eMalick Njie, Ph.D | Part 1: Starting the Unending Book of Neuroscience

Intro - 00:00:01:

 Welcome to the Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee.

Jon - 00:00:23:

My guest today is eMalick Njie, CEO and founder of Ecotone AI, a company with a vision of AI-designed medicines to cure rare inherited diseases. eMalick is also co-founder of Genetic Leap, formerly known as Genetic Intelligence, a company that is innovating at the cutting edge of AI and RNA genetic medicine to redefine drug development and more quickly address the health needs of millions of people. Before his transition into entrepreneurship and industry, he was a senior scientist at Columbia University, where he discovered multiple C. Elegans genes related to neural achievement and sensation of touch in the laboratory of Nobel Prize Winning Martin Chalfie. eMalick's diverse experience and deep expertise in neuroscience, AI, and biotech entrepreneurship makes his conversation one that founders won't want to miss. Over the next four episodes, we cover a wide range of topics, including eMalick's move from West Africa to the United States, his time at MIT, his experience moving to Florida where he completed his PhD work, the sacrifices he made while founding Genetic Intelligence and Ecotone, and his vision of how to leverage AI to tackle disease. Today, we'll chat with eMalick about his journey from Gambia to Brooklyn and how his unique upbringing fostered a deep passion for science. We'll also hear about his time at Northeastern, a pivotal internship at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and his research at MIT under Alice Ting. We'll also chat about his PhD work at the University of Florida, where he studied neurobiology and neurosciences. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of the Biotech Startups Podcast. eMalick, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

eMalick - 00:01:48:

Thanks, Jon. Great to see you as well.

Jon - 00:01:50:

So we've been really looking forward to this conversation, and I know we've had it on the calendar for a while, but in a kind of traditional The Biotech Startups podcast kind of journey and opening, we'd love to hear about your early upbringing and how it's influenced your business philosophy and leadership style.

eMalick - 00:02:09:

So I was raised not in America. I was raised in the Gambia. It's a country that some people know, but most people don't, because it's very small. It's the smallest country in mainland Africa. I live in Brooklyn now, and I love to say that there's more people in Brooklyn than in the Gambia. There's like 1.6 million people in the Gambia right now. Brooklyn's about 2 million.

Jon - 00:02:30:

Those are some crazy stats.

eMalick - 00:02:31:

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, my early childhood certainly shaped who I am and what I've done. So I was there until 10 years old, then we moved here. But those 10 years were very formational, particularly with my curiosity, what led me to become a scientist. I had parents that were... I mean, I guess we call it hippie over here, but over there we just call it unusual. Love me too.

Jon - 00:03:01: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

eMalick - 00:03:03:

They allowed me to ask basically any question that I wanted to when I was a kid, when I was like four, five, six, seven year-old. There was no boundaries and they protected me from being able to do that. Oftentimes, other adults would tell kids that are asking questions to stop doing that. And my parents would literally tell other adults to not do that around me and my sister. So that gave us a safe space to be inquisitive, to explore curiosity. And I became an annoying kid that was asking about the stars, about the trees, about everything that moves. I had questions about it and I naturally gravitated towards nature. I was wondering why particular birds went to particular trees during this season or that season. And I was not only asking questions, but I was observing. I was starting to make observations and looking for patterns. So that led me to, in a sense, become like a young scientist that continued on when we moved to the States. I went to undergrad as a... Major in the natural sciences. Like first in biology for a few months and quickly to neuroscience. Neuroscience because biology was wonderful but what i learned about studying the brain immediately knew this was sort of like a book that would never have a last page, would be an unending book. So I figured I'll never get bored of this topic.

