Mohammed Homman is in no hurry to defend his
dissertation. It's not because the Karolinska Institute doctoral
candidate needs more time to write or perform a few more
experiments. Nor is it because he needs to be home most days by 5
p.m. to help his wife, Maria Homman, who heads her own research and
development lab at Akzo Nobel, care for their two daughters. Homman
is taking his time to finish his degree because he's busy wooing
investors, hiring researchers--some of them with their own
doctorates--and establishing business partnerships. Finishing his
degree just isn't his highest priority right now.
There's also the pesky matter of patents. Announcing his results
publicly in the form of a dissertation might interfere with the two
pending patents his company, Vironova , needs to
grow. Homman started the bioinformatics company in 2005 to
commercialize technology he developed that automates virus
detection using digital images from electron microscopes. Homman,
who is 33 years old, is CEO of the company, which has 11 employees
and has raised more than $5 million in capital so far. The target
in the current fundraising round is $50 million.
"I like to move very fast and take a lot of risks compared to
the traditional Swedish way."--Mohammed Homman
How does he get it all done? "I do not get much sleep," he says
cheerfully.
Student days
Homman's initial studies, which earned him a B.S. in biology and
an M.S. in chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden, were intended
to prepare him for a career in medicine. At the Karolinska
Institute outside Stockholm, he aimed to work on bone-marrow
transplants, but under the supervision of virologist Cecilia
Söderberg-Nauclér he found himself studying human cytomegalovirus
(CMV) using electron microscopy.
The work required him to examine films from electron microscopes
to classify and count viruses.Developing a set of 100 film
negatives could take up to a week using traditional methods. He
grew frustrated with the slow pace and the technology's
limitations. "You see something and everybody interpreted it their
own way," he says. He recognized the need for an objective way of
measuring viruses.
Homman decided to use digital imaging technology--widespread in
other scientific disciplines, such as astronomy--to quantify image
data. He collaborated with a mathematician at the Royal Institute
of Technology's Center for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and a
computer scientist he has since hired from the joint Centre for
Image Analysis at Uppsala University and the Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences. Both were students like him, Homman adds,
"and our professors were not doing so much at all. We did all of
the work ourselves."
At academic conferences such as the International Herpesvirus
Workshop where Homman presented the work, some researchers began
asking him to do image analysis for them, but more tellingly,
others asked how much his analysis would cost. He realized that his
work had potential for more than the usual academic rewards: It
could also generate cash.
Homman's idea was too risky to get traditional funding, but the
Swedish business investment vehicle ALMI provided early funding in
2005. ALMI renewed its support in a July 2007 funding round. "They
[ALMI] are the real risk takers when it comes to financing this
company," he says.
Homman went on academic leave and began working on the company
in earnest. One arm of the company is already selling the sort of
antiviral research assistance that his conference attendees
requested early on--making use of proprietary techniques to
identify and disable certain proteins in viruses. The other arm of
the company is developing software that Homman expects to be
licensed to academics and other companies that want to detect,
identify, quantify, and classify viruses.
The rate at which his research progressed caught nearly everyone
by surprise. "I don't think one would have expected that it would
have developed ... so quickly," says Göran K. Hansson, a professor
in the Karolinska Institute Department of Medicine where Homman
worked. "And that reflects ... on the set of methods Mohammed has
developed and also on his dynamic personality."
Chief Executive Officer
Vironova hired a handful of researchers, programmers, and
business managers in 2006 and is already looking to expand further.
Homman casts a wide net, traveling internationally to raise money
and market his company. His approach has met with success in
Sweden, where he has won the ALMI Innovator of the Year prize,
among other awards, and abroad, where he has lined up venture
capital and partnered with heavyweights such as IBM. He says he has
raised far more money internationally in 2 years as an untrained
businessman than he could have expected as a graduate student or
postdoctoral researcher in academia.
"I like to move very fast and take a lot of risks compared to
the traditional Swedish way," he says, pointing to steady,
slow-growing Swedish successes Ikea, Ericsson, and Saab. Comparing
the venture to his academic career, he shrugs, "I guess I didn't
have much to lose--a little money, a little time. But you can do
that in science, too. Now I am able to be my own supervisor, at a
younger age than I could in academia, and I'm probably better
funded."
Still, to succeed in the long term, Vironova will need to
convince the scientific community that its products are worth
investing in. Hansson thinks that achieving widespread adoption of
Vironova's products will be a major task because "you always have
to prove each technique that comes along" before scientists will
adopt it.
Homman hasn’t had any trouble convincing co-workers, though.
They say his confidence makes him a natural leader. Jonas Velander,
Vironova's vice president for business development, says, "He can
make people really love what they do." Velander also nods to
Homman's vision and optimism. "He has lots of ideas and is always
looking forward, and he handles [failure] ... really well. He's
always ready to move on."
Fatherhood
Homman works hard and travels frequently, but he tries to be
home as much as he can to be with his family. His company was born
around the same time as his first daughter, Ida. That year, his
annual report listed just one employee--himself. As his business
has grown, so has his family.Hommanand his wife, Maria, now have
two daughters--Ida, now 2, and Leila, 8 months. They live close to
both sets of parents, who help with the children.
Maria has known Homman since high school, and their long
relationship has been an asset at work and at home. "When you have
been living together that long, ... you already know what you like
and what is working at home," she says. That leaves more energy to
focus on work and raise their daughters.
But even all that energy can't extend the day beyond 24 hours,
so Homman has adapted his working schedule to fit his home
responsibilities. Maria is a "modern Swedish woman," Homman says.
"I don't have a wife who irons my shirt and cooks for me, so I'm
home at 5 and I do half. When my daughters go to sleep, I start
working again."
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Lucas Laursen is a science writer in Cambridge, U.K.
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Comments, suggestions? Please send your feedback to our editor .
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Photos. Top, credit:
Jan McLaughlin. Middle, courtesy Mohammed Homman
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DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a0700127
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