Joel L. Tapper

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Affiliations

Building

2025 to present

ARGOS Health

A wearable monitoring system for the patients hospitals lose track of. Emergency department waiting rooms, hallways, ambulances.

argoshealth.ai

“For the patients nobody is watching.”

The patch

A disposable wearable that streams oxygen, heart rate, and respiration over standard Bluetooth. No proprietary receiver required.

FormSoft silicone, inner wrist, 50 by 35 by 3 mm
SensorsMAX30102 optical, 3-axis IMU, skin temp
BatteryCR2032, 7-day continuous, pull-tab activation
Cost$8.45 BOM at 10k, $3.68 at 1M
Regulatory510(k) Class II, K242018 predicate

The model

A multilayer perceptron trained on over 408,000 patient encounters in the emergency department predicts which patients are about to deteriorate.

0.848

Backing & programs

NSF I-Corps
National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. Customer discovery program for translating research into commercial deployment. Currently in the program.
1789 Venture Fund
UNC's student-led pre-seed venture fund, run out of Innovate Carolina.
Launch Chapel Hill
UNC's startup accelerator. ARGOS is in the active cohort.

2026 to present

RPTK

An AI agent-swarm experiment effectively able to predict election outcomes. Simulating how 1.2 million synthetic voters think, talk, and change their minds over the course of a campaign.

rptk.net

RPTK

Understand how people think.

RPTK simulates a voting population instead of polling one. 1.2 million synthetic personas, each grounded in real demographic and behavioral data, argue with each other in multi-round LLM agent swarms. They exchange messages, update beliefs, and persuade each other until the model produces a stable read on how a real electorate would react to a real message.

The first validation run was the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial race. RPTK called it retroactively within 3.2 points of the certified result. It is now running live on Clark Reinhart's Raleigh City Council campaign in the November 2026 cycle.

Research

Summer 2024
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
FRESH on the Horizon Research Fellow
Arsenic Exposure in Latin America
Independent peer-reviewed analysis on contamination pathways, regulatory gaps, and uneven exposure across vulnerable populations. Designed targeted interventions for high-risk communities.
Read the full paper
Jun to Aug 2024
EPA Human Studies Facility, CEMALB
Research Intern
Inflammatory response to controlled ozone and woodsmoke exposure
Analyzed sputum samples from controlled exposure studies. Counted cells, identified inflammatory markers, and evaluated immune-system responses across exposure conditions.

Leadership & community

2025 to present
Policy Analyst & Advocacy Lead
Students Demand Action, UNC Chapel Hill
Campus-wide campaigns on North Carolina domestic violence legislation and SB50 concealed-carry licensing.
2026 to present
Board of Advisors
Water4Good
In the process of distributing around 45,000 free water bottles. Expanding to three college campuses through local business sponsorships.
2025 to present
Assistant Director of Model UN
The Argument Institute
Building a Model UN program inside a nationally recognized speech and debate organization.
2025 to present
President & Founder
Carolina Policy Debate Team
Founded UNC's policy debate program.
2025 to present
Founder
Carolina Breakfast Club
A small group of us. Every Friday we take a UNC administrator out to breakfast.
Since age 7
Volunteer Lead
Tennis Without Borders
Collecting and donating racquets, shoes, and bags distributed to children in Cuba, Rwanda, and Cameroon. Featured by USTA Southern.

Contact

The fastest way to reach me is email.

Open to research collaborations, founding-team conversations, and unreasonable ideas. Based in Chapel Hill, NC.