Jon - 00:04:37:

Yeah, it's interesting because I always think of it like studying the brains, like the final frontier, but this like an endless frontier. Like it's just like so infinitely complex. And something about your upbringing is like I really love is that. Well, there's a couple elements. It's a bummer that adults would try to quell that natural curiosity a child might have. And I've been reading the Rick Rubin, his book on like creativity. And he I think he explicitly says it's like. You need to not lose that. Like that childlike curiosity is something that you need to cherish and nurture because as you get older, you know, people will continue to like kind of kind of like tamp that down. But that kind of like childlike awe and inquisitiveness and curiosity is what creates, you know, whether it be music, food, science, just like any creative business, any creative endeavor, and most things are creative, is super important. So I love hearing that. And also, growing up in Berkeley, kind of, yeah, hippie, maybe unusual upbringing as well. You know what you might call unusual. So you're not alone. You know, I feel like a kindred spirit here. So sorry. So I kind of kind of pulled away for a moment. But you're at Northeastern doing your undergraduate studies. It sounds like you're still have this like, kind of curiosity and you'll you'll never be bored studying, you know, studying the brain. Tell me a little bit more about, you know, focusing down on that. And did you have a wet lab experience in your undergraduate studies?

eMalick - 00:06:23:

Yeah, so the Northeastern experience was great. So first I would have to give credit to Northeastern. I believe they were... My class was the first neuroscience class in the country.

Jon - 00:06:36:

Oh. Whoa. That's like that unusual.

eMalick - 00:06:43:

Yeah. They didn't tell me this because no one told me.

Jon - 00:06:48:

Yeah, they're like, come on over. Just like, come on over. We have a wealth of precedent for this.

eMalick - 00:06:54:

I'm so surprised that I'm in this very esteemed group. It was a few of us only, but I think nine of us. I think those classes are now in the hundreds each year.

Jon - 00:07:03:

Okay, okay.

eMalick - 00:07:05:

So it was just like a really fascinating experience. It was a combination of biology and psychology. That was what the early neuroscience was, which I guess to this day it is fundamental core. But it was just interesting. Every single class that I went to, I was learning something new. And I gravitated towards memory, partly because of me being a child that lived in one place and then moved to another place and having some memories eroded. That drew my curiosity towards what exactly is memory. And that shaped some things down the line. We'll get into that later on. But I was lucky enough to impress one of my professors and she invited me to work in her lab. And that was my first web lab experience. Her name was Wendy Smith, Dr. Wendy Smith. I think she's still there as an emeritus professor. So she started this unusual. Trend going into the world of science as you progress through the different stages, is a bit like Brownie in motion, you know, you're not sure, you know, it's like bouncing balls and you know. But, she started this trend where, every every person that I worked under or was mentored by was either trained by a Nobel Laureate directly, or had another prize themselves.

Jon - 00:08:26:

Oh my God. That's crazy, and just like also, you're like, all right, I'm joining this program. Oh, it's brand new, and surprise like.

eMalick - 00:08:38:

Yeah.

Jon - 00:08:38:

You know all-star lineup here.

eMalick - 00:08:40:

Yeah, and again, I'm just, you know, that curious kid. I did not know any of this. This is all like retrospectively. I was like, oh, and then you realize that, and you're like, oh, then you realize that as well. There's a lot of professors that are very, you know, big shoulders and try to. Take up a lot of space. She was the opposite of that. She was instead very given of space. She was very welcoming. I didn't know what a pipette was. And she took my hand and showed me exactly how to use pipettes and how to use precision and how to measure correctly and how to do repetitions and how also not to get hurt in the laboratory.

Jon - 00:09:15:

Yeah.

eMalick - 00:09:17:

So she was my first introduction into the wet lab and she was excellent. We've stayed friends since then and was a key part of my development.

Jon - 00:09:27:

That's awesome. And also it's like. I always think about, and I love, you know, hearing these stories because there's like these moments of like these inflection point moments, much, much like anyone's journey. And, and it's also serendipitous too. Like you're like, you can only piece together and connect the dots retrospectively, but probably in the moment you're like, oh, this, this looks cool. Why don't we just, why don't we just keep pulling at this string? Um, and always eternally grateful and, you know, for anyone who's willing to kind of handhold you when you, you know, you have like, you're just a young kid and you just don't know better. Um, and they're willing to kind of just like handhold you and walk you through it. So that's, you know, one, I'm jealous of that experience. That's awesome. When I went in, it was kind of, it was kind of like a 300, the movie where there's like, yeah, you're like, here's a bit of lions, just figure it out. And I'm like, okay. But, um, but awesome experience. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, oh, got kicked off the staircase into the baptism of fire. Um, and, and so now it sounds like this, it sounds like you had a great undergraduate lab experience and I know you eventually did an internship in industry at a millennium pharma. How did you like find that opportunity and how did you secure that first internship?

