Noam Solomon - Immunai - Part 1

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 Noam Solomon, CEO and co-founder at Immunai, a pioneering biotech company that is comprehensively mapping and reprogramming the immune system with single-cell biology and AI to power new therapeutic discoveries, accelerate drug development, and improve patient outcomes. Prior to co-founding Immunai, Noam had a career in both industry and academia. Noam has a double PhD in math and computer science and served as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and Harvard. Noam also worked as an algorithms developer, consultant, and head of data science in several high-tech companies in Israel. Noam's extensive background in math, computer science, AI, and machine learning gives him a unique depth of experience that founders can learn from. Over the next four episodes, we cover a wide range of topics, including Noam's childhood growing up in Israel, his pursuit of a college degree at age 14, his postdoc positions in math and computer science at Harvard and MIT, the complexities of AI and ML, his experience moving to the United States, and what he's learned from founding Immunai. Today, we'll chat about Noam's early years, exploring how his upbringing shaped his high standards and competitive spirit, leading him to excel in the world of academia. We'll also discuss his unique experience of starting university at the age of 14, his early love for mathematics, and his pursuit of multiple PhDs in math and computer science, underscoring the importance of resilience, critical thinking, and creativity needed as an entrepreneur. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. Noam, it's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Noam - 00:01:45: Definitely. And thanks for inviting me.

Jon - 00:01:48: Yeah, appreciate the time. So when we're doing our homework. Before every interview, you know, we always like try to find. What is the source and the spark for leaders like yourself? And we always find ourselves coming back to the early days and the upbringing of your experience. So can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how it's formed and maybe perhaps influenced your business philosophy and leadership style?

Noam - 00:02:15: Yeah, definitely. I'll try. I mean, I just wonder how far Blackberry should go, but maybe to my very early childhood. So I was born and raised in Israel. And I come from family like an Israelis whose entire family two generations before immigrated. In my case from Europe. And it was after World War II. So both my grandfathers had, you know, they were hardworking people. My very influential grandfather was a carpenter. He was a very tough person, and he made sure that we'll all also be tough and be ready for whatever can come, so. It was about not being spoiled with food or with anything that you have to do. It was about if you get 99 out of 100, why did you get this for 100? So I grew up with very high standards and luckily my parents kind of slightly corrected for this. They were a bit more accommodating. But I definitely had a very high standard upbringing and I also have an identical twin brother. So we grew up together. And so this also brings some competitive side.

Jon - 00:03:35: Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned that your grandfather being a carpenter and obviously now you're in science, mathematics, STEM. Did you grow up in a household where STEM was present or was this something that, you know, maybe you found inspiration, you know, on your own independently, whether it be in your early schooling or can you talk a little bit about that?

Noam - 00:03:59: Yeah, so interestingly, the same grandfather really pushed all of his children and grandchildren to go into STEM. So despite not having a scientific or engineering background, he thought that if you are highly educated, you're going to have easier lives. So this was definitely something of our upbringing. My parents, my mother was a teacher, my father worked in electronics, so he did exist in the house, but there wasn't any pressure from my parents to kind of become a scientist or an engineer. From my grandfather, it did come.

Jon - 00:04:36: Yeah, I know the drill. My household was the same. So my parents, I think it was probably, and now I'm theorizing, but my late grandmother was very much just like. You better get that hundred. I'm going to kick your butt if you don't and have this like STEM kind of like pressure. And my father's an engineer and my mother's in finance. But I think they were trying to shield me from the pressure. Do whatever you want, you know, just be a good upstanding human being, just be a good person. But for some reason I ended up in STEM anyways. And so my, my grandmother's just like, yes, yes, it worked on the master plan all worked all along. Um, but that's amazing. And so. As you're progressing through your early schooling, can you talk a little bit about your track to your undergraduate studies and what you ultimately chose to focus on?

Noam - 00:05:33: Yeah, I admit that I really hated school. I was good in math and I really liked solving puzzles and being creative, and so I found an early path. So my mother allowed me not to go to school if I would do other, you know, stuff that was interesting. And so I ended up going to university when I was 14 as a means to not go to school. So I started my bachelor's degree when I was 15 and I studied mathematical science. So this is how I started.

