San Francisco Bay Area
Scientist by training. Founder by vocation. Philosopher at heart. I work at the intersection of AI and synthetic biology to enable humanity to better navigate the design space of biology and unlock novel applications of bioengineering in therapeutics and beyond. Supported by Version One, Draper Associates, Boost VC, Fifty Years (Manifest + 5050), Emergent Ventures, the Residency, Biopunk, NVIDIA Inception and the Foresight Institute. I grew up in rural Ireland in a family of seven. After attaining Ireland's top high school chemistry award, I went to UCC and became the country’s youngest pharmacist, with stints in drug discovery, at the pharmaceutical regulator, and on the clinical frontline. Seduced by the promise of bioengineering to improve human and planetary health, I also pursued a series of research projects including at iGEM, ETH Zurich, and Veraxa. I then pivoted to computational biology for my PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) during the early days of AI in biology, where I combined novel methods in single-cell sequencing with machine learning to uncover cellular differentiation as a driver of tumor evolution. Along the way, I did an MBA, co-founded Nucleate Germany (now the country’s largest student biotech entrepreneurship network), and launched PROMETHEUS, a movement for impact-driven science. I'm also an advisor to the International Pharmaceutical Federation and Cosmic Footprint Society on emerging biotechnologies. I often wonder how I can be most useful given the times I was born into. I believe our species has a far better role to play in the story of life.
Unlocking the design space of biology.
Member of the EMBL International PhD Program (<2% acceptance rate) Advisors: Dr. Wolfgang Huber and Prof. Sascha Dietrich Thesis: Tumor Evolution through Differentiation in B-cell Lymphomas My research spanned single-cell multi-omics, bioinformatics/machine learning, and immuno-oncology, including leading the generation and analysis of the largest single-cell atlas of B-cell lymphomas. This work led to the discovery of cellular differentiation as a central driver of tumor variation, evolution, and response among other publications.
Initiated the German chapter of Nucleate (global biotech entrepreneurship community) with clusters across Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin. It holds regular events about entrepreneurship for life science academic researchers across Germany and an accelerator program every year to help translate discoveries into impact.
The HPRA is Ireland's competent authority for the regulation of medicines, medical devices and other health products. Department: Human Product Authorisation and Registration Section: Pharmaceutical Assessment
Clinical pharmacy internship.