eMalick - 00:10:49:

Yeah, that was also one of the most formative experiences in general. I was looking for an internship. Northeastern is known for these co-op programs, which are basically extended internships. And I was looking for one that was the right fit. And we had, thinking about a chemistry laboratory, I made friends with some of the classmates that were one year above me. And they had interned at Millennium. And I think going back for a second internship. So through that connection, I got an interview in the NIO. I was selected where I was again, like why me? If you choose it for me, like, you know, pretty like amazing company at the time. They're not owned, they got purchased by Takata, which is a much more mature company. But at that point they were, I would say mid-sized company and quite energetic. This was the first time I was exposed to scientists at scale. Like, you know, where you're walking in the hallway and every person you see is basically a professional in this job. And, you know, I was awestruck. It's the, like, I'm not sure when people meet George Clooney. Like, this is my version of that. And I tried to be cool, and I hope I did. But I was awestruck the entire time. And, yeah, Millennium was a great, great experience. One, it showed me that science could be fun. So I will describe that in a second. But it also showed me that I could be successful at science. So Millennium's model was very similar to companies around that time, which is get as large of a compound library of different molecules for the particular targets that you're interested in. So I think at that time they had maybe 100,000 to 200,000 different molecules. And basically the size of your company's valuation is very quoted to have any of these that you have. And then the next thing is just have scientists go test them out. And so I was a junior intern's job was to go ahead and test as many of these molecules for the particular target that we were interested in and was very lucky to find two compounds, I think, they were alphanumeric numbers, but the last three digits was compound 568. And then the second one, 806.

Jon - 00:13:08:

That's a wicked memory, by the way. That's like very specific, wicked memory there.

eMalick - 00:13:13:

This was my true first success in science of doing something where, in a kind of stage where I feel like I'm playing with NBA players and like I got a good shot, you know?

Jon - 00:13:22:

Yeah.

eMalick - 00:13:24:

So those compounds did perform wonderfully. And then we'll take it off my hands to go to give it to people who actually knew what they were doing.

Jon - 00:13:31:

Yeah, here you go. Just like, here you go. Yeah.

eMalick - 00:13:35:

But certainly, I did quite well to become the, I guess, the top intern of that period. And it was really encouraging. It showed me that maybe I can succeed in this space. Another thing that was very important there was I got to sit and have lunch together with other people, but with the CEO and talk to him one-to-one. Yeah, he was a really wonderful person. He came from a chemistry background, so he also went to the academic world and formed a company, which was very enlightening for me to know at that time. And he was human.

Jon - 00:14:08:

Yeah. Sometimes you just need that quick check.

eMalick - 00:14:14:

You just need that, right?

Jon - 00:14:15:

Yeah.

eMalick - 00:14:16:

His human with a lot more zeros in his bank account than me. But nonetheless, though, he was human. And when I had a conversation with him, I left the conversation thinking, I could do this too. Which is really wonderful for, I think I'm 19 or 20 years, all of the time. To have that exposure. And he had created an environment, so that point that I said science being fun, he created an environment where we were having fun. Every Friday, I met him on one of these Fridays where we'd all have these get-togethers outside there in Cambridge, Mass. And there would be different foods that you could try. You could play volleyball. There's tons of drinks. I think I was of age at the time. But in either case, though, people became more relatable as well as there were some idea exchanges. But also it was just like you learn about who, you know, their kids will come about and play as well as like friendships will become deep and in general just fun. And that itself sort of broke a shattered vision that I had of what scientists are. Basically, what I had was what was portrayed on TV. And it just shattered all of that and actually made it much more welcoming and much more trying for me to go into the space.