Jon - 00:06:04: This sounds like a cheat code or maybe it was a kind of a Jedi mind trick by your mom. Like, you don't like school. How about some school? Like Yoda, just like this cast of the spell.

Noam - 00:06:19: You did say three years of my life. So.

Jon - 00:06:22: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Noam - 00:06:24: I'll do it.

Jon - 00:06:26: So can you talk a little about that? That's really fascinating. What was it like as a 14-year-old, you know, doing undergraduate studies? Like, you know, for me, you know, I would have just completely been just like overwhelmed. So that seems like a lot. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

Noam - 00:06:41: I was super attracted to math because I really loved going into questions I didn't know exactly how to solve. Figuring out new ways and being creative with solutions. And when I was even before 14, I went to some extracurricular activities for gifted students. And I still remember there was a problem that was posed to us and I can tell you about it. It wasn't like very sophisticated, but I think thinking about this kind of changed my perception about like, I wanted to be a mathematician growing up. It was an introduction to set theory and you know, sets are objects that contain elements. And, um... There is a question like what really is a set and whether you can think about the sets of all sets or the sets of all things. And there is a paradox, which is, let's assume we can define the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as an element.

Jon - 00:07:46: Interesting, okay. 

Noam - 00:07:48: And then the question was, would that set contain itself? So it's a very... It's a tricky question.

Jon - 00:07:56: I can feel my brain just like expanding. I love this because I myself, and I'm not an expert in math, but I love hearing people who are. And the way you're explaining it, it's like I can feel like exactly kind of what you described, enjoying puzzles. It feels like a puzzle.

Noam - 00:08:12: It is. When you're 11 or 12 and you're hearing this puzzle, you're trying to figure it out, you understand that you can solve it because... Such a set could not exist. And, you know, thinking about this when I was, again, at these ages. Really, it takes you on a journey because you're trying to figure it out, you can't figure it out, and then you realize that this was a major problem in logic in the 20th century. And after thinking about this question and similar questions, I said, wow, that's amazing. You can really spend your time doing this and then figuring things out. And I want to do more of this. And this is actually what led me to study math as a 14, 15-year-old student. And I didn't miss high school. I was so happy to go and study in university math and then computer science. If you ask me, would I let my child go and do the same? Maybe it's not the ideal recipe for life, but it was fun at the time.

Jon - 00:09:16: Yeah, absolutely. I think about experiences like, you know, it's kind of the thing where it's like, I wouldn't change my experience. But perhaps, you know, my future children, I'll do it a little bit differently. And that's okay, too. And so, you know, you're young in your undergraduate studies. Was there anyone or, you know, mentors or professors that were particularly, like, you know, took you under their wing or inspirational for you?

Noam - 00:09:42: Yeah, there were a few. So this journey that takes young high school or even middle school students, or, you know, I'm just bringing them to the university. There are people that train you to do it. I think that there was one professor in the university who was very charismatic and inspirational. And when I took his class, which is called Discrete Mathematics. I was even more inspired to become a mathematician. You know, I can mention his name. It was many years ago. And this person educated, I think, generations of people that found him inspiring. It also allowed me to understand the power of education. If you can really inspire people to, not about the material, but about like inspiring them to be curious about the questions that you are studying or they would study. They're going to go and figure out things for themselves. So this was like many years back. You know, over the years there were quite a few people that I found inspiring, they helped me kind of pave my path in the scientific community.

Jon - 00:10:55: That's amazing. Yeah. I've, I've always thought about that too, about like educators that just. Are basically in retrospect, you can kind of connect the dots, but they're just like these inflection points in your journey. And really like they teach you how to fish instead of giving you a fish, they teach you how to fish and that critical thinking, like think how to think for yourself. And then you, from there, you're off to the races. For me, it was like, it was in high school, like AP biology. So for me, I'm not a math person, but I am like a visual learner. So like biology for me, I can like, and also like, I can just like see it in my, in my mind. And so I was like, Oh, this could actually, this actually works for me. And I can actually excel at this versus I was always like struggling with math. So it's interesting to hear kind of how these educators can create that spark and really inspire and teach generations of students like yourself. So you're wrapping up your undergraduate, you know, studies, did you know that you were going to pursue your, your graduate studies was like, did you have like academic inspirations to be like, you know, potentially a professor kind of talk about how you thought about your next step there? 

