, on-campus therapist.
Federico Ramallo (16:47) ⁓
Tara Maddala (17:15) If you’re not ready for that, it can be something that feels right for you. And we assess what’s right for them when they first get onto the Meet Pandora app. So when they first onboard, we ask them, when the time comes, if you would like to get personalized resources, do you want personalized resources based on your?
on your sexual identity or gender identity or your sexual orientation or your race or your religion. Do you want something to read? you want a video? Do you want a peer support group? Do you want to meet in person with people? Do you want to meet online with people? You those kinds of things so that when they do get that flag or nudge, then we’re pairing it with
Only three resources at a time and those resources get updated with changes in the mental health and also. If they change their preferences but but really it’s always three resources because we don’t want to overwhelm them with choices because that’s another another thing right you can get overwhelmed with choices and that causes inaction so the idea is one that’s and there’s always one resource that’s local either and usually it’s a college specific campus specific resource but it’s.
you know, it encourages them to have options and be able to take that next step that feels right for them.
Federico Ramallo (18:35) Right, right. Yeah, I’ve seen people doing that. They get freeze by too many options. ⁓ Very interesting. I wouldn’t thought that Young would not seek help by thinking that they will take resources that will help other people, Yeah.
Tara Maddala (18:39) Yeah.
And they don’t oftentimes
know that what they’re experiencing is worthy of reaching out, right? They might be underestimating the effect of what’s happening or how they’re feeling. And this is a way, Me Pandora is a way to put that into context for them.
Federico Ramallo (19:07) Right, right, yeah.
Yeah, because I’ve seen that ⁓ there’s been this trend of normalization of mental health issues. It’s normal for us to have them, And I don’t think that, and that’s the perception that they have, but I don’t think that that should be the case, right? ⁓ Yeah, but I can understand that they will not seek help, right? Yeah. I think that the…
Tara Maddala (19:18) Mm, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I think.
Federico Ramallo (19:38) The other book from Abigail Schreider, what she was talking about is the over-dependency of young on therapy. So they would not, ⁓ and I’m kind of paraphrasing what I remember of what I kind of read about the book, so probably I’m saying it wrong, but what she was stating was that the over-dependency made
Tara Maddala (19:47) Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Okay.
Federico Ramallo (20:01) that they will not make
decisions. for any important decision, would go to their… they would seek help to make the decision on therapy, right? Which is, you know, an unhealthy habit, right? So I can see how Pandora would help them identify their issues, but also give them the resources to…
Tara Maddala (20:08) Mm-hmm. ⁓
Federico Ramallo (20:23) feed out by themselves, right? And then seek help when, you know, when they reach a threshold level where they actually need help, right?
Tara Maddala (20:32) Yeah, and the idea is, you know, we talk about early detection a lot at Meet Pandora, I mean, Pandora Bio, and early detection is really about, maybe I can define that. And actually, I heard a great kind of analogy, or what do call it, story around a quote recently about mental health.
He was talking about how you know let’s say you’re standing at a riverbank and you’re seeing all these people starting to drown downstream on a on a a at a stream right and so they’re starting to drown and you pull one person out and then you get more people to help pull more people out of the stream. you know instead of pulling people downstream out of the out of the river why aren’t you going upstream to figure out why people are falling in the river in the first place.
And I don’t know if you’ve heard this Desmond Tutu quote, and I’m gonna pull it out, just make sure I get it right, which is, ⁓ “we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” And so that’s really our idea is to measure these changes early so that we can establish a baseline for an individual and look for changes, individual changes.
Federico Ramallo (21:26) You
Tara Maddala (21:49) And then we nudge them early to get to to take that next step. That next step doesn’t have to be therapy, like you said with the author that you were quoting. It can be, like I said, a support group or just even learning about some techniques and tools and tips to help you to cope with anxiety, for example.
⁓ And we would be surfacing those kinds of things for individuals so that we’re catching it so much so far upstream that it’s not even close to like a crisis type of situation, which is, know, in those kinds of situations of absolutely you need to be talking to a therapist or a hotline, which, by the way we have in our app too, we have a easy call button on every screen that goes directly to text.
and ⁓ phone crisis lines.
Federico Ramallo (22:41) wow, right. Yeah, I the…
Tara Maddala (22:42) Yeah. Yeah, but our goal is upstream.
