Cold Plasma Meets Machine Learning: The SirenOpt Story of Solving Manufacturing's Nanoscale Blind Spot

Jared O'Leary, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of SirenOpt, and Ali Mesbah, Ph.D. is his cofounder and also his former PhD advisor. Ali is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

SirenOpt is a Berkeley spin-out that is solving one of manufacturing's biggest blind spots.

Their PlasmaSens platform uses cold atmospheric plasma and AI to non-destructively inspect thin films and nanomaterials in real-time—catching defects and inconsistencies that traditional methods miss entirely. They're helping manufacturers of batteries, semiconductors, and aerospace components accelerate R&D, optimize production, and dramatically improve quality control.

In this episode of Lab to startup, we talk about how the industry currently solves the problems, and how SirenOpt is improving them; Then we deep dive into their technology; the origins of the startup from research at UC Berkeley; customer discovery, especially importance of relationship building and how it is different from just interviewing potential customers; lessons from working with industry; their fundraising journey and many other topics including Jared’s experience working at Theranos.

Shownotes:

• https://www.sirenopt.com/

• Advance coatings, thin films and micro/nano scale materials are critical in several industries. But manufacturing these components are inherently probabilistic

• SirenOpt providing hardware and software solutions for real time tracking

• Overview of current solutions  

• SirenOpt technology overview

• Initial medical applications

• Challenges with cold atmospheric pressure plasma

• Transition from an academic project to startup journey

• Feedback from industry

• Lessons from Jared working at Theranos

• Importance of transparency and building trust while working with customers

• Importance of academic thinking while building deeptech startups

• Market exploration: Foray into battery industry

• Customer discovery vs relationship building

• Support from Ali: from an academia-industry relationship point of view

• Venture scalability: Demonstrating the size of the market

• Working with semiconductor industry

• Lessons from working with academic PI as your cofounder

• Fundraising journey

• Role played by accelerators and incubators: Berkeley Skydeck & Activate

• Lessons from hiring

• Long term vision & lessons transitioning from academic scientist to a startup CEO