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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Flora Yi

Joyce Yang

Max Salick

Nav Ranu

Owen Chen

Shengjiang Tu

Shravanti Kulkarni

Tommy Casolaro