We are scientists.
We are engineers.
We are drug hunters. We are insitro.

Ahmed Sandakli

Ajamete “Aj” Kaykas, Chief eXploration Officer and Head of Neuroscience

As Chief eXploration Officer and Head of Neuroscience, Aj leads insitro’s Advanced Technology exploration (ATX) group which identifies and pilots in vitro technologies (disease modeling, imaging, genomics/functional genomics screening) to be deployed across all indications at insitro. He also leads insitro’s Neuroscience Therapeutic area which is responsible for target discovery/validation and overseeding the Neuroscience portfolio.

Ajamete has spent over 30 years in both industry and academia, working in the areas of proteomics, genomics, and stem cell biology. Before joining insitro, Aj led the early target discovery team at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in the Neuroscience unit. His team efforts have led to the discovery of multiple new disease targets and the development of better predictive preclinical models. He was also a director at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a scientist at Viral Logic System Technology and an associate scientist at Immunex corporation in the early 1990s . He conducted his postdoc with Dr. Randy Moon at the University of Washington/Howard Hughes Medical Institute on Wnt-signaling. While in Randy’s lab, he conducted one of the first ever genome-wide RNAi screens and studied the role of Wnt-signaling in human disease and stem cell biology. He did his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Dr. Bill Sugden’s lab where he studied virology, immunology, and oncology.

In his free time, Aj enjoys traveling, hiking, kayaking, sailing, biking, making whiskey, and spending time with his family.

Alex Urrutia

Alexis Ewer

Alice Chin

Alicia Cuevas

Alicia Lee

Allison Lai, Controller, VP of Finance

Allison Lai is the Controller / VP, Finance at insitro. She brings with her 18 years of experience in accounting and finance operations with most of her experience in the life sciences industry.

Prior to joining insitro, Allison served as VP, Finance & Controller at Adicet Bio, a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company engaged in the design and development of immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases, where she helped build and scale the accounting team. Before then, Allison was at Genomic Health, a global provider of genomic-based diagnostic tests, where she was most recently the Senior Director of Accounting and supported the organization’s increasing headcount and international growth. Allison has also held increasing roles at Affymax, a publicly-traded biotechnology company, and she started her career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP in their audit and assurance practice.

Allison received her BA in Business Management Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and she is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of California.

Outside of the office, Allison is constantly chasing after her two sons and cheering on the Golden State Warriors.

Amanda Chau

Amber Love Hazelwood

Amela Alijagic

Amela is an Associate Scientist in the Disease Modeling team and she is working on developing iPSC-derived models for various liver diseases to generate data sets for insitro’s machine learning platform.

Prior to joining insitro, Amela worked on establishing iPSC-derived models for neurodegenerative diseases and testing small-molecule modulators of the autophagy-lysosomal pathways for therapeutic potential. Amela obtained her A.S. in Biotechnology from San Francisco City College, and her B.S in Cell and Molecular Biology from California State University East Bay.

In her spare time, Amela likes long distance running and exploring hiking trails in the Bay Area. When at home she enjoys crafting projects, playing board games, and spending time with friends and family.

Amien Alazzeh

As a Lead Lab Operations Associate, Amien is a part of the Automation & Engineering team with focus on implementing and supporting automation solutions across multiple functions at insitro. Amien also helps maintain and implement operational excellence within insitro’s laboratories.

Prior to joining insitro, Amien spent the last few years as a Lab Manager, where he focused on streamlining processes, EH&S, supply chain management and implementing operational excellence.
Amien holds a Cell & Molecular Biology degree from San Francisco State University.

In his spare time, Amien enjoys going on road trips, weightlifting, and traveling.

Anna Shcherbina

Ariel Kauss

Arnab Banik

Atieh Givmanesh

Avantika Lal

Avantika works with insitro’s Data Science and Machine Learning team, applying computational methods to analyze multidimensional genomic data and uncover disease biology.

Prior to insitro, Avantika was a senior scientist at NVIDIA, where she worked at the interface of deep learning, GPU computing, and genomics. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, she developed machine learning approaches to analyze multi-modal genomic data from cancer cells.

Outside of work, she enjoys hacking on open-source projects, reading science fiction novels, and discovering new foods.

Ayla Nelson

Ayla is working as an Associate Scientist ll or Research Associate, on disease models for neurological disorders using high-throughput screening. She is excited to be on a team of drug hunters.

She received her Bachelors of Science in Cell Biology from the University of California, Davis. There she researched signaling pathways in Arabidopsis to better understand integrated and external signals to determine the trade off between growth factors and secondary metabolites. Later she worked on high through-put antibody and TCR discovery platforms. A poly-clonal antibody platform to screen various targets across multiple epitopes. High-thoroughput screening of antigen-specific T cell receptors using immortalized TCR libraries, leading to novel TCR discovery (Nature Biotech).

When she is away from work, she enjoys hiking, tide pooling, kayaking, and baking.