Noam - 00:12:04: Yeah, for sure. You know, I grew up in Israel, and when you're 18 or 19, you go to the army. So I was drafted to the army, luckily because of my education, I was also kind of sent to be a software engineer in the army, but. As I told you, when I was 12 or 13, I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a mathematician when I grew up. And every year reinforced this for me. And the bachelor's degree, it was an amazing experience. By the way, I still think that everybody that is interested in math, even if they don't want to be a mathematician, should study math or physics because the... Principles and foundations, also critical thinking, which gives you the tools. That are really serving me to this day. I still think of myself as a mathematician before other things. And the first degree is... It's so important because it's like going to the mall and you do a lot of shopping. So you study a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you figure out what you are better at and what you are maybe more inspired by. And again, I sound like such a nerd that I am, but to me, mathematics is one of the most beautiful things out there.

Jon - 00:13:18: Absolutely. And we're all nerds here. So you're in good company. The water is warm. And I absolutely think, at least when I was younger. At first, I was like... What am I going to do with all this information? But now that I think about it, kind of the systems thinking and the critical thinking are just invaluable skill sets that you can just apply to whatever the discipline may be, whether it be, you know, strictly math or, you know, something else like in business, which is like this multivariate problem. And you also let's throw in human emotions like into that. And that's even like, okay, how do I handle this? It is kind of for me, as I think about the kind of the STEM studies. It gives you a tool set that enables you to be effective. That's amazing. And you mentioned that when you were in the Army, you said you were doing software engineering?

Noam - 00:14:12: Yeah.

Jon - 00:14:12: Was that your first stab at software engineering? Because you were doing pure math, if I'm not mistaken, in your undergraduate, but now you're doing software. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Noam - 00:14:22: Yeah. So also early on, I started writing software. And in fact, the first two years in university, I did only study pure math, but then I had computer science as a second major. So I did write code before going to the Army. I was definitely much more passionate about the mathematics. And even in the computer science, I was very driven to the theoretical computer science elements, to things like the Turing machine, which is the theoretical model for later computers. But even as 15 or 16 years old, I knew at some point I had to make a living, and so it would come very handy to write code. And it definitely came in handy in the army, and without going into the details, I wasn't an amazing soldier, to be honest. It was an interesting experience, and I think some things you understand later in life. Probably today I would have been a better soldier, but at the time it was very... I found the discipline was needed for the army, a little bit too restrictive for my liking.

Jon - 00:15:35: Absolutely.

Noam - 00:15:36: It changed a lot, though.

Jon - 00:15:38: Yep, totally. And I can see this kind of like you've got your math side, you've got the software side. How did you end up choosing to go pursue your PhD in what I assume is pure math? 

Noam - 00:15:50: It was a very easy decision. It was the natural decision. I was... I ended up actually doing two PhDs, as I think you know, and one was in pure math and the other was in tropical science, and I was interested in both. Probably if I hadn't become an entrepreneur, I would probably have done even a third one in physics. But the pure math degree was, actually the story is the following story. When I was maybe 15, maybe 16, I read a book by Simon Singh about Fermat's Last Theorem. It is a remarkable story of a French mathematician 500 years ago or 450 years ago that was back in the day mathematicians, it wasn't the profession, it was a hobby. So he was in law, maybe a lawyer, maybe a judge, I don't remember now. And he was a brilliant mathematician. It was dealing with Fermat's Theorem and it came up with a very interesting observation that I'm not going to go into the details, but it was called the Fermat's Last Theorem. What was remarkable and made generations of mathematicians obsessed over is that he wrote a memoir or a book, and in one of the footnotes of one of the pages, he wrote, I have a very simple proof for this statement, but I don't have enough room on this page. And then for hundreds of years, mathematicians tried to prove what he stated, what he claimed. And then in, I think 1993 or 1994, a mathematician by the name of Andrew Wiles, and then later his former PhD student, Richard Taylor, they proved this theory. And I think if I'm not mistaken, Wells won the Fields Medal for, which is the Nobel Prize for mathematicians. And this thing really inspired me. So I wanted to kind of study more about this and to become more of an expert. I ended up doing a PhD in an area of pure math called number theory, more precisely arithmetic geometry. So this was kind of started early on. It was very interesting, very abstract, very demanding, and it was a very important chapter in my life.

