I'm drawn to the edge where science meets art, cognition meets complexity, and theory meets lived experience.
I'm currently building a novel R&D engine for innovation funding at Analogue while writing, researching, and interviewing about paradigms of progress to unlock the adjacent possible. As you're reading, these take up most of my brainspace:
How we value and capture emerging industries before they’re obvious
Knowledge transfer and learning in an age of synthetic overload
How we tell stories about science that actually stick — and shape what gets understood, funded, and explored.
I'm interested in how we facilitate the process of scientific discovery, serendipity, and creative storytelling when so much learning — and the joy that comes with it — is seen as unnecessary and mundane. If we can trace connections that already exist but are illegible, discovery can feel like play again.
My calling is in the craft. I grew two content platforms (500M+ views) and still film with creative teams from time to time, including a documentary translated from my epidemiological research and circulated by the NIH. I take photos, write, and host a podcast about funding, innovation, interdisciplinary work, creativity, and other ideas.
Previously, I built a synthetic data platform to simulate rare consumer cohorts, worked on tissue engineering, and developed risk and analytics tooling for a few public health orgs. I still advise some early-stage biotechs from time to time.
I tinker prolifically, collaborating on projects from a human museum of loneliness to Michelin menu curation all in the name of Letting my Life Unfold.* My work has been backed by the Fulbright Foundation, Stanford University, the Malaysian NIH, Novartis, NUS, and others, for which I’m deeply grateful.
I'm studying neuroscience at MIT's McGovern Institute and bioinformatics/politics at the University of Toronto. I'm about to visit my 55th country (track my travels) and host dinner parties around the world. I'm currently living in Toronto, except when I'm not, during when I split my time between Boston, NYC, and SF.
Something strike a thought? You can find me on X or email me joliegcy @ gmail.com. I love to walk and talk with people and read in coffeeshops or park benches.
If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe to my semi-regular updates — I share recent writings, crafts, and highlight other thinkers, projects, and in-betweens I find especially compelling.
Acknowledgements - I owe everything and more to the people who shaped my path — friends, mentors, and collaborators who challenged me to think deeper and create better.
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*Letting my Life Unfold means approaching science and society with curiosity rather than rigid plans. This is the thesis of my early 20s. During undergrad, this philosophy guided me through Toronto, New York, SF, Boston, Malaysia/Singapore, Thailand, Germany, and more as I pursued seemingly disparate projects: mapping flavour compounds, motorcycling through Taiwanese tea farms, collaborating with hawker food stalls and Michelin-starred chefs alike. I found myself building a company one semester, then researching systems the next. I've approached each experience not as a step on a predetermined path, but as part of an emergent pattern that reveals — unfolds — itself over time.