Babacar Ndoye

Babacar Cedric Ndoye is a cell biologist with experience in the generation and applications of induced pluripotent stem cells. As an Associate Scientist in the Process Engineering team at Insitro, Babacar is combining his experience in cellular dynamics with automation processes for the development of multi-functional platforms.

Prior to joining Insitro Babacar received his BS in Biology from Stanford University, after which he spent several years at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute working in iPSC research from patient consent to cardiomyocyte differentiation. He later joined Khloris Biosciences and helped set up and maintain a biobank, as well as develop novel therapeutics and assays for drug discovery.

When not in the lab, Babacar enjoys reading, cooking, and photography, as well as staying active by weight lifting, playing tennis, biking, and swimming.

Baris Ungun

Bay Johnson

Ben Miller, VP, Automation

Blake Simmermon

Blake is an associate scientist on the process engineering team at insitro. His focus is on supporting and developing automation solutions to provide high quality data for research and machine learning.

Prior to joining insitro, Blake worked in lab operations at Emerald Cloud Lab where he gained experience working with a wide breadth of analytical methods and instrumentation.
Blake received his B.S. in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University with a focus on polymer science.

In his free time, Blake enjoys skiing and hiking with friends.

Bobby Leitmann

Bobby is a research associate that supports the development and integration of image-based assays to further insitro’s drug discovery.

Bobby got his B.S. in Biological Engineering at the University of Georgia (UGA) and did some hands on research focusing on stem cell therapies. He became a double Dawg when he got his M.S. in Engineering at UGA with a focus on Cell Manufacturing Research using high content imaging in the Mortensen lab.

In his free time Bobby likes to spend time with his partner and two crazy kitties, hike, dance, gardening and practice jiu jitsu.

Bowen Liu

Bowen Liu is a computational chemist with experience working at the interface of chemistry, drug discovery, and machine learning.

Bowen grew up in New Zealand and received his dual BSc/BCom undergraduate degrees at The University of Auckland majoring in Chemistry, Applied Mathematics, Finance and Accounting. Afterwards, he moved to the Bay Area and completed his Ph.D in Chemistry at Stanford under the supervision of Jure Leskovec and Vijay Pande. At Stanford, Bowen focused on developing machine learning methods for problems in small molecule drug discovery and lead optimization, namely molecular property prediction, molecule generation, and chemical reaction prediction.

In his spare time, Bowen enjoys reading, playing video games, and going on staycations.

Brian Young

Brigham Hartley

Brigham Jay Hartley is a Cell Engineer on the Functional Genomics team part of High Throughput Biology. His work utilizes start of the art gene and genome modification technologies to generate complex cellular models of disease and novel biological tools.

Following his PhD modeling cellular aspects of Parkinson’s disease using hIPSC-derived neurons at Monash University in Australia, Brigham completed a Post-Doc at Mount Sinai in New York functionalizing the genomics of neurodevelopmental disorders using hiPSCs, transcriptomics and screening technologies. Brigham was then recruited as a start-up member of Sana Biotechnology in Cambridge, MA where he led a team that developed novel engineered cellular-derived material. Brigham then gained a fascination and a love for the intersection of robotics and high throughput biology at the New York Stem Cell Foundation where he led the platforming of genome modification technologies, differentiation and phenotyping of hIPSC using liquid handling robotics.

When not in the lab, Brigham likes to shape the future of bonsai trees, watch F1 cars go round and round the track really fast and get out in nature on his mountain bike. He also enjoys thinking about what the cells are up to.

Chelcy Hedgspeth

Chengyun Lee

As a Scientific Specialist, Chengyun contributes to iPSCs differentiation and disease modeling projects.

Chengyun received his B.S. in Clinical Laboratory Sciences and Medical Biotechnology at the National Taiwan University, Taiwan and participated in a number of research in the stem cell biology field. He pursued his M.S. in Stem Cell Biology at the University of Minnesota.
After graduation, Chengyun joined Ben Barres’s lab at Stanford University as a Life Science Research Professional.

Prior to joining insitro, Chengyun worked at Neucyte where he performed compound screening and dosing experiments and participated in iPS-based neurological platform upgrade program and drug discovery efforts.

In his spare time, Chengyun enjoys reading and listening to audiobooks.

Chris Baker

Chris has spent nearly two decades in research, mostly focused on infectious diseases, such as HIV. He began his career at the California Department of Public Health, looking at T cell responses to HIV in US and Ugandan patients. His PhD work was using SIV to model the consequences of HIV exposure on the development of the immune system, and later did postdoctoral work on the contributions of the immune system to preterm labor.

Prior to joining insitro, as Associate Director, Core Lab Operations, Chris worked as an immunologist and production cytometry lead at Verily Life Sciences, supporting the Immune Profiler Baseline, and various internal platforms across the company. Before that, Chris was the Technical Director for the Core Immunology Lab, developing, implementing, and executing immunology assays to support the research community at UCSF and various companies around the Bay Area. He also co-founded and taught the UCSF Flow Cytometry Training Program.

