The same month when Joe Akin was set to defend his PhD dissertation in Boston, his grandmother was to be honored on her 100th birthday in Oklahoma. Akin really wanted to be there, but didn’t see how he could manage the time or finances to make the trip possible. His brother wisely reminded him there was no way he was not coming, and together they managed to get Akin there to witness the ceremonial presentation of a Cherokee communal handsewn quilt to his grandmother.
When Akin was growing up, his grandmother was his primary source of the history and stories that fed his inclination to serve his community and reconnect with his Cherokee identity. In high school, he represented his hometown of Claremore on the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Tribal Youth Council.
Akin’s grandmother also was his best teacher on how to live. “She embodied, for me, this idea of balance — balance within yourself and balancing yourself with the external world,” Akin says. “I always think about her wisdom when I face tough challenges.”
One of his first challenges was in high school when he set his sights on attending either the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy. He navigated the competitive admissions and testing processes and was accepted at both institutions. He chose the Air Force Academy because he thought its technology, science, and engineering all seemed much cooler. Following the “coolest science” became a theme for Akin in his educational and professional pursuits.
He excelled at the academy, earning a BS in chemistry in 2003, and was deemed eligible by the Air Force to attend graduate school. He earned his master’s in materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005.
At the same time, Akin continued his service as a scientist in the Air Force. He worked on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiatives, and one really captured his imagination. The project focused on a special set of genes that could identify a person by odor, and that led Akin to become intrigued by the complexity of the immune system. He thought if he ever went back to school for advanced studies, it would be in immunology, a field where his research and output in the lab could be translated into human applications and improved patient outcomes.
After completing his military service, Akin began working on his PhD in immunology at Harvard University. He became part of a team that worked on new discoveries and translatable technologies for cancer patients.
He also was influenced by Harvard’s President’s Innovation challenge, an event that kicked off the opening of the university’s new Innovation Lab. The Challenge was the genesis of Akin’s working relationship outside the lab with a fellow PhD student, Dr. Girija Goyal. They did not win the competition, but their conversations about problems they saw in translational science, and whether any of these were interesting enough to build a company around, fueled their entrepreneurial spirit.
Taking a scientist’s approach to becoming entrepreneurs, experimenting to find out what works and what doesn’t, the duo created ReFigure. Akin describes the ReFigure platform as a sort of Pinterest for scientists and engineers. “Our main selling point is that it unshackles scientific communication,” he says. “It’s not meant to replace scientific publications, but to complement them. And it’s meant to bring new people into the discussion and promote partnerships, and that can lead to increased discoveries.”
To Akin, the coolest science happening now runs across disciplines and technologies. That’s why he is passionate about ReFigure’s mission to break down barriers and make information more accessible and transparent. He explains, “We want to find new and interesting ways to use ReFigure to communicate science the right way through the right channels to the right people.”
