Revolutionizing Biology with AI
Leveraging a team of world-class experts, access to unique multiscale data, and unparalleled computing power, Bioptimus is building the first universal AI foundation model that connects biology at its different scales – from molecules to cells, tissues, and whole organisms.
Bioptimus Team
Jean-Philippe Vert is co-founder and CEO of Bioptimus, a pioneering AI-first biotech company building foundation models to transform our understanding of biology and accelerate biomedical innovation, and professor (on leave) at PSL University.
A leading figure in AI for biology, Jean-Philippe has over 25 years of experience at the frontier of machine learning and life sciences. Prior to his current roles, he was the Chief R&D Officer at Owkin and a Research Lead at Google Brain. Prior to moving to the industry he has held professorships at ENS Paris, the Curie Institute and Mines ParisTech, was a visiting Miller professor at UC Berkeley, and began his research career at Kyoto University.
He holds degrees from École Polytechnique and a PhD in mathematics from Paris University, and is a member of the National Academy of Technologies of France. He has authored over 190 publications and is recognized globally for his contributions to AI, biomedical data modeling, and translational research.
David Cahané is the Cofounder and General Manager at Bioptimus. For over a decade, David has been launching and scaling deep-tech ventures, translating cutting-edge machine learning into real-world impact. David spent over six years at Owkin, as Chief Solutions Officer, where he focused on developing AI engines for biological research to drive discoveries in biomarkers, targets, and optimized trials.
Prior to Owkin, David was instrumental in building the Data Science/Machine Learning teams at Wavestone, a global consultancy firm. David earned his Engineer degree in Computer Science, Statistics, and Mathematics at Institut Polytechnique Paris and studied Machine Learning at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Rodolphe Jenatton is the Co-founder and CTO at Bioptimus. Rodolphe is a key figure in the development of Bioptimus's technological vision and implementation. Prior to co-founding Bioptimus, Rodolphe was a Senior Research Scientist at Google Brain. Before his time at Google, he spent five years at Amazon working in Machine Learning. He has also held positions with Criteo.
Rodolphe's academic work includes a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ecole Polytechnique, where he worked on machine learning and convex optimization. He earned his Engineer degree in Computer Science, Statistics, and Mathematics from Télécom Paris, a Master's degree in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Decision Theory from Pierre and Marie Curie University.
Zelda is the VP of Research at Bioptimus, as well as a co-founder. She brings a combination of deep theoretical expertise and real-world impact to the company's mission of transforming biomedical research through AI. Her research focuses on applying principled mathematical approaches to unlock insight from noisy, high-dimensional data.
Before co-founding Bioptimus, Zelda earned her PhD in Computer Science at MIT, then worked for several years at Google DeepMind. Her prior research includes theoretical investigations into ensembles of AI models, understanding sources of uncertainty in model predictions, and AI applied to drug discovery.
Felipe Llinares-López is co-founder and VP of AI at Bioptimus. Felipe’s expertise lies at the core of Bioptimus’ mission, as he has focused on developing novel machine learning methodology and applying it to solve problems in computational biology throughout his career. Before co-founding Bioptimus, Felipe worked in Google DeepMind, where his research revolved around protein and DNA language models for function prediction and sequence alignment.
Prior to that, Felipe got his PhD and held a postdoctoral position in ETH Zürich, where he worked on machine learning for genomics and graph-structured data. His doctoral work earned him the ETH Silver Medal, awarded for outstanding theses.
Charlie Saillard is a Principal Research Scientist and Co-Founder at Bioptimus. He brings expertise in machine learning and the development of machine learning models for pathology. Before co-founding Bioptimus, Charlie spent six years at Owkin, where he applied machine learning to computational pathology across various projects, including applied research, diagnostics, and the development of foundation models for pathology.
Charlie earned his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Université Paris Dauphine and a Master’s degree in Machine Learning from Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay.
Julie Gerardi is Chief Commercial Officer of Bioptimus. Julie possesses extensive expertise in the domain of drug and biomarker discovery. A biochemist by training, she has an impressive record of leading commercial efforts within the life sciences sector, encompassing both start-ups and Fortune 500 corporations such as Agilent, AstraZeneca and Danaher. Her tenure at Bioptimus commenced following her role as Vice President of Business Development and Strategy at Parse Biosciences, a prominent provider of scalable single-cell sequencing instrumental in generating foundational datasets. Preceding this, she held the position of VP of Business Development at Tempus AI, where she oversaw commercial operations and the development of their biological modeling and tumor organoid programs.