When he is not working, he loves spending time with his wife and kids, hiking, playing sports, and building in his woodworking shop.

Chris Probert

Chris Probert is a computational biologist and computer scientist with extensive experience building deep learning models for genomic data. His current work at insitro is focused on enabling large-scale deep learning on functional genomic data produced by the high throughput biology platform.

Chris is a PhD candidate in Computational Biology (Genetics) at Stanford working with Anshul Kundaje and Christina Curtis where he was an NSF Fellow and an Accel Innovation Scholar. His PhD work focused on large-scale machine learning analysis of functional genomics datasets, including imputation and superresolution of genome-wide epigenomic signals, unsupervised methods for learning differentiation lineages in single-cell RNA-seq, and tissue of origin inference from cell-free DNA fragmentation patterns. He has extensive engineering experience building scalable infrastructure and data architectures to support distributed training of deep learning models from petabyte-scale functional genomic datasets. He also holds an MS and BS in Computer Science, and experience working in both research and product focused software engineering roles at Google, Illumina, and Counsyl.

Outside of work, Chris enjoys running, cycling, backpacking, and backcountry skiing.

Christoph Klein

Christoph is a scientist turned software engineer who loves bridging the gap between software and the life sciences. His current work focuses on developing the scientific pipelines that enable our biology and machine learning teams at insitro.

Previously at Myriad Genetics and Counsyl, Christoph led engineering teams charged with the clinical interpretation of variants detected in patients. These teams develop the pipelines that filter thousands of variants per sample down to the few that cause rare diseases, predispose you to elevated cancer risks or challenge the health of your pregnancy.

Christoph holds a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Vanderbilt where he studied tribology using molecular dynamics and built open source tools to enable large scale screening studies.

Outside of work, Christoph enjoys biking, surfing, reading and spending as much time outside as possible with his partner and his pupper, Oscar.

Ci Chu, Associate Director of Functional Genomics

As the Director of Functional Genomics, Chu leads insitro’s genetic screening and phenotyping efforts.

Chu has over a decade of molecular phenotyping and profiling experiences in academia and industry. Before Insitro, Chu was the genomics tech lead for the Immune Profiler platform developed at Verily Life Sciences (an Alphabet company in healthcare). Verily and Gilead are employing this platform to understand inflammatory autoimmune diseases. During his postdoc, Chu set up a single cell RNAseq platform at Genome Institute of Singapore to map the human immune atlas. During his graduate training with Dr. Howard Chang at Stanford University, Chu invented an RNA-interactome analysis method, “ChIRP,” to study the mechanism of X-chromosome inactivation by the famous long noncoding RNA “Xist”, among many other projects, via genomics, imaging and protein mass spec assays.

In his spare time, Chu tests sneakers for Puma, and reads books to his two young kids.

Cong "Karl" Guo

As Director of Translational Genetics, Karl leads insitro’s efforts to integrate genetics with multiomic data to identify and validate drug targets.

Karl has over 10 years of genetics and genomics experience in industry and academia. Prior to joining insitro, he was a director in the Human Genetics and Computational Biology department at GlaxoSmithKline. He led efforts to identify drug targets by coupling GWAS results from 23andMe and the UK Biobank with sophisticated variant-to-gene mapping methodologies. He is also experienced in designing high-throughput genetic screens and developing computational methods to identify and prioritize targets. Karl received his Ph.D. in genetics and genomics from Duke University as a trainee in Dr. Tim Reddy’s lab where he studied the functional impacts of non-coding genetic variation on disease. He received his B.S. in biomedical engineering from Georgia Tech while performing undergraduate research in Dr. Ravi Bellamkonda’s lab.

Outside of work, Karl enjoys cooking, rock climbing, and playing tabletop games.

Cynthia Hao

Cynthia Hao is an Associate Scientist developing pooled screening and image analysis workflows to glean insight into complex disease phenotypes from insitro’s cell models. She is also building systems to collect and analyze high-quality microscopy data at scale.

Cynthia earned a B.S. in Bioengineering and an M.S. in Computer Science, both from Stanford University. She completed her honors thesis on pooled CRISPR screening methods for microscopy phenotypes in Professor Roger Kornberg’s lab, for which she optimized screening protocols, carried out high-throughput CRISPR screens, and implemented and parallelized a computational image analysis pipeline. During her time at Stanford, she also worked in various academic labs, on projects ranging from building a rationally designed cell to DNA synthesis in outer space.

In her free time, Cynthia enjoys trying new recipes, costume design sketching, and making music.

Daphne Koller, Founder & CEO, Board Member

Daphne Koller is the CEO and Founder of insitro.

Daphne was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. She was the co-founder, co-CEO and President of Coursera for 5 years, and the Chief Computing Officer of Calico, an Alphabet company in the healthcare space. She is the author of over 200 refereed publications appearing in venues such as Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics, and has an h-index of 130. Daphne was one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people and is a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Society of Computational Biology.