Jon - 00:18:14: So I want to double click. You mentioned that it was demanding. Can you describe the grad school experience? Was it just like... Undergrad was like here and then grad school was like, whoop, bam, like off the chart, like out of the camera, like hard.

Noam - 00:18:27: Yeah, I'll tell you about the experience. It wasn't only harder, which it was, but it was an experience that is much more, you felt the solitude. So I think doing a PhD in pure math, it's an invitation to be a lone wolf, so to speak. So I did my first degree in methodical science, in order to jump into arithmetic geometry, there is a lot of prerequisite that are missing. So I think the first year or year and a half, I just had to complete knowledge I didn't have. And the question that I was studying was very, not only challenging to solve, but actually challenging to penetrate. So you have to spend a lot of time alone, without any, you know, in bachelor's degree, you have tests every semester, you can excel, but in research, you have to grind and you have to walk alone day after day, week after week, month after month. Eventually it becomes a very fulfilling experience that you're able to conquer things that are more demanding, but I think that the material is harder, you know, you're more alone and you need to build resilience. And you need to build the confidence that you can achieve a goal, even if you don't know where you're going. I think that the same skill that I had to build back then, were very useful in being an entrepreneur and a CEO of this startup.

Jon - 00:19:58: I mean, I was just going to say that. I was like. It sounds like this experience of solitude. It's almost like meditation, almost, where you're just trying to will something when there's an uncertainty to it. And that's exactly kind of like, particularly in the early days of entrepreneurship too, when it's just like a small founding team and you have this massive problem that you're trying to tackle that hasn't been solved yet. It sounds just like that experience in grad school. But also at the same time, that uncertainty is where opportunity lies. And I think sometimes when I speak to grad students who are contemplating... Entrepreneurship, they almost are like, how am I going to utilize this, this PhD or whatever it may be. But I'm like, all of that is very applicable to entrepreneurship. It is very much like you will be able to like, that's what you need to thrive is to be able to thrive in the uncertainty. And particularly in the early days, like run through those walls by yourself to get this thing from zero to one. Very interesting. And so you're now starting to wrap up the kind of the solitude of your first PhD in math. What was up next for you?

Noam - 00:21:08: So I think. Halfway through the PhD, I knew I was going to make it, to succeed. But I also really realized that there are certain... Truths that were true for my 12 year old that were not true anymore for my 24 year old. And that I need to figure out what I wanted to do next, and it wasn't to just continue. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I actually started going first academically to, you know, into economics, different types of disciplines to kind of study a little bit of here and there. So I spent still a few more years doing that. I did a postdoc to further my understanding. It was very difficult for me to be candid with you, to let go of my childhood dream. So there is something that people don't realize that even after having a PhD or even after being in postdoc, especially for mathematicians, calling yourself a mathematician, it's only after you reach some milestones that you need to... It's like writing a script for a movie that doesn't make you a writer. You need to have a successful movie first. And So it was difficult for me to admit. That the solitude of being a pure mathematician and writing research Improving theories that take years to prove was not true for me anymore. You know, I needed the social interactions. I needed... To bounce ideas off of different people. And I did the work that they do to matter. The number of people in the world that could even, what I was working on was very small. It was a very small community. And I wanted to communicate, I wanted to kind of get out of this cage that I created for myself. So it took me a few more years to realize it, but again, what I ended up doing was counterintuitive because I ended up doing another PhD.

Jon - 00:23:09: Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. Was this the era when you decided to go get your PhD for your computer science focus, right?

Noam - 00:23:18: Yeah, so there was an interim stage where I actually started engaging in other disciplines, ecology, philosophy, economics, and I ended up, you know, really spending time reading and interacting with people. But someday I went to this conference or workshop and there was a researcher that ended up being my second PhD advisor. He gave the talk that I found very inspiring. And it was a New Era in Combinatorial Geometry. This was the title of the talk. And the thing that I found really fascinating was that there was a new discipline. And a new theory that was proved by building a bridge between seemingly two unconnected areas in mathematics. And it was really an area that was, or a field that was between math and computer science. And i just went and talked to this professor his name is michael is one of the you know biggest experts in computational geometry. And. We started talking and he said, why don't you do another PhD? And I said, okay, something like that. And I ended up doing another PhD, which is a bit crazy, I have to say, but it was very logical to my old self.

