Our Team

Aadyot is a machine learning scientist who develops and uses a broad suite of state-of-the-art modeling techniques to better design and understand proteins. Before joining Profluent, Aadyot worked on AI research at both Salesforce and Caltech, where he led and contributed to numerous high-impact publications and open source projects.

Adeline is passionate about providing lab automation solutions to scientists that improve workflow efficiency, scalability, supports high-quality data generation. Prior to joining Profluent, Adeline has built new automation labs from ground up and led the development of high throughput workflows at leading genetic medicine and cell therapy companies such as Sangamo Therapeutics and Kite Pharma (Gilead).

Alex leads a research lab at the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington, and serves an advisory role to the Experimental Biology team at Profluent. He has 18 years of experience in molecular biology research, and has been working to understand mechanisms of diverse CRISPR-Cas systems since 2016.

Alex uses cutting-edge machine learning models to design proteins with new functions. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from UC San Diego, in which he published research on computational metalloprotein design, and he uses his expertise of both protein biochemistry and computational protein design to engineer diverse proteins for therapeutic applications

Ali is relentlessly focused on any 1-2 major items that enable Profluent to accelerate and unlock positive impact. He is a machine learning researcher by background with a PhD from UC Berkeley. Ali loves building startups with previous experience as a founder and early employee. Leading up to Profluent, Ali was the architect of the ProGen moonshot at Salesforce AI Research demonstrating to the world that large language models (LLMs) can generate functional protein sequences from scratch.

Andrew brings over a decade of expertise, from Zymergen to Ginkgo Bioworks, in developing innovative software solutions for genomics, blending a passion for bioinformatics with cutting-edge engineering. He has delivered transformative projects, including the creation of DNA design pipelines, optimizing compute and data infrastructure, and creating flexible tools for data tracking and analysis.

Anthony is focused on the general engineering efforts around the training and inference portions of Profluent's machine learning models. Prior to Profluent, Anthony worked at Meta as a software engineer building scalable, reliable systems. He then pivoted to the more biology side of things, working as a researcher in a genetics lab, focused on understanding the role of non coding regions in the DNA using machine learning.

Blair leads the development of platforms for the discovery and characterization of novel gene editing tools. Prior to joining Profluent he worked at Epicrispr Bio, a leading epigenetic editing biotech. Blair is passionate about building the tools to bring next-generation therapies to patients. He received his training at UC Berkeley and UCSF, where he studied gene regulation in development and disease.

Eleanor is committed to bringing state-of-the-art software technology to the scientific community. Drawing from her chemistry background at UChicago and Stanford, she combines expertise in life sciences and software to fuel biotech innovation.

Emily works on the Therapeutic Translation team focusing on protein characterization and assay development. Prior to Profluent, Emily's passion for fungal ecology allowed her to work in various settings from the rainforests in Puerto Rico to Oregon vineyards. She received her B.S. and M.S. in biology at the University of Oregon.

Gabriella is a biochemist and biophysicist motivated by protein engineering. Throughout her career she has researched the structure-function of disease-relevant enzymes, ranging from the telomerase RNP in her undergraduate studies at UCSC, receptor tyrosine kinases and their dug resistance mechanisms in her PhD at UCSF, to now CRISPR protein therapeutics at Profluent.

Hilary leads all aspects of business development in her role as Chief Business Officer of Profluent. She is a rare disease patient-advocate passionate about developing next-generation genetic medicines, with more than a decade driving partnerships at leading gene editing companies including Editas, Vor, and Tome. Hilary received her PhD from Duke University and completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School / Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Janice is a curiosity-driven researcher focused on addressing biological challenges and questions through rigorous experimentation and the development of innovative platforms. She brings a diverse range of experience, from drug discovery at BioMarin to high-throughput strain engineering using cutting-edge automation solutions at Zymergen.

Jeff’s goal is to leverage all of nature’s protein design experiments to build a programmable toolkit for solving societal challenges. While studying molecular biophysics at Johns Hopkins, Jeff developed the first machine learning models for antibody structure prediction, as well as the first antibody-specific language models.

Jennifer is an experienced researcher, excited to discover and test new proteins for novel functions. With a proven track record of leading innovative projects and contributing to patented breakthroughs such as at Zymergen, she brings technical expertise, creativity, and a collaborative spirit to her work.

Joe is excited to be leading a team of collaborative, insightful and, honestly, just plain awesome researchers, who are solving challenging protein engineering problems using cutting edge experimental approaches and state of the art laboratory automation. Prior to joining Profluent, Joe spent over 10 years engineering microbial systems for biomanufacturing at Zymergen and UC Berkeley, resulting in a number of patents, peer reviewed papers and commercial ready assets for partners and clients.