In her spare time, Daphne enjoys spending time with her family, especially while traveling to exotic destinations (62 countries so far and counting), where they enjoy hiking, sailing, scuba diving, and eating fresh local food.

David Conegliano

David is an automation engineer on the Process Engineering team at insitro. David collaborates with scientists and engineers to design, develop, and implement automation solutions for high-throughput biology protocols and workflows, enabling machine learning applications in biology. 

David’s experience spans across both cell biology and engineering. He started as a research associate at the Wyss Institute at Harvard where he collaborated with scientists to design novel microfluidic cell-based models. He quickly transitioned to a startup as a scientist at Emulate where he developed dynamic, three dimensional in vitro cell models of the lung and liver. He worked on designing, characterizing, and testing these models with primary human cells for disease modeling and toxicology applications in collaboration with major pharmas. He later transitioned into the engineering discovery arm of Emulate where he led liquid handling automation for platform expansion.

David holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and M.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

In his free time, David enjoys exploring new hikes, trying new restaurants, and relaxing on the beach on a hot sunny day.

Divya Kanichar, Director, DEL

As the Director of DNA-Encoded Libraries, Divya leads insitro’s DEL synthesis and screening programs in collaboration with her teammates.

Divya has seven years of experience in the construction and screening of evolvable DELs. Before joining insitro, Divya was a co-founder and COO of Haystack Sciences where she led R&D lab operations. She also constructed the equipment and devices required for synthesizing chemical libraries based on instructions encoded in DNA, and leading the synthesis of these programmed libraries. Her innovations have increased the speed and efficiency of construction of programmed, evolvable DELs.

Prior to Haystack, she worked at Impossible Foods building and screening DELs to discover ligands of interest in food science. In graduate school, Divya studied medicinal chemistry and discovered novel diazaborines with antibiotic properties with a particular focus in tuberculosis.

In her spare time Divya enjoys playing with her kids and dipping them in the Russian River.

Donald Naegely

Donald is a Senior Lead Engineer, primarily working on developing strategies for internal pipelines, data provenance, and cloud infrastructure. As part of the data engineering team, Donald is working with the other teams to scale and automate internal pipelines and improve the common infrastructure to support future analyses.

Previously, he was a principal engineer at Counsyl (acquired by Myriad) working across many teams helping to develop a new LIMS system, a platform for variant curation, bioinformatics pipelines, and moving to a cloud infrastructure from on premises.

Donald received a BS and MS in Computer Science from Drexel University.

In his free time, Donald enjoys backpacking, skiing, biking, and reading.

Duane Valz, General Counsel

As General Counsel, Duane is responsible for managing risk and structuring opportunities for insitro.

Duane has led the legal and IP functions at prominent Silicon Valley companies operating at a variety of scales and growth stages. He joins insitro from Zymergen, a company applying laboratory automation and machine learning to engineer microbial strains for industrial fermentation applications and new product development, where he served as the company’s first in-house lawyer and general counsel. Prior to Zymergen, Duane was a senior member of the patent team at Google, where he led strategic IP initiatives bearing on mobile, cloud, web and open source technologies. Before that, he served as associate general counsel in charge of patent development at Yahoo!

Mr. Valz began his career at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin (now combined with Arnold & Porter LLP). Over his career, Duane has been named multiple times to the IAM Strategy 300, recognizing the world’s leading IP strategists. He holds B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and serves on the boards of directors for the Level Playing Field Institute and the Berkeley Law Alumni Association.

In his free time, Duane enjoys cooking, traveling, live jazz, yoga, the outdoors and quality time with his family.

Dylan Hecker

Dylan is a talent acquisition professional who is passionate about human capital trends and solutions. Recruiting is a very broad and unique industry, but Dylan enjoys the challenges and rewards that come with helping others find their dream careers. Prior to joining Insitro, Dylan joined and worked for a staffing firm right out of college that specializes in healthcare and life sciences, partnering with organizations of all sizes across the United States.

Dylan graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Science in Human Services & Leadership degree. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys hiking, going to the beach, reading, listening to podcasts, and hanging out with friends/family.

He prides himself on his strong work ethic, and is very eager to continue growing both personally and professionally.

Edward Chee

Edward is a Staff Software Engineer at Insitro. He has diverse industry experience ranging from working horizontally across large cross-functional teams at companies like Google and Oracle, and also writing code across the entire tech stack at smaller startups.

When his wife was diagnosed with an intractable cancer, Edward learned first-hand the criticality of data-driven medical decisions and developed a custom immunotherapy based treatment plan at a time when the modality was not yet proven. Consequently, he has a passion for advancing human health through improved data-driven decisions and the leveraging of novel medical therapies and modalities.

Edward holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and B.A. in Business Economics from Brown University.

In his free time, Edward enjoys chess and improvising on the button accordion and piano.

Eilon Sharon, Director of Data Science

As Director of Data Science, Eilon is leading the development of cutting edge machine learning, computational biology and statistical genetics approaches to improve drug development.