Federico Ramallo (22:46) Right, yeah, I think your analogy is very good and yeah, the way that I’m hearing paraphrasing super early, I said it wrong, but the way that we as human grow is by voluntarily get out of our comfort zone, right? ⁓ Basically, you know, going…
Tara Maddala (23:06) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (23:10) going on an adventure, going into the dark forest, slay the dragon, whatever that dragon may be, but confronting our fears. But it has to be a voluntary decision. It can’t work if somebody else is pushing us too. ⁓ And by providing that guidance,
Tara Maddala (23:25) Yes, yes.
Federico Ramallo (23:31) you provide those guardrails, right? So they can do it by themselves in a safe way, but also they can have access to help if they are outside of the guardrails, right? Right, right. Very interesting, So…
Tara Maddala (23:43) Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (23:49) how do you gather mental health clues? are you using wearables, phones, service, all of them?
Tara Maddala (23:55) All of them, yes. So exactly.
we are the foundation of Meet Pandora is an app. The app helps us collect the information and the data. Then in the back end, have these AI algorithms that then create the flags or nudges. So the data that we collect are daily, weekly, and monthly check-ins. It ends up being less than a minute
per day on average to get this 360 behavioral map. So the check-ins, which are active elements, there’s the voice journaling and the text journaling, which the voice journaling gives you these 24 biomarkers, like pitch variance and words per minute and many different features of a voice. And then we get
the GPS data that I mentioned through GPS tracking to see if someone is socially isolating, for example. And then we get wearable data if they have a wearable. So it connects with multiple wearables with APIs to get the information. But we don’t have a wearable paired with Meet Pandora specifically.
But we get all kinds of data, even from GPS, right? We get weather data. get, you know, there’s, we obviously, the more sun and better weather, the better people’s moods. so there, capture weather information as well, sunlight, for example, and things like
Federico Ramallo (25:22) Interesting. Can I tell you a side comment? ⁓ So we went to Ireland many years ago and we went to, you we stayed at an Airbnb, you know, it was somebody else’s house, right? Great host. And he mentioned that they take vitamin D because the amount of sun they get is very, very little.
Tara Maddala (25:25) Yeah.
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Federico Ramallo (25:46) And then the other thing he was telling us is if it starts to rain, don’t cancel your plans, just go. Because it’s going to stop. It’s kind of like Seattle where it rains very little, it’s not enough to wear an umbrella, but enough that it’s annoying. And he was explaining to us that they take vitamin D because
Tara Maddala (25:46) Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Like this.
Thank
Federico Ramallo (26:13) they get most of the year they don’t get sun they get cloudy rainy-ish days and you know and that that you know increased the pressure in we were in Dublin right and and he was saying they have to take vitamin D and then they have to actively seek towards other activities because otherwise they get depressed by just watching the day right
Tara Maddala (26:18) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, actually your story reminds me of something a little bit more on like the personal, personalized side, which is I live in sunny California. I live in Sunnyvale, California, which is where it’s always sunny in Sunnyvale, California. And I still have to take vitamin D because and I’m outside all the time playing tennis.
I take vitamin D because of my skin color. So I don’t absorb the vitamin D or process it, something like that, because of the darker skin color. I mean, this just points to like, even like the personalization on, I’m tying it back to Pandora, which is that even like the same pattern, right, for individuals, like being living in Sunnyvale, California can affect people differently based on their, you know, race.
So we take all those kinds of factors into account too when we do our algorithms. Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (27:34) Right, right, interesting,
Yeah, because most of the recommendation engines are generic, you having access to, knowing yourself and having access to your own data, you can, interesting.
Tara Maddala (27:45) Yes, yes, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, well said. Yes.
Federico Ramallo (27:50) So how quickly can a college or well you talk about how high school is going to be in the future but how quickly can they get started?
Tara Maddala (27:59) Yeah, very quickly. Our app is off the shelf, ready to go. There’s a level of personal, there’s a level of customization that we do for colleges. So I mentioned the resources, for example, right? The resources, usually we oftentimes put college-specific resources into that particular deployment.
And so whatever customization they need, we will work with the college to work on that. the ideal time for a student to start on meet Pandora would be the summer before they enter college. And that’s because, you know, at that time we were talking earlier about, you know, kids moving away, you know, they’re still at home. And so it kind of sets that baseline before all these things change where they have the social pressures and the school pressures and the
You lose support they once had with their family and their friends and so so ideally you know the summer before they start college in the college would offer it to their students incoming incoming freshman but but me pandora can be used at any time to help you know in the college journey.
Federico Ramallo (29:10) Right, right. So the right time to get started is now. Whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Tara Maddala (29:12) Yes, exactly. I love that. I should have said the right time to get started
is now. should have that, yes.