Jon - 00:24:45: Yeah, it's like serendipity almost. The universe will just kind of like pull you in different ways. And was this grad school experience a solitude one or was it more of collaborative? And we're, you know, I don't have experience in computer science. Is computer science grad studies a little bit more kind of social and more collaborative in that nature?

Noam - 00:25:03: It's a very good question. I think that it really depends on the field and the area that you go and study and specialize in. But for me, it was definitely a much more collaborative experience. And I was also a little bit older, a little bit more mature, and I also had other activities as I was doing the second PhD. So I worked as a lecturer in the university and a few colleges. I moonlighted in a few high-tech companies. So I really went out there and tried to enrich myself with other things except for doing the PhD. And because I already had the first one, I think it was easier for me than people are doing for the first time. So I enjoyed the second one much, much better.

Jon - 00:25:47: Very cool. And there's so many directions I want to go with this too. And I love hearing that you're, you know, you're like studying philosophy, you're doing computer science. And I used to beat myself up because, well one. I see my colleagues who are like super focused and it's the best at a given field. And I was never that. I was more of like, I'd like to think I'm decent, like in a lot of things and various interests. And so for me as well, when I was, when I was doing, you know, my biology studies at Berkeley, I also was studying philosophy as well. And I always was like, my friends were like, you're what? Like, those are like so different. But I think about those experiences now and that breadth of experience is really informative. And like, through philosophy, learning about rhetoric and persuasion, and just like logic, like logic, like philosophy is like a lot of logic. I was like, I can do logic. For some reason, I can't do math. I don't know why. But it ends up, I was like, ah, like this works for me. And figuring out ways that you can get pieces together on the entrepreneurial journey, I think is invaluable. And so you're basically like a sponge. It seems like you're just like soaking up skill sets, leveling up across the board. And can you just like talk briefly a little bit about like those like skill sets that you were on this second PhD, the skill sets that you were acquiring and internalizing?

Noam - 00:27:10: I'll try, but maybe I'll say another thing that is related to first, in this moment where I went to this lecture that Yves Chérir gave with the fancy title of the new era in material geometry. There was a specific result by two mathematicians. One of them was in Caltech and the other in MIT that I ended up doing my postdoc fellowship with the guy from MIT. So I ended up kind of closing the circle and kind of finishing my latest postdoc back in math. So I kind of closed the circle and I actually ended up being in math. And if I hadn't found that, Immunai, that we'll talk about probably soon, I was already thinking of continuing and becoming faculty in some place doing math. So for me, this shopping of ideas and disciplines kind of brought me back home and feeling that for me math was a very major part of who I am and what I find really interesting. In terms of skill sets and what I picked up through my studying economics, studying philosophy, studying psychology, going and working in startups and software and machine learning data science, I think I found the world. And in particular, I realized that there are a lot of very small people that are working in high-tech companies and a lot of very interesting initiatives outside academia. And I started realizing that you get amazing skills, critical thinking, creativity, founders of knowledge in academia. But if you want to make a real impact on the world, there is a lot you can do outside academia. And I would even say you have to leave academia and go out there. And I think... Somewhere in 2016, I already decided I was going to do something of my own. And this was two years or two and a half years before founding Immunai. And I wouldn't have found it by just staying on in academia and only concentrating on my PhD in photo.

Jon - 00:29:25: Absolutely. And I say this internally at Excedr all the time, that you can find inspiration everywhere. So growing up, I was. And now I'm going to date myself, but, you know, I was very into the music scene. I still see live music all the time. And so Excedr, we're in biotech equipment leasing. Different world in the music industry. But being in the music industry in my early days, learned so much about what it, what like, there's like experts and just creatives and just inspirational figures there. And the way they do things, we find ways to impart and bring it over to Excedr and what we do, even though they're super different and they make a huge impact. So I love that. Like that's like a beautiful thing to just kind of like see what's out there. 

Outro - 00:30:16: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with Noam Solomon. 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 Noam. 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.