Jon - 00:15:30:

That's incredible. And I think one, the first thing that obviously by my reactions, it's like leadership, like the biggest companies, still people. And I think for me, now I'm speaking for myself, a lot of like, after having conversation with leaders, so many leaders, it's just like, everybody's just figuring it out. Everyone is dealing with hard stuff. Everyone, you know, and like, you know, everyone's on this journey. And they're, yes, the zeros in the bank account might be different, but still everyone has is the human condition that is like the through line to it all. Like, and I, at Excedr, we make it a point where we just call them like skip levels. But we always try to like have senior leadership talking to whatever level it may be, and keeping and staying kind of in touch and intimately aware of like, what's happening, what's the energy. Because I think as an observer and a kind of history or a historian of business, like when things kind of go awry, when you lose that touch. And you start just like, you start thinking in spreadsheets where it's just like. Okay. Here's how many FTEs we have or what, and we just, and you start managing from a spreadsheet and that you lose that human element. And then that the thought that's not fun anymore. Like, that's like, it's no longer fun.

eMalick - 00:16:58:

It's beginning to automate and you lose people's spirit and their desire to overperform.

Jon - 00:17:02:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And as the saying goes, like, I'm not just a number in a spreadsheet. Right. So it's like, you know, it comes from that. And I guess for, you know, just for my curiosity, the funniness at Millennium, is that was that like an industry specific thing? Is academia just have a very different for you, your lab experience in academia, just very different for you?

eMalick - 00:17:24:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the scale. So I've certainly had lots of fun in academia. The scale is different when I was in the industry with Millennium in particular, because I guess there's the funding amounts and then the amount of budget allocation and also the competitiveness of... So we saw what Millennium was testing on a larger scale with Google a few years later, or I guess until now, to be honest, with the cafeterias, with food, and giving perks to mothers when they have babies, and having parties for just literally as a competitive edge to bring the best talent to their companies compared to the next. While universities will try to do things like that, it's a bit more difficult just because the industry of academia is capped much, particularly in the sciences, by the NIH. There's only so many grants that you can much of it's going to go back to the university directly as indirect costs and so forth. So what Millennium did and how it was competing is hard for universities. So universities, for instance, Columbia versus Yale. Columbia says, we're in New York City. Take that, Yale. And Yale says, we've got a house over here. Take that, Columbia. So there's that level of competition, right?

Jon - 00:18:43:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different vectors.

eMalick - 00:18:45:

Exactly. Versus spending $70,000 to make sure your people are happy over a period of a few months every Friday. So it's just like a different space. And I luckily was able to understand that very early on because I saw both sides at the same time.

Jon - 00:18:59:

Absolutely. Yeah. It's like apples and oranges, it sounds like. And yeah, I think that was I had a similar experience, too. I was like, what are these like Friday socials? Like, usually in my academic lab, I'm like, maybe we're splitting a pizza. Like, maybe. Exactly. You're wrapping up your internship at Millennium and, you know, your undergraduate study. What year was that? And I know you eventually ended up at MIT. So can you talk a little bit about that period for you?

eMalick - 00:19:30:

So the Millennium was my. My last internship, I believe. So when I finished it, because of the conversation with the CEO, instead of continuing to go down industry, which is what basically all of my peers did.

Jon - 00:19:44:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

eMalick - 00:19:45:

They were making good paychecks and I was on par with them, but I decided I wanted to follow this longer vision, hopefully one day having something that, being a laboratory of my own or a company of my own. So I eventually matriculated to MIT. So everything looks good in hindsight, but it actually wasn't the easiest. There was this period of time where I was graduating and I didn't have a job and I had declined taking interviews at Millennium or any of the other places that I had offered to me just because I wanted to pursue the PhD. So I was gonna take this gap year to sort of increase my skillset. And I was in this in-between spot where I thought I was the worst human being in the world. So that did happen. My roommates had to help me out with a rent for a few months, to be honest. I was like 21, 22 years old, something like that, which I thought it was the end of me at the time. So it was bad. But there was one thing that I had in my back pocket, which was there wasn't that many neuroscientists in the world. And I was one of them.

