 The longevity industry is booming right now. Millions of dollars of investment in donations are pouring into startups, research labs and organizations that are seeking to solve the problem of human aging. And this means that more and more people are joining the fight, both because of the positive impact they can make on the world and because there's potentially a lot of money to be made. But do you need a background in medicine or biology to work in longevity science? The answer is no. Plenty of well-known people come from what might be considered non-traditional backgrounds and work in life extension. We'll feature seven of them in this video. Nathan Chang, the program director of the On Deck Longevity Biotech Fellowship, recently highlighted some examples of leaders and founders working on aging that come from various backgrounds. Historically speaking, some of the biggest advances in biology were catalyzed by those outside the field. Next up and number seven on our list is Jonas Sinek, who received his PhD in mathematics at the University of Illinois where he focused on number theory and hyperbolic geometry. He was formerly head of data science at BioAge Labs before he became the CEO of Y Combinator startup Equator Therapeutics. Next is Reason, who has advanced degrees in space physics and astrophysics and writes about longevity science at his blog fightaging.org. The aging began as a science and advocacy blog in 2004, an outgrowth of a similar initiative called the Longevity Meme. In 2018, he founded Repair Biotechnologies alongside Bill Sherman, who also does not come from the traditional biology background. The company is working to develop a gene therapy to degrade cholesterol plaques in order to treat atherosclerosis. Number five is Laura Deming. In 2011, at the age of 17, this teal fellow founded the first longevity focused venture fund. Although Laura did some sea elegans biology work in the lab of Cynthia Kenyon when she was 14, she actually went on to study physics at MIT. Laura's style of thought is still heavily influenced by physics. Number four is Ben Kamens. Ben received degrees in computer science and philosophy from Duke University before becoming founding engineer and VP of engineering at Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that produces educational videos. He self-learned biology and went down the rabbit hole of aging biology. In 2017, with the encouragement of Laura Deming, he founded Spring Discovery, a startup with a drug discovery platform that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation to develop therapies that treat aging and age-related diseases. Spring Discovery raised $18 million in series A funding in 2018. Next we have Daniel Oliver. Daniel received a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech and an MBA from Harvard Business School. It was at Caltech that Daniel would meet Noah Davidson, with whom he'd go on to found Rejuvenate Bio. Rejuvenate Bio is a George Church lab spin-out that is developing a combination gene therapy to reverse aging in dogs. Next, Joe Betz-Liqua earned a bachelor's degree in earth sciences and a master's degree in robotics at MIT. He also did biophysics research at Caltech. He has experienced founding DNA sequencing and electronics companies and was a co-founder of Viom, which is now part of the drug discovery company Recursion. Joe is currently a co-founder of Retrobio Sciences, a startup seeking to develop therapies for age-related diseases. And finally, Peter Fedachev. Peter received his master's in physics at Moscow State University and his PhD at Amsterdam University. He served as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck. Fedachev eventually switched from writing physics papers to more biology and drug discovery papers, and in 2012 he co-founded Jero, an AI drug discovery startup that leverages data from whole exome sequencing. An affiliated company, JeroSense, attempts to develop biomarkers of aging using biometric and biotracking data. You can find the full list assembled by Nathan Chang on the Lifesband.io website or on longevitymarketcap.com. We'll link to both in the video description. As mentioned in the beginning of this video, Nathan is also the program director for the On Deck Longevity Biotech Fellowship, which is described as a community for people to come together to build, join, or invest in revolutionary longevity biotechnology startups. We'll link to that in the description as well. If you're interested in working in the longevity industry, Lifesband.io has a number of positions open as of the recording of this video, and good news, for many of them a background in biology is not required. Find out more at Lifesband.io. Please subscribe to this channel, as we'll have a lot more content and announcements like this coming soon. Whether you do or want to work in longevity science, or are just keeping up to date, we appreciate your support. I'm Ryan O'Shea and we'll see you next time on Lifesband News.