Mathilda Strom is the Founding Chief Operating Officer at Bioptimus. A serial entrepreneur, Mathilda has a track record in scaling purpose-driven ventures at the intersection of technology and global health. Prior to Bioptimus, she served as Chief Commercial Officer at CarbonPool, the world's first insurance company to settle claims in carbon credits. Before than, she co-founded and was deputy CEO of BIMA, a microinsurance and frontline digital health provider that expanded to 17 countries, delivering healthcare and financial services to over 6 million low- and middle-income individuals across Africa and Asia.
Mathilda has held board positions with organizations such as the Microinsurance Network, Tangelo (a fintech company in Latin America) and Azuri Technologies (a renewable energy firm bringing solar solutions to Africa). Recognized among Sweden's top 10 future women leaders and one of the top 50 female entrepreneurs to watch, she brings a unique blend of operational expertise and visionary leadership to the forefront of AI-driven biomedical innovation.
Ketan brings over two decades of experience driving innovation at the intersection of data, AI, and life sciences. Most recently, Ketan served as VP of Product Strategy at Clarivate, where he shaped solutions for pharmaceutical R&D and evidence-based decision-making. Prior to Clarivate, he held senior product leadership roles at AstraZeneca, Oracle, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly, where he led the development of digital tools and platforms to accelerate drug discovery and development.
Philip Conti-Permanne is the Director of Data Acquisition at Bioptimus. With a blend of scientific training and strategic business experience, Philip specializes in bridging the gap between cutting-edge science and commercial execution. Philip spent over three years at Owkin, as Director Corporate Development, where he focused on building strategic partnerships to access new capabilities and data. Prior to Owkin, Philip worked in corporate development at Esco Lifesciences Group where he led two strategic investments and acquisitions.
Philip earned his Masters in Chemistry at the University of Bristol with first class honours focusing on synthetic organic chemistry applied to drug discovery and studied bioprocess engineering at UCL.
Tokuwa Kanno is the Head of Computational Biology at Bioptimus. Tokuwa is an established leader in the field and has extensive experience in preclinical, translational and clinical research. His work has contributed to multiple IND filings, First-in-Human studies, and drug approvals. Prior to joining Bioptimus, Tokuwa worked in roles of increasing seniority at JnJ, Sanofi and GSK. Most recently he served as the head of Oncology Genomics at GSK, where he led a team overseeing end-to-end genetics and genomics support for the company's oncology preclinical pipeline.
Tokuwa obtained his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from King’s College London.
Scientific Advisory Board
Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001, where they described conserved pathways of protein complex assembly, and a “periodic table of protein complexes”, using biophysics and data science. After starting work on single cell genomics of T cells, in 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Genome Campus where she was the first and to date only faculty member appointed across both the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. There, she was a founding member of the Sanger-EBI Single Cell Genomics Centre. In 2016, Sarah was appointed as Head of the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and co-founded the international Human Cell Atlas consortium. This initiative creates reference maps for cells across all human tissues, and has grown to include over three thousand members across the world. She also co-directs the CIFAR MacMillan Multiscale Human research programme.
From April 2024, Sarah has taken up the chair in Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Cambridge, Department of Medicine/Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She now also spends part of her time at GlaxoSmithKline, and the startup company she co-founded, EnsoCell Therapeutics.
While maintaining a molecular and biophysics perspective, Sarah’s laboratory has developed and applied experimental and computational approaches for cell atlas technologies to decipher human cells, tissues and organs. A particular focus of hers is how cellular diversity is generated in the immune system and through development. Notable achievements include the first comprehensive reconstruction of the cell interactions in the human placenta in early pregnancy, and the first 3D map of the developing and mature thymus at cellular resolution and full molecular depth. Her work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the EMBO Gold Medal, Genetics Society Mary Lyons Award, Biochemical Society GlaxoSmithKline Award, the FEBS|EMBO Women in Science Award, Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Sciences among others. She is an EMBO Member, ISCB Fellow, International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal Society.
Andrea Califano is the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and also holds appointments in the Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, Biomedical Informatics, and Medicine. He just stepped down from his positions as Founding Chair of the Department of Systems Biology and Director of the Columbia Genome Center, to take a new role as the President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York.
In 1986, after completing a doctoral thesis in physics at the University of Florence, Italy, Dr. Califano joined the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, where, in 1997, he became program director of the IBM Computational Biology Center. In 2000, he co-founded First Genetic Trust Inc. to pursue translational genomics research. Finally, he joined Columbia in 2003.
