Dyllan Muller: A Gentleman and a Scholar

By Madi Bixler ’14

Dyllan Muller, LCA Class of 2016, says he’s been blessed with opportunities. It wasn’t always easy, but he has certainly made the most of them. Despite his achievements, though, Dyllan remains a humble young man, dedicated to his faith and to service.

He was born in Roodepoort, in northeastern South Africa, and his mother — a pharmacist — nurtured Dyllan’s interest in science by performing experiments with him on weekends. He entered LCA in sixth grade, and it was here that the teenager blossomed in chemistry. In the Upper School, Mr. Branch, his AP Chemistry teacher, was instrumental in his decision to pursue a career in the field.

“I’ve had the pleasure of teaching many extremely bright and motivated students,” says Mr. Branch, “but Dyllan Muller would be at the top of my list. He is the most honest and sincere young man I’ve ever met. He is extremely humble. I love his drive and his love for chemistry, both of which made him a joy to teach.”

Mr. Branch worked closely with Dyllan in many class labs and his advisory group, and helped him experiment with an idea that would become the premise of the young man’s start-up company, called No-dium (rhymes with sodium). What sparked the idea was this: “After having a particularly salty soup for dinner,” Dyllan says, “I began to wonder if there was a way to remove sodium from food chemically, and when I asked Mr. Branch about it, he gave me a few things to experiment with at home.”

Dyllan went on to Tulane University, in New Orleans, because of its reputation for strong research in chemistry and chemical engineering, the availability of financial aid for international students, and its required service courses. At LCA, Dyllan had been heavily involved in the Legacy Service Organization (LSO), which is when he discovered his passion for people and giving back. In his major service project at Tulane, he helped an organization called Santosha Village create jobs for homeless individuals, and worked closely with the founder, Haiyan Khan, to craft business plans that would enable the men and women to earn a living.

Academics and service were never a problem; the tough part was that having attended a private Christian school his whole life, Dyllan initially struggled to find a friend group at Tulane, recently cited as the number one party school in America. After he researched Christian ministries, he joined the Bridge College Ministry, and eventually held a leadership position in the club on campus.

Like many other Christian students, Dyllan struggled with finding a balance with being in the world but not of the world. It was challenging, he said, to find people who shared his values. When he became a resident advisor (RA), he was surprised at how “many students at Tulane thought of Christianity as hateful and very strict,” he says. “I wanted to show my residents a true picture of Christianity by example and I believe I showed them how loving Christianity really is.” As he fostered connections with them, his residents began to trust him. They all knew he was a Christian, and this led to witnessing opportunities. “I even got to take a resident to church who was interested in joining me,” he says.

Dyllan believes that his relationship with the Lord has strengthened, and he attributes much of that to the biblical foundation Legacy gave him. “Legacy taught me how to critically analyze worldviews and biblical texts,” he says. “I often used On Guard, by William Lane Craig, a book we studied in Mr. Littleton’s class, among other resources from Legacy’s Apologetics and Worldview courses.”

He credits Legacy’s curriculum with preparing him for the rigors of Tulane. He recalled Mrs. Bixler’s simple but important advice to “read the syllabus!” and, he says, Legacy’s math and science courses helped him succeed in college calculus. “I was able to accomplish my dual degree in four years because of the many AP courses LCA offered,” he says. “When I entered college, I had already completed 16 credit hours.”

At Tulane, Dyllan wanted to continue the sodium experiments he had begun under the coaching of Mr. Branch. He joined the Novel Tech Challenge, hosted by the university, performed many tests, and with a fellow classmate won a $2,500 prize. “We discovered opportunities where No-dium could have pharmaceutical promise in combating

heart failure, in addition to simply removing salt from food,” says Dyllan. “Our start-up project was accepted into the Delta Regional Authority’s I-Fund program.” He and his partner now have applied for patents for their work.

Although at Tulane he worked in organic chemistry and stem-cell research labs, Dyllan felt that he was missing out on directly helping consumers. He applied for Unilever’s internship program because with the fast-moving company, he’d be serving people. There he worked on finding natural ingredients for cosmetics and skincare, creating a virtual process for testing for chemicals that would reduce extensive lab screening. In 2020, Dyllan graduated from Tulane with a BSE in chemical engineering and a BSM in management, with a minor in finance and a specialization in entrepreneurship. He immediately went to work full time at Unilever.

“After a while,” he says, “I wanted to explore the intersection between science and business more fully, as this was an interest of mine in college.” He applied to Harvard Business School and was accepted into its deferred MBA program, which allows students to acquire industry experience for two to four years before entering the university. He says he’ll begin the MBA program in 2022 and plans to apply to Harvard’s master’s in biotechnology program as well.

In the next two years, Dyllan will work with Unilever and continue furthering No-dium. “I hope to obtain more grants for patents, perform more research and development, do more pitch competitions virtually, and solidify No-dium’s intellectual property strategy,” he says.

Madi Bixler (’14) graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with a BS in supply chain management. She is a product specialist at Interstate Batteries and is pursuing her master’s at UTD.