Federico Ramallo (29:18) Yeah, yeah. And ideally summer before getting into college. So you have a baseline. Very interesting. So you also mentioned that you work with the campuses, right? Do you have a campus license or it’s on an individual basis?
Tara Maddala (29:22) Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Ahem.
Yeah, that’s that’s a great question. It’s it’s a campus license. So the campuses, the college will we offer it as like a subscription service for all their entire student body, and then they offer it to their their students as users.
Federico Ramallo (29:50) Right, interesting. Why did you name the company Pandora?
Tara Maddala (29:54) Yeah, that’s a great question. I actually was pretty stuck on Pandora Bio. So yeah, so I want to make sure I get this story. So Pandora was the first woman created by the Greek gods. So first of all, being a woman and being a woman founder, I kind of wanted that kind of tie. But then the other thing is that everyone’s heard of Pandora’s box, right? So Pandora.
⁓ You know, had a box and then she was told not to open it. You know, it’s box contained all the evils of humanity and nonetheless she opened the box and all the evils escaped except for one. So do you know what the one is? The one evil. Yeah, so do know what the one evil is?
Federico Ramallo (30:33) really, I didn’t know that there was one that stayed.
No, I’m trying to think because I read the stories, but I don’t remember.
Tara Maddala (30:43) Ahem.
Okay, right. That’s okay. A lot of people don’t. Okay.
So the one you well, I don’t even know if it would say it’s an evil, right? So the one thing that was left in the box was hope. And hope is the antidote to despair. And it moves us to act even when the outcome is uncertain. And that’s our goal at Pandora is to, you know, unlock the box and let hope out to help people act even in uncertain times.
Federico Ramallo (31:15) I love it. I didn’t know that Hope was the only one that stayed. I didn’t remember. Left in the box. Very interesting. Yes, yes. I always thought about Pandora’s box, yeah, Pandora, the box has an owner, which is Pandora, right? Which kind of makes sense, yeah.
Tara Maddala (31:16) Yeah.
Left in the box, yes.
Well, now you know.
Yeah, and it’s funny,
a lot of people think of Pandora’s Box as being a negative thing, like let’s not open Pandora’s Box, but if we open it now, we can unlock hope.
Federico Ramallo (31:42) Right, right. And we hope there’s everything, right?
Tara Maddala (31:46) Yeah. Well, hope is the antidote to despair. And so that’s, that’s, that’s our goal. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (31:51) Right, right. the other thing, which kind of goes to hope, that this reminds me is to try to aim to do a little bit better every day, right? ⁓ Because when you feel without hope, when you feel that there’s nothing you can do to do better, just do a little thing, right? And then…
Tara Maddala (32:02) Mm.
Federico Ramallo (32:13) focus on that little thing, then once you get movement then the second step is easier, the third step is easier there was a phrase that was related to that how do you do a 10,000 miles journey by one step at a time
Tara Maddala (32:18) Thank
One step at a time. Yes,
yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that step looks different for everybody, right? And that’s why we are providing options because everyone needs to do what feels right for them as that first step.
Federico Ramallo (32:49) Right.
Tara Maddala (32:50) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (32:52) So is Pandora Bio available for the general public as well?
Tara Maddala (32:58) ⁓ Right now, it’s not. We are planning to get into the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in the next month or so. So it could be available to others as well. Right now, our goal is to work with colleges and get it out that way.
Federico Ramallo (33:11) Right, right. Yeah, because I can see how this… Right.
Right, right. Yeah, because you only need to close one campuses to be able to help a lot of students, right? And it’s also a tool for the campuses to provide help, right?
Tara Maddala (33:35) Yes, yeah. And mean, our goal is to have three campus partners this year so that we can help more students and also, you know, the more data that gets fed into the algorithms, the better the algorithms get as well. And so we can help more students.
Federico Ramallo (33:50) Very nice. And you mentioned that you’re planning to get three campuses this year. What other milestones do you hope to reach this year?
Tara Maddala (34:00) ⁓ We’re also applying for an SBIR grant. It’s called a small business grant from the NIH. And the goal would be to do further studies by enrolling students onto Meet Pandora so that we can, again, collect more data to make those, to improve the experience for users as well as, ⁓ you know, get better flags and nudges.
So that’s our goal, the three for this year. And this year is half over.
Federico Ramallo (34:26) Half over, yeah, yeah.
It almost feels like Halloween. I know, it’s far away, almost.
Tara Maddala (34:32) Well, the
stuff is in the stores for Halloween already, so you’re right, yes.
Federico Ramallo (34:36) Yes, yes, that’s right. I mean, they get ahead.
