Freenome

By training, Im an engineer and computer scientist, focusing on machine learning and fast, scalable code. By interest, Im a computational biologist, with interests in (epi)genetics, structural biology and biophysics, and drug discovery. Since 2019, I have been VP, Data Science at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, where I lead our interdisciplinary team in... bringing together ultra-high-throughput experimentation and high-dimensional biological experimentation to accelerate drug discovery. Previously, I served as Chief Scientific Officer at Freenome from December 2016 to October 2018, where I supervised Freenomes R&D (ranging from molecular biology and assay development through computational biology and machine learning) to develop blood-based early cancer diagnostics. Prior to Freenome, from 2011 through 2016 I was VP, Scientific Affairs, Director, Research, and Senior Software Engineer at Counsyl (acquired by Myriad Genetics in summer 2018; now Myriad Womens Health), where I managed research in early technology development, clinical development, scientific publications, and wetlab-focused software engineering and computational assay development. I completed my Ph.D in Computer Science from Stanford University in June 2011, co-advised by Vijay Pande and Daphne Koller . My research focused on methods for large-scale machine learning for drug discovery (thesis: Accelerating Chemical Similarity Search Using GPUs and Metric Embeddings ), and I did additional non-thesis work in protein folding, high-performance computing, and computer architecture. During my PhD, I interned at Vertex Pharmaceuticals with Brian Goldman and Pat Walters, developing methods for computational drug discovery. In 2006, I graduated from UC Berkeley with highest honors with my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Go Bears!). I did undergraduate research with Profs. Kathy Yelick, Bora Nikolic, and John Wawrzynek. I was also a member and officer for several semesters at the Berkeley Mu Chapter of HKN (Eta Kappa Nu) . Even further ...Read More