TechBio Leadership: The Origin of Species

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I. What’s in a Name?

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TechBio is a relatively new industry categorization. The epithet reflects the decisive incursion of computation into the drug discovery and development process. The philosophical basis of TechBio resides in the intent to radically enhance the efficiency of drug discovery (e.g., target identification) and development (e.g., patient selection and trial design). Data Science and AI can be combined in various ways to create novel and increasingly precise algorithms, as well as enhanced/novel datasets, to bring new medicines to market and address unmet patient needs.

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II. Anthropology - The Position in Context

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From an organizational perspective, the term Chief Technical Officer in TechBio can cover a multitude of sins, depending on the industry segment, the stage of a company's development, and the structure/scientific emphasis of the individual platform. In the leadership of TechBio companies, there's a need for an integrated dual understanding of biology and/or chemistry and computation/data science in order to create a meaningfully differentiated product in the marketplace. The cultural content and underlying values of this new type of company are also polyglot. Generally speaking, Tech is product-driven, focused on short-term revenues, and largely unencumbered by regulation. Biotech is patient-focused and characterized by long lead times to market. It manifests a high risk of failure deriving from the basic complexity of biology and the multiple nuances of regulatory approval. TechBio's success requires intellectual and pragmatic accommodation at the board and executive levels.

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II. Job Structure and Pedigree

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Head of R&D, or to a hybrid CTO/CSO officer. In terms of training, one major phenotype will have a PhD in Physics, Computer Science, or Mathematics, but will remain light on formal training in the life sciences. Often, the understanding of biology/chemistry among this phenotype is largely self-taught. With the obverse version (deriving from the laboratory side of things), formal education comes in the form of a PhD in the life sciences, but this academic lineage is often attached to a person who is broadly intellectually curious and spiritually open to the Brave New World of AIDD. In this case, the computational side is often self-taught.

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III. Career Path to CTO - A Mixed Bag

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A. The Present   

The career path to CTO is thus varied and can start on either side of the functional chart, in information technology or in R&D. Examples described below include prominent TechBio executives who have bridged the subject matter/expertise gap in various ways.

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B. The Future

While there are currently two common species of career path, we see the bifocal functional expertise and cultural flexibility essential for a successful CTO career coming in an increasingly structured fashion, either in an evolved form of dual degree program or some newly and consciously developed synthetic curriculum. We find ourselves still a half step away from the full manifestation of this chimeric pedagogy. The current attention on and demand for an interdisciplinary frame of reference are satisfied in various ways. Thus, somebody wanting a technical career in AIDD can enroll in a degree program in subjects like bioinformatics and computational biology, combining scientific training in life sciences with technical training in computer science.

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IV. Real Life Portraits

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BEN BIRNBAUM

CO-FOUNDER OF INDUCTIVE BIO 

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As a youth, Ben manifested substantial vocational interest in physics and biology, but driven by intellectual curiosity, pivoted as an undergraduate to computer science. He resolutely pursued the subject to a PhD level.

His early career was anchored by an assignment for Google before a transition to Flatiron Health, a decision that decisively moved him in the direction of healthcare. Ben founded the company’s first machine learning team and made major contributions to the success of this digital health leader, which is now part of Roche, before leaving to pursue entrepreneurial dreams.

He is currently the co-founder of a seed-stage Comp Chem start-up with his co-founder/business partner, who is the CEO.

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IYA KHALIL

VP/HEAD OF DATA, AI, GENOME SCIENCES AT MERCK & CO.

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Iya got into Biology by way of Physics and to Pharma through entrepreneurship. This daughter of immigrants originally sought an academic career in perhaps the most intellectually dense and willfully abstract of all the sciences: Theoretical Physics. Through a graduate school classmate, she encountered the beauty of biology. This exposure inspired her to buy and read cover to cover the canonical textbook in this new branch of science. Thus began her quest to master her adopted subject.

Instead of pursuing roles in Strategic Consulting or Financial Services firms, the two most aggressive sectors in the quest for mathematical talent at the time, Iya joined her former grad school colleague, Colin Hill, in starting GNS, a tech vendor to Pharma.

Her desire for end-to-end involvement in the R&D arena led her to Novartis in a leadership role, which applied AI across the functions, and then to her current role at Merck & Co., where she finds herself univocally embedded in the Translation and Early Development functions.

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LINDSAY EDWARDS

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT RELATION THERAPEUTICS

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Lindsay provides the example of someone who came from life sciences and creatively and decisively moved into computing. His early experiences were not, however, scientific and gave further insight into the creativity often inherent to the path to CTO.

A professional musician and programmer who morphed into a serious bicyclist, Lindsay worked as a professional cycling coach (and writer), an experience which inspired a committed interest in Physiology, resulting in a PhD from Oxford in the subject.

After five years as a career academic, he embraced the pharmaceutical industry, where he migrated through a series of crossover positions before being recruited by Relation, a genuine TechBio. At Relation, he reports directly to the CEO and supervises the tech platform and all computational science. He has a peer on the R&D side.

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SERGEI YAKNEEN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT ISOMORPHIC LABS

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Sergei had an early developed interest in computing. His career began in Canada and was that of a traditional IT professional. Sergei came to build and lead large software engineering teams for the likes of Amazon. Though he had doctors on both sides of his family, Sergei's inspiration for being drawn to the subject of medicine was not genetics but manifested instead when a family member succumbed to cancer.

Sergei then shifted his focus from a pure computing career to the possibilities of using computing for more precise diagnosis and more effective treatment of this disease. In largely self-taught OTJ fashion, he grew his understanding of the life sciences, augmented by a PhD in genomics at Heidelberg.

In his current role, he reports to the President of Isomorphic Labs, where he and his team are developing and applying frontier AI to reimagine and advance the drug design process to unlock deeper scientific insights, faster breakthroughs, and life-changing medicines.‍

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Interested in discussing your TechBio recruiting and leadership needs? Contact us today

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