Tara Maddala (34:39) Yeah, it’s earlier, earlier
every year.
Federico Ramallo (34:43) Yeah, I mean, I just need to remember here in Mexico in December, grapes go skyrocket for some reason. People buy grapes for Christmas. So they go really, really high on price. So I have to stock grapes in November. But then in January, they’re super cheap because they’re overstocked.
Tara Maddala (34:56) ⁓
in the freezer.
is a
fun fact I never heard of.
Federico Ramallo (35:12) Yeah, this happens particularly in Mexico. It
doesn’t happen in other parts of Latin America. Yeah. So I’m Argentinian and I moved to Mexico 17 years ago. Yeah. And it is one of these little quirks like this that I found interesting and what I miss the most is the foot, right? Because on
Christmas or other special occasions you have you know special, know special meals all around right and you feel that becomes normal, right? You know in in July in Argentina we have chocolate for whatever reason Hot chocolate because July is summer in Sunnyvale, but winter in Buenos Aires so There’s this tradition where
Tara Maddala (35:51) Right.
Federico Ramallo (35:56) every school gives you a hot chocolate and so again it’s I try with different chocolates here in Mexico where you know is the country of the chocolate right but it’s a different flavor so it’s not the same right
Tara Maddala (36:04) Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think Mexican chocolate has cinnamon or something in it.
Federico Ramallo (36:15) Yes, yes, they put sugar to coffee which I don’t like, they put, ⁓ not cinnamon, put cane sugar on the coffee, so yeah Anyway, I get used to that, right? But I do miss those types of things,
Tara Maddala (36:20) Mmm.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (36:31) And then Alfajores, which is a sweet from Argentina that has dulce de leche in the middle and it’s also delicious. It’s this childhood sweet that you used to get. Anyway, sorry, I digress.
Tara Maddala (36:40) ⁓ sounds delicious.
Yeah.
Food is very important and yeah.
Federico Ramallo (36:59) yes, yes, and you know we’re talking about mental health issues and the you know, there people that eat when they’re stressed, right? they over eat and yeah anyway, I’m trying to
Tara Maddala (37:11) Well, there are actually a lot
of eating disorders in ⁓ college students as well.
Federico Ramallo (37:14) Right.
really? Interesting.
Tara Maddala (37:18) Yeah, I think that
it’s something pretty high. I don’t want to quote a number, it’s double digit percentages.
Federico Ramallo (37:27) wow.
Tara Maddala (37:28) Yeah, maybe look very low double digit percentages. But yes, the eating disorders are quite ubiquitous, think largely because of social media, you know, with seeing, usually mostly in in women.
Federico Ramallo (37:39) Right, right and then that changes their bodies and that changes their perception of themselves which triggers more mental health issues, yeah Yeah So I have a few more questions for you, let me look them up
Tara Maddala (37:47) Yes, yeah.
Okay, sounds good. Yeah, great.
Federico Ramallo (37:57) You talk about early detection, right? And you talk a little bit about that early. Can you expand on the early detection in mental health and how… Well, you talk about how Pandora By is helping, but can you expand a little bit more on why it’s important to have an early detection?
Tara Maddala (37:59) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so early detection is something that I actually have spent 20 or maybe not 20, like 10 to 15 years of my life on actually, first in physical diseases. So, you know, we know that like I spent time at at Grail, which was a pioneering company working on early detection for cancer. And there we look at genomic biomarkers in the blood. So we look at
blood we look for shedding DNA and then we identify people who might have early signs of cancer and in cancer we know that if you detected a stage one or two you have a 90 % chance of survival and if you detected a stage four you have a 10 % chance of survival so it’s it’s very it’s very you know very different if you detect it early and so
we always say early detection saves lives. And so when I was thinking about mental health, I was thinking, can I contribute to helping in that space? And that space, mental health also being a couple of decades behind from cancer research. And so it’s these behavioral and social biomarkers that are early signs of
changes in mental health. So not these, you know, blood based biomarkers per se, but the social and behavioral biomarkers. And what’s the best way to capture social and behavioral biomarkers, but through a phone, right? So, that was the, that, that was the thinking that, you know, early detection saves lives. If you can cat in back to that stream, right? Instead of trying to, you know, find enough people to pull the people out of the stream.
Why not go upstream and just prevent people from falling in the stream to begin with? So that’s just the premise is that if you can catch it earlier, you can find other resources to change the course of the mental health journey.
