October 10, 2024

🧬eMalick Njie, Ph.D - Ecotone - Part 2 | What is Memory? | Playing “Stump the Professor” | Lab Coat Labs vs Sandals Labs | Wanting to Help People at Scale

55 minutes

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Part 2 of 4: Jon Chee hosts our latest guest, eMalick Njie, CEO of Ecotone AI, a healthcare company that is using AI to find cures for inherited diseases. eMalick is an experienced scientist and entrepreneur who has focused on blending his expertise in neuroscience with his knowledge of AI.
In addition to founding two AI companies, Ecotone and Genetic Intelligence, eMalick received his PhD in Neurobiology and Neuroscience from the University of Florida. His extensive and diverse experience from being a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia university to being the CEO of the AI thinktank NeuroStorm makes our conversation with him one you won’t want to miss.
Join us this week to hear about:

Answering the question “What is memory?”
How playing “Stump the Professor” led eMalick to Columbia
Studying C Eligans in a sandals-wearing lab
The wide applicable uses for AI and ML in research
Wanting to help people at scale

Please enjoy Jon’s conversation with Dr. eMalick Njie!
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Find Our Guest, Barbara Alcaraz Silva, at these links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emalick-njie-ph-d-ab82348/ https://ecotone.ai/
Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joncheehttps://www.excedr.com
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Enriched Notes:

Topics Mentioned:Alzheimer’s Disease: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-alzheimers Neprilysin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329843/ Amyloid Plaques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloid_plaques CAR T Therapy: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/treatment-types/immunotherapy/car-t-cell1.html C Elegans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans Amyloid Hypothesis for Alzheimer’s https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/alzheimers-new-study-supports-amyloid-hypothesis-suggests-alternate-treatment AlexNet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlexNet Biotech Startup Support: https://www.excedr.com/resources-category/biotech-startup-support
People Mentioned:Dr. Wolfgang Streit: https://neuroscience.ufl.edu/profile/streit-wolfgang/ Dr. David Borchelt https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-borchelt-42474623/ Martin Chalfie https://chalfielab.biology.columbia.edu/people/martin-chalfie
Timestamps:00:28 Intro01:52 Moving to Florida and dealing with massive shifts in weather and culture04:48 Experience working to answer the questions, “What is memory,” 06:21 Studying the other extreme edge of memory, Alzheimer’s disease10:43 Investigating possible plaque busting proteins13:43 Benefits of having more freedom and other differences between MIT and Borchelt's Lab16:25 Playing “Stump The Professor” with Martin Chalfie 20:06 Getting both invited and challenged to write a proposal to study at Columbia25:47 Learning to love the constant surprises and level of people in New York29:46 Going from a lab coat lab to a sandals lab to study C Eligans at Columbia 34:25 Researching neurons responsible for touch sensitivity in C Eligans38:30 Martin Chalfie’s mentorship brilliant mentorship style allowing his students to grow43:43 How a data deluge stemming from one of his experiments started his AI/ML journey 49:53 Choosing the entrepreneurship path and wanting to help people at scale54:27 OutroThe Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

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