His team uses machine learning to integrate observations from large population-level studies with results from various high throughput in-vitro assays to identify potential drug targets.

Eilon has extensive experience in applying machine learning to decipher various biological questions. After completing a dual major B.Sc. in biology and computer science at Tel Aviv University, Eilon joined Rosetta genomics, where he worked on discovering miRNA genes in humans and predicting their targets. He then earned a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Eran Segal. During his PhD, he developed synthetic biology Massively Parallel Reporter Assay (MPRA) and statistical and thermodynamic models, which he applied to decipher the encoding of transcriptional regulation in yeast. Following graduation, Eilon transitioned to a postdoc at Profs Jonathan Pritchard and Hunter Fraser labs in Stanford Medical school department of genetics. At stanford, Eilon worked on a diverse set of projects including: detection and fine mapping of genetic associations with T cell receptor V-genes expression; software for transplant health monitoring using cell-free DNA sequencing (which was commercialized by Stanford); and detection of functional genetic variants using a novel high throughput CRISPR editing. Eilon is the author of over 20 refereed publications appearing in venues such as Cell, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Genetics.

In his free time, Eilon enjoys hiking and camping outdoors with his family.

Elaine Lam

As a member of the Process Engineering team at insitro, Elaine is working to develop and scale high quality systems and processes to enable the production of high quality biological data for machine learning.

Elaine started her career as a Systems Engineer at Roche developing in vitro diagnostic instruments. At Roche, she was responsible for the design, integration, and lifecycle management of different complex systems. She later moved into the world of biotech startups at Synthego as an Automation Engineer, where she was involved in everything from system qualifications, new process development, to continuous improvement. Some of her projects included developing robust automated processes to enable new CRISPR oligo products and building an automated platform to allow for rapid iteration in scaling engineered cells. Elaine holds a B.S. and M.Eng in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University with a minor in Music.

In her free time, Elaine enjoys traveling to new places, playing the violin, and building cardboard forts for her two cats.

Ellen Berg, Vice President, Biomarker Sciences

Ellen Berg is Vice President of Biomarker Sciences at insitro. She and her team are developing tools and assays to support target validation and the progression of drug discovery programs.

Ellen is a scientific leader in translational human biology for drug discovery, consumer product and chemical safety applications. She has a background in biopharmaceutical drug discovery and experience in the development and commercialization of new technologies to support translational research and product development. She has collaborated with and consulted for research groups in the pharmaceutical industry, consumer products, academia and government working to understand mechanisms of drug efficacy and chemical safety.

Before joining insitro, Ellen was Chief Scientific Officer of Translational Biology for Eurofins Discovery, developing new scientific directions for the company’s in vitro pharmacology and phenotypic profiling data and analysis services. During her career, she worked in the biopharmaceutical industry and co-founded BioSeek, where she led the development of the BioMAP® human primary cell-based assay platform.

Ellen holds a PhD from Northwestern University and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University in the Department of Pathology (Butcher lab). Her research interests include drug and toxicity mechanisms of action, phenotypic drug discovery, and predictive methods for product safety and efficacy testing.

Outside the company, Ellen is involved with organizations and industry consortia that promote the use of human-based alternatives to animals in drug discovery and product development.

In her free time, Ellen enjoys activities with her family and friends, spending time her dog, and indulging her love of art and design through data viz.

Ellie Javid, Head of Financial Operations

As Head of Financial Operations at instiro, Ellie brings over 15 years of progressive accounting and finance operations experience, including managing cross-functional projects and scaling teams for growth within the life science industry.

Prior to joining insitro, Ellie was an independent consultant for early-stage Bay Area life science companies and worked on various accounting projects, including the development of systems and infrastructure to support growing businesses. Before then, she was Controller at Invitae, a leading genetic testing company offering diagnostic testing for hereditary conditions. Ellie helped the Company prepare for IPO in 2015 and built the team to scale as a public company. Prior to Invitae, Ellie worked at Genomic Health, a publicly-traded global provider of genomic-based diagnostic tests, where she managed the US accounting operations and teams. Ellie also spent time at Ironwood Pharmaceuticals during phase III clinical trials of Linaclotide (FDA approval 2012). During her time at Ironwood Ellie supported the company’s 2010 IPO, ERP transformation and plans for commercialization.

Ellie is Certified Public Accountant and holds an active license in the state of California.

Ellie received a Master’s in Healthcare Administration and Management from City University in London where she focused on finance and delivery of healthcare services across UK and US healthcare systems. During her studies, she also worked at the University of Cambridge, Research Services Division, to support coordination of Medical School research contracts with industry sponsors, budgets and funding.

In her spare time, you can find Ellie mountain biking off the trails in Marin or sailing in the Bay with her husband.

Eray Watts, VP, High-Throughput Chemistry

As Vice President of High Throughput Chemistry, Eray leads insitro’s efforts in collection of data correlating molecular structures with biological activities.

