Kevin Schallert ‘16 B.A. Political Science
By Michele Willer-Allred
The entrepreneurial skills of CSUCI alumni continue to shine, and Kevin Schallert is no exception as the Chief Operating Officer of a biotech company offering a more cost-effective way for people to do COVID-19 testing.
Schallert graduated from CSUCI with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and was on the University’s sailing team. But he also studied Math and had an interest in Quantitative Biology. That led him to working as a research associate with the Southern California Research Learning Center for the National Park Service, where he helped with bird population studies out on the Channel Islands.
Schallert developed a professional background in high-growth startups and mathematical programming. When the pandemic began, he took a leave of absence as managing partner of Chambre LP so he could work full-time on figuring out a way to help.
He ended up becoming co-director of the COVID-19 National Scientist Volunteer Database, a curated database of more than 10,000 professional scientists from all over the United States and surrounding territories who wanted to volunteer their time, expertise, and consumables to help people respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
“We think there’s a lot of industry reasons why testing is more expensive than it should be —
we’d like to make technology more freely available,
and make it so anyone has access to low-cost, molecular testing.” —Kevin Schallert
In response to the pandemic, Schallert co-founded and became Chief Operating Officer of FloodLAMP Biotechnologies, which aims to provide rapid, high-quality, and easy-to-run molecular COVID-19 testing that is also affordable.
“We developed a test that is primarily used by first responders. While this test had previously cost $100 to administer, it can now cost about $1 per person, and it doesn’t require any training or expensive equipment,” Schallert said.
He explained that the test is operated primarily now by firefighters in city government, who were able to increase its use from just giving tests to unvaccinated employees to testing every employee multiple times a week.
“We think there’s a lot of industry reasons why testing is more expensive than it should be — we’d like to make technology more freely available, and make it so anyone has access to low-cost, molecular testing,” he said.
Schallert said being at a smaller university such as CSUCI was beneficial in preparing him for the business world by giving him the skill sets needed to succeed.
“When we joined the sailing team, we were able to talk to everybody, from professors who came out with us to the President of the University. We had the confidence to work with anybody no matter what their perceived status was to solve problems,” he said.
While Schallert doesn’t race sailboats anymore, he appreciates keeping in touch with the friends he gained while at the University, as well as the confidence he gained by interacting with other students, faculty, and staff, with different backgrounds and perspectives, which has helped him work collaboratively with others to find solutions for world-wide issues.
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© Spring 2022 / Volume 27 / Number 1 / Biannual