Joel is a machine learning engineer at Profluent and is excited about building systems that support building state of the art machine learning models and using those models to develop high impact proteins. Joel has over 5 years experience in the machine learning for therapeutics industry, such as Roivant Sciences, and has a background in chemistry and physics from Harvard.

Jordan brings ML designed proteins to life. From his 6 years of synthetic biology experience at Zymergen, Jordan has developed biologically sourced solutions for industries spanning agriculture, oncology, and plastic recycling.

Joseph is responsible for the design and development of Profluent’s brand, having crafted all iterations and ensuring its continuous evolution. He brings a myriad of experience with him from design agencies of varied size and clientele that continue to inform his work, including VaynerMedia, TinyWins, and Nihilo.

Lisa is passionate about unraveling the molecular mechanisms of gene editors through cutting-edge biophysical chemistry and structural biology techniques. Lisa majored in Biochemistry at Grinnell College in Iowa and got her PhD at UC Berkeley in Molecular Cell Biology in the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology.

Matt is developing computational methods to discover the next generation of gene editing tools by decoding massive metagenomic datasets. He earned his PhD from UCSF, where his research in the Bondy-Denomy lab focused on bacterial defense systems and contributed to the DARPA Safe Genes program for developing anti-CRISPRs. He is a co-inventor on patents for these anti-CRISPRs, filed in conjunction with Berkeley and the Doudna Lab.

Melvin is responsible for overseeing and optimizing the day-to-day operations of an organization, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and alignment with strategic goals. He has a rare combination of cross-functional experience at early-stage startups and Fortune 500 companies, where he provided design and interface coding expertise to AI researchers on various research projects and product prototypes. Before Profluent, Melvin was an early employee at MetaMind (funded by Khosla Ventures) which Salesforce acquired to lead the launch of its internal AI research lab.

Michael is passionate about connecting disparate data sources and empowering scientists to accelerate discoveries. Through a decade of experience building scalable web apps, data infrastructure, and bioinformatics pipelines at Zymergen, Impossible Foods, and now Profluent Bio, Michael has helped pioneering biotech companies transform how they collect, analyse, and leverage their data.

Nathan is enthusiastic about advancing genome editing technologies for therapeutic applications through innovative molecular engineering and screening approaches. Trained in Erik Sontheimer's lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and now a scientist on the biology team Profluent, he brings deep expertise in CRISPR-Cas9 technologies, RNA therapeutics and molecular biology.

Peter is passionate about advancing the boundaries of genetic medicine and is the VP of gene editing at Profluent. With over a decade of experience in the field at institutions such as Caribou Biosciences and Scripps Research Institute, Peter has spearheaded technology development campaigns centered around CRISPR activity, specificity, and delivery. His contributions have resulted in high-impact publications, numerous patents, and technologies currently advancing in early-stage clinical trials.

Rachel turns robots into the backstage crew of science, training them to reach their full potential to help humans free their hands. With experience at Thermo Fisher and Samsung Biologics, Rachel has spearheaded transformative projects in assay development, high-throughput screening, and therapeutic production, impacting advancements in automation.

Riffat is part of the biology research team. She conducts laboratory experiments, collects and analyzes data, and contributes to ongoing research projects. Riffat was previously at NASA Ames Research Center and Inscripta.

Sam leads Technology Development at Profluent, bridging biology, automation, informatics, and machine learning to create innovative solutions. Passionate about helping teams develop new processes and unravel complex biological phenomena, he thrives at the intersection of science and technology. Sam was previously at Amyris and the Berkeley National Lab where he spearheaded advancements in protein, strain, and process development within biological manufacturing.

Sarthak Jain is passionate about designing cutting edge machine learning models for biomolecules. He was previously part of Amazon Research working on foundation models for text and have published high impact studies in field of ML interpretability.

Stephen Nayfach leads Bioinformatics at Profluent Bio, where his team builds a platform for the curation of large-scale evolutionary and lab-generated data, enabling natural discovery and powering machine learning models. He holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from UCSF and was previously a Research Scientist at the Joint Genome Institute. During his career, he has contributed to pioneering research and developed impactful tools that have advanced microbial data science, metagenomics, and genome editing.

Yasmeen is all about making things happen, striving to ensure Profluent and it's people are set up for success. With over a decade of experience in various supporting operations roles at Docusign, Tapjoy, and Upsight, she uses her experience to tackle challenges with a unique people-first approach.