Federico Ramallo (40:19) Right, so early detection means that the chances of survival are higher although that could apply to mental health, right? because it’s not survival, yeah. Early detection saves life, yes. Then the ⁓ recovery time is shorter and the… ⁓
Tara Maddala (40:30) Right. Yeah. Yeah. We say early detection saves lives. Yes. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (40:41) know permanent consequences or you know any permanent damage it could be smaller right it could be it could affect you less if you can detect it and work on it early
Tara Maddala (40:55) I mean, also for some serious mental illnesses, there’s an aspect of isolation that comes with over time. And if you could catch the changes earlier before there’s that isolation, then you can get more support earlier too, which we all know that support is very, family support, friend support, social support is very important to recovery.
just as you catch things earlier and you get therapeutics, right, for physical diseases, you can also get therapeutics for mental health. So there are all kinds of ways that earlier detection can save lives.
Federico Ramallo (41:34) Amazing.
Federico Ramallo (41:35) how does your biostatistics background guide Pandora’s bio strategy?
Tara Maddala (41:42) That’s a great question. So I think it’s important to generate solid ⁓ clinical evidence for health products. And ⁓ a couple of years ago, Tom Insel, you might recognize his name. He was the former head of the National Institutes of Mental Health. And he echoed the sentiment in an article where he said, need to tell useful mental health tech from snake oil. That’s a pretty bold statement.
And he basically compared today’s like unregulated mental health app landscape with the modern wild west. And he was saying essentially his problem, what he’s saying is that marketing and scale often overshadow rigor and evidence. And so as a statistician, know, rigor and evidence, especially building on that rigor and evidence in what I talked about earlier with the grail and actually genomic health.
You know, when you’re diagnostic tools for physical illness, you have to have that rigor, that clinical evidence to make accurate statements. And that’s what we’re trying to build at Pandora Bio. This idea of, ⁓ I’ll tell you one more quote, last quote, which is, statistician said a couple of decades ago, can’t bung, you can’t, you can’t,
Fix by analysis what you bungled by design. And so we take that design first approach to making sure that all of the data that we’re feeding into these algorithms are generalizable and free of bias and confounding and really give accurate estimates of accurate information back to students. So I feel like
a special place, there’s a special place for biostatisticians in doing something like this. yeah, so that’s how the biostats background fits into this.
Federico Ramallo (43:34) Interesting, interesting. I didn’t know that there is a lack of rigorous process as physical health issues, right? Because what I’ve seen happen is that when you’re doing marketing, you kind of start with the hypothesis first, right? And then you develop everything else after, right? But with a scientific rigor method, you don’t, right? You don’t guide
Tara Maddala (43:42) Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (44:03) the expected results you’d rather prove it or disprove it, right? ⁓ Yes
Tara Maddala (44:07) Yeah, yeah, the scientific method. Yes. Yes. You have a hypothesis
and then you either prove or disprove it. and, yeah. And you want, and you want to put accurate information out there because it is health, it’s mental health and it’s guiding, guiding what, people do.
Federico Ramallo (44:20) Right.
Right.
Federico Ramallo (44:22) I think I have one last question and we can wrap it up Yeah, yeah, yeah, we we’re on the nick of time so we have a few more minutes
Tara Maddala (44:24) okay. my gosh, where did the time go? Okay. ⁓
Federico Ramallo (44:32) What surprised you the most since you started Pandora Bio?
Tara Maddala (44:36) You know, I’ve Pandora Bio with several former colleagues who I’d worked with in the genomic diagnostic space and new people who I’ve met and just their passion for this, for helping young people in their mental health and their creativity. just, I think what surprised me the most is just how wonderful the team is actually working.
at Pandora Bio and how we’ve all come together around a mission that we all believe in and are just the intersection of the different disciplines and how. There’s a saying about innovation happens at intersections and bringing together people like the folks that I worked with in the past who understand that clinical evidence is key.
And then working with ⁓ psychologists and psychiatrists and working with data scientists and bringing all our expertise together to further a mission. maybe they’re passionate, but there’s so many people that are so passionate about this.
Federico Ramallo (45:41) wow, amazing awesome, so thank you very much Tara for joining us today I’m really looking forward to see where you’re going to take Pandora Bio next you and your team of shout out to the team
Tara Maddala (45:51) ⁓ thank you.
Yes,
the team is critical. It’s a wonderful team.
Federico Ramallo (46:00) yes because I think this is a key subject that will help a lot of people that sometimes we have so much noise on the world about a lot of things and we don’t pay enough attention to our mental health so I think you’re in a very interesting mission and I’m looking forward to see where you’re going to go next
Tara Maddala (46:22) Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Federico Ramallo (46:26) Thank you for joining.
Tara Maddala (46:27) Okay.