Jon - 00:20:52:

There we go.

eMalick - 00:20:54:

So this attracted the attention of this lady, Dr. Alice Ting, who was this young professor at MIT Chemistry in 1966. So I interviewed with her and she was very young and her lab was about six months old at the time. She had just come from UC Berkeley, to be honest, where you are. So that's the second level. So she had just come from training with Roger Chen, who was to soon receive a Nobel Prize. And Alice was part of the work that helped significantly with that. He actually named her in his Nobel Prize speech directly. And she was just great. You know, we had this conversation in my interview where she said words like awesome and cool and bad. I'm just like, this lady is a backer, backer.

Jon - 00:21:45:

What? I was like, what? Like, this is not what I'm used to.

eMalick - 00:21:49:

Yeah. She just had a really wonderful affect. And she wanted somebody that knew neuroscience because she had this ambition of using some of the chemistries, particularly click chemistry. I think now Susan Bortosi just won a Nobel Prize for that a few years ago. But she was like a very early and forward thinker in using click chemistry to apply labels to neurons so you could visualize in different ways. And this is why she wanted me to come to her lab. So that was a great experience. It was definitely not all positives. MIT is a hard place. It's the high level of give a asterisk, asterisk, like everybody. So for me, it's really where I saw high performing individuals. And I was sort of thrown into that milieu and learned to swim, thankfully. And then also became part of the community, which was really wonderful. And I learned a ton in the laboratory and made some lifelong relationships since then.

Jon - 00:22:56:

That's amazing. And I want to go back just for a moment about the kind of like, Things are never always up and to the right. Screen. But I had a similar experience too. And I don't think we're alone in this. Like, there are these moments when you're just like trying to figure it out. And in a similar fashion, but in this case, it was my now wife, she kind of, I was trying to figure out Excedr. And when, you know, when you have no clients, like when you start the company, you have no clients. Like, okay, I can't pay myself a salary. So, and I thought that was the, like, okay, I'm starting to just bleed my life savings here. Like, how am I going to do this? And it is the generosity of your friends, family, and loved ones who support you. And I'm eternally grateful for that. Just kind of like was able to smooth that like kind of rough period out, which, and then, you know, eventually, you know, finally we were able to kind of get on your own feet. But, you know, I had a similar experience too. And in that moment, for anyone who's listening, it's like, you're not alone, right? It's like, you're not alone. Like these kinds of experiences are universal, especially when you are going out into that frontier. There's bound to be these kind of rough patches.

eMalick - 00:24:13:

The waves get stronger, and some of those down waves are really tough. And yeah, if you're listening to this, it's... It does change.

Jon - 00:24:21:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

eMalick - 00:24:23:

But it's not standing out alone. Yeah.

Jon - 00:24:24:

Exactly. And, you know, this sounds like the MIT lab is like, well, one, it's kind of the smaller nature of the lab almost sounds like a startup within like a larger academic institution where it's kind of like you, I'm going to imagine being, you know, being a small lab, you probably, right, you're doing a lot. You're probably doing a lot, learning a lot. And can you just like talk about what, you know, it sounds like it's one, it's a very high caliber, of course, at MIT, but were there any memorable challenges and triumphs for you during that lab experience?

eMalick - 00:25:00:

Yeah, quite a bit. So I would say the person that I became closest to, just like a heads up, so I came into the lab, I was about six months old. I'm essentially not just coming as like a research technician, I'm coming in to help build the lab up. So like MS, MS machines, like I'm buying and setting up.

Jon - 00:25:21:

Oh, wow. I was like... You got this. These are also very expensive. Don't screw this up.

eMalick - 00:25:28:

Exactly. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. You cut this amount. I'm just like, play cool. I guess play cool. And my social life sort of went to zero because I just put everything I can into this. And luckily, I didn't screw up. But I became close to Mark Holworth, who was the first postdoc for Alice. So essentially, I got hired and then Mike got hired. Mark got hired like a few weeks afterwards, something like that. So we were like sort of the early members of the Ting Lab. And our benches were side by side. And we became like besties even to this day, right? He's now the chair of pharmacology at Cambridge. Sick. But he was good at what he did. He's good, you know. I remember, but his levels were good. So we were working on this particular essay for something with biotin, biotin, abidin, binding to some like a substrate. I can't remember exactly what it was. But very straightforward protocol. That he and I, I think, worked on over a period of time that was significant. And we had this meeting with Alice. And we sort of showed up with empty hands. And it could have been just me. Maybe I should drop Mark out of this. It could have been just me. I couldn't meet her and I completely failed.