Eray is a scientist and inventor with a passion for DNA Encoded Libraries and other invitro evolution technologies. He joined insitro from Haystack Sciences where he was a co-founder, and CEO. His innovations in the DEL field include greatly expanding the synthetic diversity achievable with evolvable DELs, and devising the nDexer selection platform. Prior to Haystack, Eray built and screened DELs at Impossible Foods, and in the lab of Pehr Harbury at Stanford. He did a post-doc at Vanderbilt University in the pharmacology department, working with Anthony Forster, Craig Lindsley, and Borden Lacy. His graduate work in the lab of Chaitan Khosla focused on precursor-directed biosynthesis of novel polyketides, and also on the discovery of novel dihydroisoxazoles targeting TG2 for treatment of Celiac disease.

Eray’s hobbies include science fiction of all kinds, and spending summer Saturdays at the river.

Eric McKeeby, Director of Communications

As Director of Communications, Eric leads communications for insitro, designing strategies and inclusive programs and content to ensure all audiences and stakeholders are a part of insitro’s transformative journey in healthcare.

Eric has more than 15 years of communications and marketing experience across healthcare, where he has focused on innovations that improve patient outcomes. Recently, he served as Head of Marketing & Communications at the Regeneron Genetics Center, building a branded communications program for one of the world’s largest genomic research and development initiatives. He has also served as Director of Health Communications at Ancestry, where he led programs to help advance understanding of genomic health, drive product affinity and purchase, and increase engagement with genetic health screenings and research.

His experience includes working with companies like Abbott Diagnostics and Abbott Molecular, Cancer Treatment Centers of America and Merck, as well as launching communications and engagement programs for a Medicaid health plan, the American Board of Internal Medicine, and Virginia Tech. Eric has deep relationships and expertise honed from working with diverse partners, from patients to physicians to biopharma industry to advocacy partners to governmental organizations, that enable collaboration throughout the healthcare ecosystem. A veteran of the US Army, Eric served as a public affairs officer in the Horn of Africa during Operation Enduring Freedom.

Eric enjoys a variety of activities including creative writing, browsing used bookstores, volunteering at community-based literacy programs, hiking, stargazing, and singing 70’s love songs to Huxley, his English Springer Spaniel.

Eric Tse

Eugeni Vaisberg, VP, Disease Model Systems & Arrayed Screening

Eugeni Vaisberg, Ph.D., is Vice President, Disease Model Systems and Arrayed Screening at insitro.

Eugeni is a drug discovery scientist and inventor with 30 years of experience working in academia and industry. Before joining Insitro, Eugeni was a Staff Scientist at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) where he led groups responsible for the development of cutting- edge cell biological technologies, drug delivery platforms, and the development of an extracellular vesicles-based diagnostic platform. In addition, Eugeni and his team collaborated with ML experts from Google to develop cutting-edge data driven platforms for stem stem cell differentiation and for high throughput image based screening.

Prior to joining Google[x] he worked as Principal Scientist, Therapeutic Innovation Unit at Amgen where he played a leading role in defining the approach and implementing key applications of stem cell biology for drug discovery.

Prior to Amgen Eugeni served as Director of Lead Discovery at iPierian where he was responsible for building one of the world’s first “disease in a dish” drug discovery platforms based on cellular reprogramming technology, advanced high throughput screens, and data analysis.

Before joining iPierian Eugeni worked at Cytokinetics where he was one of the founding scientists and held multiple positions of increasing responsibility. He established biochemistry and informatics departments and led development of a state of the art system for quantitative cell biological assays – Cytometrix™. This work transformed all stages of drug discovery at Cytokinetics and made the company one of the leaders in high content assays and screening.

Dr. Vaisberg is an inventor with over 25 patent applications and multiple scientific publications. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Institute of Protein Research, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, USSR.

In his free time he enjoys traveling, SCUBA diving, exploring microbrews, and photography.

Eva-Maria Krauel

Fiorella Ruggiu

Flora Yi

Gabriel Dreiman

Gina Farrugia Ortega

Haoyang Zeng

Hari Somineni

Harris Nami

Hervé Marie-Nelly

Jacob Pachter

James Warren

Jared Weaver

Jeevaa Velayutham

Jenny Lash

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Jevan Soo Lenox, Chief People Officer

“I am so inspired by insitro’s mission to transform drug discovery through machine learning and biological data at scale, and by the talented insitrocytes united in pursuit. My career has shown me over and over again that the most powerful innovation comes from diverse, multi-disciplinary, collaborative teams, and the possibilities created through insitro’s approach feel unbounded.”

As Chief People Officer, Jevan ensures that insitro attracts the best and brightest, inspires and supports them to do their best work together, and grows and develops them beyond what they thought possible.