Dr. Califano is an internationally recognized pioneer in the reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks and in their analysis to systematically and efficiently identify key tumor checkpoint modules, whose aberrant activity is necessary for tumor viability. This has resulted in several clinical trials, including a very innovative N-of-1 study where patients affected by 14 untreatable, lethal cancers are analyzed on an individual basis to prioritize optimal therapeutic strategies, including both single drugs and drug combinations.
Dr. Califano is very active nationally, serving on numerous editorial and scientific advisory boards, including the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, The MIT Koch Cancer Center, Cancer Genetics Inc., and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., among others. He has served as Chair or Co-chair of many international conferences and meetings, including the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR); the RECOMB-ISCB Conference on Regulatory and Systems Genomics, with DREAM Challenges; Keystone Conferences; as well as several special conferences of the AACR on genomics and cancer systems biology.
He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the AACR, ISCB, AAAS, and IEEE, recipient of the 2015 and 2022 NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (R35), the 2019 Ruth Leff prize in pancreatic cancer research, and the 2023 Alfred G. Knudson prize in Cancer Genetics.
He is also the Co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of DarwinHealth Inc.
Caroline Uhler is a core institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she directs the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center and is a member of the Scientific Leadership Team. She is also the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT.
Caroline’s research lies at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and genomics, with a particular focus on causal inference, representation learning, and gene regulation. Caroline is recognized as a creative and innovative researcher and teacher at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and biology. She is a SIAM Fellow, a Fellow of the IMS, a Sloan Research Fellow, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. In addition, she has received multiple awards including an NIH New Innovator Award, a Simons Investigator Award, and an NSF Career Award. Caroline holds an M.Sc. in mathematics, a B.Sc. in biology, and an M.Ed., all from the University of Zurich. She obtained her Ph.D. in statistics from UC Berkeley and then spent three years as an assistant professor at IST Austria before joining the faculty at MIT in 2015.
Fabrice André, MD, PhD, received his MD in Paris in 2002, and a PhD in Biotechnology from Paris University in 2005. He is a medical oncologist working at Gustave Roussy and taking care of patients presenting a breast cancer.
He is a past recipient of Career Development Awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and Outstanding Investigator in Breast Cancer Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He is currently Head of Research Division, and Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology.
His research work in the field of biomarkers and personalised therapies focuses on biomarker discovery, development of targeted agents and implementation of personalised medicine. His team includes 80 people working on basic sciences, bioinformatics, biotechnologies and clinical research. He is also leading phase I-III trials testing targeted agents in the field of breast cancer and large national trials testing implementation of high throughput technologies in the health care system.
Professor André has published more than 300 peer reviewed papers, including papers in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Medicine, as main author.
Professor André is the Chair of the National Cancer Precision Medicine Center PRISM and was a member of several scientific committees for international meetings, including SABCS, AACR, ECCO, ESMO, and IMPAKT.
Professor André is currently President of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). He has been a member of the Annals of Oncology Editorial Board (2010-2013), Associate Editor since 2014 and Editor-in-Chief 2017-2023.
He was the first Chair of the ESMO Young Oncologist Committee, served as Coordinator (2012-2014) and member (since 2015) of the ESMO Breast Cancer Faculty. Professor André was also a member of the ESMO Cancer Research Faculty, 2012- 2014; Chair of the ESMO Translational Research and Precision Medicine Working Group (end 2019), and member since 2020. He is also a member of the ESMO Council. He was the Scientific Co-Chair of the ESMO 2022 Congress and the MAP Congress.
Professor Jakob Kather holds dual appointments in medicine and computer science at the Technical University (TU) Dresden, Germany, serves as a senior physician in medical oncology at the University Hospital Dresden and holds an additional affiliation with the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) in Heidelberg. His research is focused on applying artificial intelligence in precision oncology. Prof. Kather’s research team at TU Dresden is using deep learning techniques to analyze a spectrum of clinical data, including histopathology, radiology images, textual records, and multimodal datasets. Guided by the belief that medical and tech expertise needs to be combined, medical researchers in his team learn computer programming and data analysis, while computer scientists are immersed in cancer biology and oncology. Prof. Kather chairs the “Working group on Artificial Intelligence” at the German Society of Hematology and Oncology (DGHO) and is a member of the pathology task force of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). His work is supported by numerous European and national grants, which enable the team to develop new deep learning methods for medical data analysis techniques and to apply them in precision oncology.
John Connolly, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), where he designs and executes PICI’s overall research strategy in close collaboration with the institute’s leadership team, center directors and scientific steering committee.