Jon - 00:26:51:

Sorry about that.

eMalick - 00:26:53:

And I just thought this was like an impossible task. And then the Christmas holidays came about and I went home and then I came back and we had a meeting with Alice. And then she was presenting all these graphs of how she not just did an essay, but like took it like 100x more than what. And just a space of like three days over Christmas. So humbling.

Jon - 00:27:15:

Yeah, yeah. I think those moments too, it's like... When you see like... Super excellence it's like you're like you're talking about the levels but it's also just like oh like it's kind of aspirational too, you're like you're like okay like, I can push, like I can push it harder. Like be, kind of like the foot on the gas, like we can actually do this. And I, I always think about my co-founder. When I was still in the lab it was a long time ago, but I was a bit kind of like, more of like a ruffian, like in the lab. But, um, my co-founder kind of like whipped me into shape, and really it was just like, no, like here here's what it means to be excellent and I was like, okay, I get it now. It's kind of like you said, being in the NBA. You're like, okay, if I don't pick up the pace here, I'm going to be left behind. It's kind of like a wake-up moment too. And you kind of need that sometimes because I think... Before you join the NBA, you're kind of like in the, whatever, you're in junior varsity or you're in the G League.

eMalick - 00:28:16:

You're very invested in the junior varsity, right?

Jon - 00:28:18:

You're just like, I'm just like draining threes in the G League, dunking on people. You go to the NBA and you're just getting smoked. You're just running on defense every single time. You're just like, I'm gassed. Like you need to do more lifting and you need to run more in off season.

eMalick - 00:28:34:

Exactly. It's like a technique that you need that will change your, your, your pacing that will change your lung capacity that will change sort of your mentals. But there's like a form that needs to be had for you to achieve that. And you need that if you're going to be able to maintain the space.

Jon - 00:28:51:

Right. And, you know, I can imagine. And by the way, that description of Alice. That like the kind of that sink or swim kind of go hard. That's super Berkeley too. Like super Berkeley, like there's Berkeley is not known for handholding in a lot of ways. So I can imagine I'm just, you know, I wasn't there, but I can imagine it's kind of like this, it's a high pace singer. So I'm like, come along as go kind of energy. So that's really fascinating. And also one, having a mentor, like kind of being so close on the lab bench is also amazing because I think those, it almost like serendipity, right? Like early hires, you just happen to be next to a rock star and you can kind of like learn via osmosis. So that was very cool too. So as you know, you're, you know, you're now wrapping up your time at MIT. When did you know it was time to, you know, one, I know you ended up at university of Florida and end up pursuing your graduate studies.

eMalick - 00:29:50:

Yeah, absolutely. So this is a little bit contentious because I'll just be transparent with this. I left the lab. And also didn't matriculate to MIT for a very specific reason. I'm an animal lover. Right. When I grew up in the Gambia with dogs and maybe a cat or two, something like that. And I guess I wasn't okay with... With sacrificing animals for lab research at the time. I knew I was going to at some point in the future, but I needed to let myself mentally develop to that stage. And I was very self-aware of myself at the time. So I was in the lab for about a year and a half. Remember, Alice wanted me in the lab because I'm neuroscience background. But that, it wasn't just about advice. It was especially, the experiments were working in silico, also in silico, in vitro enough that we wanted to start doing it on actual animals. And guess who's the neuroscientist in the room? That would be me. So I was tasked with, me and Mark, to be honest, but then it fell a lot on me. So I did the experiments for a bit, but I just wasn't okay with it. And this led to one of maybe the toughest times, again, questioning myself. I had a meeting with her where she, you know, she's very straightforward as a person. She's like, how do you expect to become a full neuroscientist, like a PhD, if you don't want to sacrifice live animals? So I think I absorbed that, but stuck to my guns. You know, sure that I could do it. I did sacrifice a bunch of mice, but then I just wasn't ready for it. So I wrote a resignation letter, which also was called, How Do You Lose Your Recommendation Letter to MIT 101?

