An environmental therapeutics lab.
Providence, RI · Est. 2025
About the Lab
The environments people move through shape what they think, feel, and know. Most of them were not designed with that in mind. Platforms optimized for engagement over attention. Clinical AI trained to agree over accuracy. Resource infrastructure that serves the organizations already visible, not the ones that need it most. We study the mechanism. We build the antidote.
A diagnostic instrument gives you a number for something that does not have one yet. A blood pressure cuff does not ask how you feel. It gives a reading that means the same thing in any clinic in the world. We build that for things medicine has not gotten to yet: how disconnected someone has become from real relationships, how much an AI is steering their thinking without them knowing it.
A therapeutic environment is a place or experience designed so that going through it produces a real, specific change in you. The environment does the work. You leave less isolated, thinking more clearly, trusting yourself more. Not because you tried. Because of what it put you through.
The Work
Each project pairs a diagnostic instrument with a therapeutic environment. Back the work directly or get involved.
Film Therapeutics
Watching someone face death honestly might be the closest thing we have to therapy for our own. This documentary series tests that idea one conversation at a time. The Ghana national football team is the next episode.
Cognitive Profiling
Your listening history has a cognitive signature you've never seen. WAXFEED surfaces it while you discover new music. The platform and the research are the same thing.
AI Honesty
Clinical AI will change a correct diagnosis if you push back hard enough. This study measures how often, across 1,000 real chest radiographs, and builds the case for regulators to act.
Community Discovery
A location game where every move you make draws a live map of how well your city connects people to opportunity. The players are also the researchers. The map belongs to everyone.
Give where most needed
Not sure which project? Back the lab itself. Your contribution goes where it is needed most across all active programs.
See all funding options →$10–$999 contributions are gifts in exchange for perks. No financial return. Full terms →
The Lab
Brown University · MetroWest Medical Center · St. Vincent's Hospital
Theodore is a fourth-year medical student at Brown University, completing a transitional year at MetroWest Medical Center before beginning a residency in diagnostic radiology at St. Vincent's Hospital. His research examines how environments shape what the mind suppresses, from the sensory inputs that govern social behavior in the brain to the training incentives that cause clinical AI systems to override their own correct reasoning. He was an undergraduate researcher in the MIT Synthetic Neurobiology Group under Dr. Ed Boyden, studying zebrafish social behavior as a whole-brain model of sensory input to behavioral action, and trained at UMBC under Dr. Rachel Brewster as a Meyerhoff, HHMI, and MARC/URISE Scholar. He has co-authored work in Molecular Cell, a bioengineering simulation study presented at SMFM 2026, and patents in brain-modeled knowledge graphs and cognitive biometric authentication. He founded Polarity Lab in 2025.
Brown University · Sociotechnical Systems and Wellbeing Lab
Shadrack is a student of Computer Science and Religious Studies at Brown University ('27) and a Research Assistant in the Sociotechnical Systems and Wellbeing Lab under Dr. Diana Freed. He previously conducted survey research on conditions in which youth thrive at the Character Lab. At Polarity Lab, he leads technical infrastructure, product design, and creative direction across all three research programs. He is the producer of A Very Distant Perspective, co-founder of Blueno, and founder of WAXFEED. He co-authored patents in brain-modeled knowledge graphs and cognitive biometric authentication.
Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa · BIPOC Business Society
Nathan is studying Finance and Business Technology Management at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, where he serves as VP Finance of the BIPOC Business Society and conducted undergraduate research in AI trend forecasting and computational modelling. He spent a year as a business and technical solutions analyst at HOIST. He co-authored a brain-modeled knowledge graphs patent. At Polarity Lab, he leads the work of making the lab's research and products legible across every audience it touches, from internal team building to investor partnerships and brand strategy.
Innovation Investigator in Residence
MUSEOFRI · Providence, RI
J'Juan is the founder and CEO of The MUSE Foundation of Rhode Island, the state's first philanthropic foundation built to cultivate creativity and innovation in communities of color. A Providence community leader for thirty years, his work spans workforce development, youth empowerment, cultural equity, and philanthropic investment. He led the campaign that made Juneteenth a Rhode Island paid state holiday in 2024 and established the Rhode Island Black Philanthropy Month Legacy Fund, with partnerships across United Way RI, Brown University, and the RI Foundation. In parallel, he has built a career as an independent branding and business consultant to clients including Atlantic Records, Universal Music Group, SONY Records, and the City of Providence. His field research on professional development barriers across the nonprofit sector and resource discovery failures in Rhode Island organizations formed the problem foundation for the Community Discovery lab. At Polarity Lab, he contributes community research and field knowledge to the Proximity Index and PolarityGPS.
Brown University · Fountainhead
Chris is a student of Computer Science at Brown University and the founder of Fountainhead, a platform for connecting collaborators across the creative and technical space. He came to AVDP having immediately understood the research framing of the podcast, proposed extending it into shortform content, assembled his own production team to execute the first shortform episode, and co-developed the conceptual framing of the series with the lab. He has conducted research at Rutgers University in quantum circuit optimization under Dr. Zheng Zhang. At Polarity Lab, he contributes to the AVDP program as a producer and creative collaborator on AVDP.
Get Involved
Bring a Project
Have an MVP or working prototype that fits the environmental therapeutics thesis? The lab provides team, infrastructure, and the model to make it compound.
Apply →Join a Project
Researcher, engineer, filmmaker, designer. If your skills match what a project needs, there is a role with a defined tier and disbursement weight waiting for you.
See open roles →Back the Work
Start with $10 and get your name on something real. Every project has a direct contribution path, or give where the lab needs it most.
See funding options →Money and time are not the only ways to help. If you know someone this work should reach, an introduction or a share is worth more than most people think.