As a human immunologist, his research interests focus on immune monitoring and immunometabolism. Dr. Connolly previously served as CSO of Tessa Therapeutics, a clinical stage cell therapy company focused on solid tumor immunotherapy, and one of PICI’s strategic partners. He is an associate professor at National University of Singapore and an adjunct associate professor of Immunology at Baylor University, where he served on the Board of Governors for the Institute of Biomedical Sciences.
He is also a senior principal investigator and director for translational immunology at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IMCB) A*Star. Additionally, Dr. Connolly serves as director for the IMPACT Program, a multi-disciplinary national initiative focused building cell therapy manufacturing, clinical and regulatory capability for Singapore.
Dr. Connolly received his PhD in Immunology from Dartmouth Medical School and studied human dendritic cell biology under Dr. Michael Fanger. During this time he was involved in the development of immunotherapeutic preclinical models and clinical trials for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). He moved to the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, a fully translational research institute dedicated to rationally designed vaccines against cancer and infectious disease. Dr. Connolly served as the director of Research Initiatives for the Baylor Research Institute, leading a large integrated translational research resource and multi-institutional programs that involved a number of international sites. During his tenure at Baylor, he was the central core facility director of the NIAID Centers for Translational Research on Human Immunology and Biodefense, an NIH-funded consortium of basic, translational research and clinical trials focused on vaccine design. Dr. Connolly is the past president of the Board of Directors of The American Cancer Society in N. Texas and founding director of the Singapore Immunology Network’s Immunomonitoring Platform.
Nikolaus Rajewsky is a globally recognized leader in Systems Biology, renowned for groundbreaking work on the role of RNA in regulating gene expression in health and disease. His research blends cutting-edge experimental biology, biochemistry, and data science, including machine learning. He has pioneered single-cell and spatial biology approaches, applying them to human tissues and advanced model systems to better understand, predict, and intercept disease trajectories.
In 2008 he founded and since then chaired/directs the "Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology" (MDC-BIMSB) as a strategic expansion of the MDC. He chaired the international recruitment of ~30 group leaders at BIMSB. MDC-BIMSB scientists use a combination of innovative experimental and computational approaches to understand and integrate different levels of gene regulation, ranging from DNA 3D conformation to cell-cell communication. Rajewsky and colleagues have built an interdisciplinary environment where these multi-scale insights are frequently translated into new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, often in collaboration with the Charité Hospital.
His work has earned him global recognition, and a h-index of 92 with over 80,000 citations (“Highly cited researcher”, Clarivate). He delivered hundreds of invited lectures, including 19 keynotes in the past five years. He is an elected member of EMBO, the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), and the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He has received the most prestigious German Research award, the “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award”.
Regina Barzilay is a School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of AI & Health in the Department of Computer Science and the AI Faculty Lead at MIT Jameel Clinic. She develops machine learning methods for drug discovery and clinical AI. In the past, she worked on natural language processing. Her research has been recognized with the MacArthur Fellowship, an NSF Career Award, and the AAAI Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity. Regina is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
Strategic advisors
Michael Schnall-Levin is the Chief Technology Officer of 10x Genomics. Before joining 10x Genomics, Michael was a NSF postdoctoral fellow with Eric Lander at the Broad Institute, where he worked on developing novel applications of DNA sequencing technologies. Prior to that, Michael worked at Foundation Medicine, where he developed some of the early algorithms to accurately detect mutations in patient tumor samples. Michael earned his Ph.D in Mathematics from MIT with Bonnie Berger, where he was both a Hertz fellow and NDSEG fellow, and his B.A. in Physics from Harvard College.
Thomas Clozel is a visionary entrepreneur and oncologist, co-founder of Owkin, a pioneering scientific AGI startup that leverages machine learning to enhance medical research. His work focuses on bridging the gap between advanced technology and healthcare to revolutionize the way we understand and treat diseases.
Thomas Wolf is the co-founder of Hugging Face and Chief Science Officer. An expert programmer, he previously worked programming open-source software that make complex research accessible, creating the Transformers and Datasets libraries.
Beyond his technical achievements, Thomas Wolf is a passionate advocate for a more open, collaborative, and ethical approach to AI development. He actively promotes the principles of open science, encouraging the sharing of models, data, and research to accelerate progress for everyone. His vision has been central to establishing Hugging Face not just as a company, but as a central hub for the machine learning community, shaping a future where advanced AI is accessible, transparent, and built by a global collective of contributors