Jon - 00:31:45:

That is hilarious. Yes. Yes.

eMalick - 00:31:49:

Right. But I had absolutely no regrets then, and I don't now. It's one of the proudest decisions I've ever done. I knew what I was about. I knew what I hopefully could be able to do despite losing the support of somebody that was very important to me. Mark was supporting me the entire time, which was incredibly helpful. So that was sort of the ending of a chapter. And also, I really wanted to go study full-on neuroscience, not in a chemistry lab, but in an actual neuroscience lab. And was starting to learn about Eric Kendall's work at Columbia. I became more interested in that, as well as another professor that was at Johns Hopkins. It was this hot young professor called David Bruchelt. And I learned that David was going to be moving to University of Florida. I was sort of to think maybe University of Florida could be where I'd end up at because his work was super interesting. Just to continue on with the Brownian motion, he was at Johns Hopkins working in a team that won a Nobel Prize for prions.

Jon - 00:32:57:

Let's go. Let's go.

eMalick - 00:33:00:

So protein template. But he was like a trained in the classical diseases and neuroscience, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS. And to go back from earlier, I said I was curious about memory when I was an undergrad. I saw this opportunity to go learn more about memory with him at Florida if things worked out. So I had this really difficult period of leaving MIT, just sticking to my principles. And if Alice ever sees this, I always just have to thank her for the wonderful experience that we had together. It was a learning experience for all of us. And also to Mark. Mark was just so wonderful. I was in Cambridge last summer around this time, and we got to have a really wonderful time seeing the university and having fish and chips and all that good stuff.

Jon - 00:33:47:

Amazing.

eMalick - 00:33:48:

But I was destined to be in a full-on neuroscience laboratory. And through luck of the draw, it worked out that I ended up at University of Florida in David's lab. I had a co-mentor, Wolfgang Streit, who was also great. But David was sort of... It was the start of a new chapter where I full-on went into my curiosity in neuroscience.

Jon - 00:34:10:

That's really cool. And, you know, look. I, and again, I'm speaking for me now, going against that, like, kind of like that principle and that gut feel. I find anytime I kind of like have made that sacrifice, I ultimately regret it where I'm like, and everyone has different principles. So I'm not trying to espouse anyone has to believe in what I believe in. When you finally click and you do the work that is aligned with your principles, that's when magic happens. Every day you get out of bed and you're pumped versus you get out of bed and you're just dreading what you're doing. Again, everyone has their own principles and I'm not going to tell anyone to believe in any one thing or the others. That's totally your prerogative, but I completely respect it. I completely respect it. When I was at Berkeley, I did a lot of talks work. Talks a lot is a lot of it's in vivo um so you know it's it's it's hard it really is hard and and then also interestingly enough when i i did a little bit of work for method the the soap company that's at target this is back when they were pre-target like they were um that their startup method was a startup at one point in time um and their whole thing and a lot of like cpg cosmetics that whole industry a lot some of them don't do this but a lot of them do um is they they, basically, they created like unique in vitro assays, to avoid the need to do in vivo studies. And it got blessed by the fda and whatnot. Um, so anyways, I'm just saying this that there are, and especially this was a long time ago so things have gone way better, um, and more sophisticated, but you know, had a similar struggle to doing a lot of talks work at Berkeley.

eMalick - 00:35:54:

Yeah, it's something that, something folks don't really often talk about within the sciences or biological sciences. Um, so, but, I, I'm always happy to to share my experience and like I because, I know i'm not alone in it. And I, you know, of course grew to do the experiments, that were needed to become a PhD so to speak many mice went down, um.

Jon - 00:36:13:

Yeah.

eMalick - 00:36:13:

But this is part of a growing process right.

Jon - 00:36:16:

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, you're not, again, you're not alone. I had a similar experience too.

Intro/Outro - 00:36:23:

That's all for this episode of the Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with eMalick Njie. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening. And we look forward to having you join us again for part two of our conversation with eMalick. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for the Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.