Luis Voloch: AI and Biology

* Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!* Want to write with us? Send a pitch using this form :)In episode 46 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Luis Voloch.Luis is co-founder of Immunai, a leading AI-led drug discovery company with over 140 employees and over one billion dollar valuation based out of NYC & Tel Aviv. Before Immunai, Luis was Head of Data Science and Machine Learning at ITC and worked at Palantir, where he worked on a variety of ML efforts. He did his studies and research in Math and CS in MIT. He has also led AI, genomics, and software efforts at a number of other companies.Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (02:25) Luis’s math background and getting into AI* (06:35) Luis’s PhD experience, proving theoretical guarantees for recommendation systems* (09:45) Why Luis left his PhD* (15:45) Why Luis is excited about intersection of ML and biology* (18:28) Challenges of applying AI to biology* (22:55) Immunai* (27:03) Challenges in building a biotech (or “tech-bio”) company* (30:30) Research at Immunai, Neural Design for Genetic Perturbation Experiments* (34:43) Interpretability in ML + biology* (36:00) What Luis plans to do next* (37:55) Luis’s advice for grad students / ML people interested in biology* (40:00) Luis’s perspective on the future of AI + biology* (43:10) OutroLinks:* Luis on LinkedIn, Crunchbase* Luis’s article on The convergence of deep neural networks and immunotherapy* Papers* Luis’s thesis* Neural Design for Genetic Perturbation Experiments* SystemMatch: optimizing preclinical drug models to human clinical outcomes via generative latent-space matching Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe