Dazhi Tan

Discovering drugs at the intersection of experiment, computation, and AI.

Greater Boston

About

• Innovative scientist with a deep understanding of the structures, dynamics and functions of proteins and nucleic acids. • Interdisciplinary background spanning biochemistry, structural biology, and computational biology. • Research experience in both academic and industry settings

Experience

  • 4:59 NewCo, a 5AM Ventures Company ()
    • VP, Computational Chemistry
      Jun 2025 - Present · 1 yr 2 mos

    • Head of Computational Chemistry
      Jan 2024 - May 2025 · 1 yr 5 mos

  • BAKX Therapeutics (2 yrs 1 mo)
    • Senior Director, Head of Computational Drug Discovery
      Nov 2022 - Jul 2023 · 9 mos

      • Chief architect of the company’s high-throughput cloud computing infrastructure. • Lead developer of proprietary, fully-automated free-energy calculation engine (AutoFEP), as well as 10+ other MD simulation and quantum chemistry applications. • Co-developed MolRepX, a physics-augmented, deep-learning-based molecular descriptor for training highly accurate predicative models as well as intelligent and steerable generative models. • Spearheaded the development of a web-based graphic portal for all computational chemistry and AIDD applications to democratize the usage of computational tools within the entire company. • Designed the company’s programmatic compound and assay data management workflows and served as the administrator of the experimental and computational databases. • Supervised two PhD-level computational scientists to expand the computational platform and provide day-to-day support for internal programs. • Created the computation-driven TurboDesign compound ideation and triaging workflow, and coordinated across different functional teams and CROs to ensure its efficient operation. • Formulated early corporate strategies on computation and chemistry, and continued engaging in subsequent key decision-making as part of the research leadership team. • Interfaced with 20+ VC investors to primarily pitch the company’s computational capabilities during Series-A fund-raising.

    • Director, Lead of Computational Drug Discovery
      Jul 2021 - Oct 2022 · 1 yr 4 mos

  • Reverie Labs ()
    • Head of Computational Chemistry
      Jan 2021 - Jun 2021 · 6 mos

    • Principal Computational Chemist
      Apr 2020 - Jan 2021 · 10 mos

  • Silicon Therapeutics (Roivant Discovery) (2 yrs 8 mos)
    • Principal Investigator
      Jun 2019 - Apr 2020 · 11 mos

      - Project lead of an exploratory innate immune-oncology (IO) program. - Led the computational and structural biology work of two flag-ship small-molecule IO drug discovery programs from the very beginning to the pre-IND and lead-optimization (LO) stages, respectively. - Primary developer of proprietary scientific software packages covering a wide range of computational chemistry tasks such as quantum mechanical calculation, force-field parameterization, MD simulation, free-energy perturbation (FEP) calculations, and virtual screening. - Mentored a junior modeler and a structural biologist. Organizational knowledge leader in the field of computational structural biology.

    • Senior Investigator
      Sep 2017 - May 2019 · 1 yr 9 mos

  • Research Fellow at D. E. Shaw Research
    Jul 2014 - Sep 2017 · 3 yrs 3 mos

    I successfully developed more accurate computational models (i.e. force fields) for the molecular dynamics simulations of nucleic acids as well as protein-nucleic acid complexes.