Our Story
Who We Are
In 2016, Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize for discovering cell autophagy—or, the way in which cells recycle the materials they produce every day. Ohsumi looked at the staggeringly complex system of cell metabolism… and asked a very simple question.
What happens to the waste?
As training physician-scientists, the two co-founders of Polycarbin consumed tens of thousands of lbs. of plastic during their time working in labs. In 2019, out of curiosity, they asked themselves…
What happens to all this waste?
Curiosity evolved into an obsession focused on addressing one of the most significant environmental and public health problems facing the scientific community today.
Years ago, James and Noah embarked on the physician-scientist training path with the hopes of having a career marked by large scale change. Today, they are operating as the two co-founders of Polycarbin and aim to remedy the global biomedical plastic crisis.
With 15 years of combined laboratory experience, James and Noah know how scientists work and how this plastic waste is produced. With their proprietary software-enabled platform that promotes durable behavior change, James and Noah aim to make single-use scientific plastics a thing of the past.
Noah Pyles
Co-CEO
James O’Brien
Co-CEO