Jevan brings to insitro more than 15 years of experience building transformative, high-growth companies and making their talent and culture a strategic advantage. He was most recently the Chief People & Culture Officer at Stitch Fix, an apparel e-commerce company combining data science and human stylists, that he helped grow to 10,000 employees globally and successfully launch multiple new businesses which quickly reached hundreds of $ millions in sales. Prior to Stitch Fix, Jevan was Chief People Officer at Blue Bottle Coffee where he put in place a new retail talent model and service culture to drive global expansion. He also held multiple leadership roles at Square including building their first sales team to move the company upmarket and expand revenue streams ahead of a successful IPO. Jevan began his career at McKinsey & Company in Boston, New York, and Shanghai as a management consultant serving technology and healthcare clients as well as leading McKinsey’s Asia-Pacific recruiting strategy across twelve countries.

Jevan received his MBA from Harvard Business School, his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and Bachelors in East Asian Studies from Harvard College. He was named a First Mover Fellow by the Aspen Institute in recognition of his leadership within organizations to align business impact with the long-term health of society and the planet.

In his free time, Jevan can typically be found with his husband chasing after their two young sons and their large Airedale terrier. He enjoys complicated recipes, running and fitness, and binge reading novels and back issues of The New Yorker.

John Bisognano

Joseph Marrama

Joshua Turnbull

Joyce Yang

Kathryn Iverson

Keith James, SVP of Drug Discovery

As Senior Vice-President of Drug Discovery, Keith is responsible for machine learning-enabled drug discovery programs at insitro. Keith and his team are both establishing new drug design capabilities, exploiting the power of machine learning models, and undertaking drug discovery programs on molecular targets derived via the insitro-human (ISH) target discovery platform.

Keith has over three decades of drug discovery experience, building and leading research enterprises ranging from handfuls to hundreds of scientists, tackling programs across a wide range of therapeutic areas, and employing a panoply of therapeutic modalities. During his career, Keith, and the organizations he has led, have delivered over thirty clinical candidates, across fifteen therapeutic areas, many of which have reached Phase 2, and two of which are in the hands of physicians treating patients today – eletriptan (Relpax®) for migraines and maraviroc (Selzentry®) for HIV infections.

Before joining insitro, Keith was President of the Ferring Research Institute in San Diego, engaged in the discovery of peptide therapeutics. Before joining Ferring, Keith had a long career at Pfizer, leading discovery research at three different sites across the US and UK, heading the company’s R&D strategy team, and running a laboratory as a visiting investigator at The Scripps Research Institute.

Keith completed his academic and postdoctoral studies at Imperial College London, The University of Cambridge (Raphael lab), Stanford University (Johnson lab), and Columbia University (Stork lab).

In his free time, Keith enjoys cycling, jogging, reading, writing and mechanical watches.

Kelly Haston

Kevin Ford

Kevin Liao

Kirill Novikov

Lauren Lau

Lin Gan

Liyuan Zhang

Lori Siao-Bulacan

Magdalena Holewa

Martha Rook, Chief Technical Operations Officer

Martha has more than 20 years of academic and industry experience in molecular biology, diagnostics development, biologics process development and cell and gene therapy manufacturing.

Prior to joining insitro, Martha was Chief Technical Operations Officer at Sigilon Therapeutics where she was responsible for the Analytics, Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Quality organizations. Martha spent 13 years at MilliporeSigma where she held a variety of roles, ultimately serving as VP and Head of the Gene Editing & Novel Modalities Business where she led a team developing and providing tools and services for cell and gene therapies from discovery to manufacturing. Martha received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from MIT and holds a B.S. in chemistry from Texas A&M University. She pursued post-doctoral studies in neuroscience as a Lefler Fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Neurologic Diseases.

In her spare time Martha enjoys kayaking, hiking and coaching her two son’s soccer teams.

Mary Rozenman, CFO / CBO

Dr. Mary Rozenman is insitro’s CFO/CBO and maintains responsibility for a number of strategic and operational functions at insitro including strategic and operational finance and accounting, strategy, business development, investor relations and corporate communications as well as project and portfolio management.

Mary brings to insitro more than 15 years of scientific expertise, company building and transactions leadership in the biotechnology industry.

Prior to joining the insitro team, she served as the senior vice president of corporate development and strategy at Aimmune Therapeutics, leading business development and partnerships with companies such as Regeneron/Sanofi and Nestlé Health Science, and supporting the company’s strategic finance and investor relations efforts. In her time at Aimmune, she raised more than $650 million in capital through a range of private and public transactions including leadership of the company’s 2015 IPO.

Before Aimmune, Mary was a vice president at Longitude Capital, where she focused on biotechnology investments and participated in multiple therapeutics investments and boards of directors, including observing on Aimmune’s board. Mary was also previously a junior partner at McKinsey & Company, focused on pharmaceuticals and corporate finance. Her scientific work has been published in premier scientific journals, and she is a named inventor on several patents.

Mary holds a doctorate in organic chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University and a bachelor of arts in biochemistry and Russian literature from Columbia University.

In her spare time, Mary likes to cook, enjoys hiking, going to the theater and hanging out with family — including her husband and young son and daughter.

Matthew Rasmussen, VP of Data Engineering

As VP of Data Engineering, Matt is responsible for leading the development of data pipelines, data storage systems, provenance tracking, and engineering infrastructure to support the high-throughput biology and Machine Learning teams at insitro.

Previously, as VP of Engineering for Myriad Genetics, Matt led engineering teams focused on software automation and genomic data pipelines to make high complexity genetic testing routine in clinical practice. During his time at Counsyl, Matt developed and scaled the software behind several successful prenatal genetic testing products.

Matt holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from MIT, where he developed efficient bioinformatic algorithms with applications in evolutionary genomics and population genetics.

In his spare time, Matt enjoys running, drawing, programming for fun and playing with his kids.

Max Salick

Michael Bereket

Mohammad "Muneeb" Sultan

Mukund Hari

Nav Ranu

Nikhil Jain

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Owen Chen

Patrick McEnaney

Perry Palmedo, Senior Director Corporate Development & Strategy

Perry is the Senior Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at insitro. He supports the executive team on initiatives at the intersection of machine learning and corporate strategy, including business development and the formulation of machine learning problems relevant to drug discovery and development.

Perry completed his Ph.D. in the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics program at Harvard Medical School where his research focused on using statistical models to predict protein structure from sequence variation. Prior to graduate school he spent five years working in finance for Morgan Stanley and BMGI, the investment office of Bill and Melinda Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He majored in physics at Princeton University where his senior thesis focused on modeling viral gene regulatory circuits.

Having grown up in Sun Valley, ID, Perry is excited to be back west and enjoys spending as much time as possible outside, whether on foot, bike, or skis.

Pooja Prasad

Prateek Chandra

Rahul Atmaramani

Ralph Ma

Robert Hilgraf

Robert Miller

Robin Betz

Roey Baror

Rohan Sikand

Sahil Malpotra

Sam Sances

Santiago Akle

Sarah Fong

Shahin Mohammadi

Sheetal Modi

Shengjiang Tu

Shipra Gupta

Srinivasan Sivanandan

Stanley Leung, Associate Director

Stephen Meadows

Suheyla Kart

Sumit Mukherjee

Syuan-Ming Guo

Tanaya Walimbe

Theofanis Karaletsos, VP, Data Science / Machine Learning

“insitro offers the unique opportunity for computational modelers interested in hard scientific problems of social relevance to combine data generation, analysis, modeling, and decision making under one roof. I am thrilled to have found an incredible amount of intellectual stimulation paired with mission-driven execution here.”

Theofanis Karaletsos is a machine learning scientist by trade seeking to build robust, data-efficient models of complex systems that allow us to understand and control the world around us. Theofanis previously held positions as Staff Scientist at Meta/Facebook working on the interface of probabilistic programming, deep learning, and uncertainty aiming to robustify large scale ML systems, and was a founding member and senior researcher at Uber AI Labs in San Francisco focusing on probabilistic machine learning, deep learning, probabilistic programming (see pyro.ai), and their applications in fields as diverse as simulation, reinforcement learning, healthcare, biology, spatiotemporal modeling, vision, language, and large-scale economics.
In his earlier roles, Theofanis was a researcher at AI-startup Geometric Intelligence (which was acquired by Uber to form Uber AI Labs) and previously at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York, and did his graduate work at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. See more at karaletsos.com.

At insitro, Theofanis is fascinated to work on building computational abstractions spanning the spectrum of internal in vitro and in vivo (i.e. clinical) datasets representing the breadth of the drug discovery process and is excited by the fundamental problem of causal transfer from the lab to the clinic.

Thomas "Tom" Soare

Tima Dehghani

Tom Stocky, SVP, Lab & Data Platform

As SVP of Lab & Data Platform, Tom is responsible for our data systems, software tools, and lab automation.

Previously, Tom was a technology fellow at Denali Therapeutics, where he helped expand the use of machine learning techniques to support their discovery work, and helped further develop their digital strategy for engaging with patients.

Tom has built technology products for more than 15 years. As VP of Search at Facebook, he grew the service to more than 2 billion searches per day across the community’s more than 3 trillion posts. He also led teams responsible for profile, entity graph, and language technology. At Google, he helped start the developer products team and was part of the founding team for Google App Engine, which laid the foundation for Google’s Cloud Platform. He later led teams working on Google search, commerce, and travel products. As Head of Learning Platform at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, he oversaw the engineering, product, and design teams for their education technology efforts.

In addition to his work at insitro, Tom serves on the board of directors for the Banner Alzheimer’s Foundation and on the scientific advisory board for Denali Therapeutics. He holds an MEng and BS in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

In his free time, Tom enjoys puzzle/escape rooms, anything baseball or softball, and going on adventures with his family.

Tommaso Dreossi

Tommy Casolaro

Victor Galievsky

Vincent Lee

Xueya Zhou

Yasmin Arjomandi

Zachary McCaw

Zack Phillips