BigHat Biosciences

We welcome Michelle Gaus, Brendan Mullaney, and Glori Marie Roman! Glori joins BigHat’s as Scientist I, Molecular Biology. Glori Roman, PhD, is a chemical biologist with specialized expertise in antibody engineering and protein characterization. She obtained her BS in Chemistry from the @uprm and then moved to Nebraska to pursue her graduate degree at the @UNLincoln, where she focused on engineering diagnostic antibodies and biosensors using cutting-edge techniques such as non-canonical amino acid incorporation. At 23andMe, she made significant contributions to optimizing and developing assays for the selection of antibodies for the company’s pipeline, as well as advancements in bispecific antibody engineering and development. Brendan Mullaney joins as Director, Scientific Software Product. Brendan is a scientist and software product manager with a background in clinical genomics, cancer diagnostics, scientific software development and neuroscience. He earned his B.A. in Neuroscience from @JohnsHopkins, his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from @UCSF and completed a postdoc at @UCBerkeley. Brendan previously held leadership roles in software product management at @GrailBio and @Invitae. Michelle joins as BigHat's new Senior Manager of People Operations. Michelle is an HR professional with over nine years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, specializing in performance management, employee relations, and HR operations. With a data-driven approach and a strong focus on fostering a high-performance culture, Michelle works to enhance productivity and align HR strategies with business goals. She is passionate about continuous professional development and values creating workspaces where all employees can thrive. Michelle holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from @MarquetteU and is a certified SHRM-CP. Welcome to the team, Brendan, Michelle and Glori! bighatbio.com/about

We’re thrilled to share that @ryan_henrici, our VP of Discovery Medicine, has been selected as a recipient of @penn_state's 2025 Alumni Achievement Award! This prestigious honor celebrates Ryan’s exceptional contributions to science and medicine—from his early academic achievements to his transformative work here at BigHat Biosciences, where he’s advancing the frontier of AI-driven antibody discovery and development. Ryan’s leadership and passion continue to inspire us as we push the boundaries of therapeutic innovation. We’re proud to have him on the BigHat team.

We are excited to share an important leadership update at BigHat Biosciences. @peytongreenside has stepped into the role of CEO, bringing deep scientific expertise, strategic vision, and a strong commitment to our mission to develop better biologics through ML-guided design. We also want to express our sincere gratitude to @MarkDePristo – his leadership and partnership have been instrumental in shaping BigHat into what it is today. We look forward to his continued support as an advisor in this next chapter. Read more here: bighatbio.com/news/bighats-n…

BigHat’s machine learning team is excited to share its latest paper, in collaboration with the Gordon Wilson Lab at @nyuniversity, “Bayesian Optimization of Antibodies Informed by a Generative Model of Evolving Sequences,” which was accepted for publication at the prestigious International Conference on Learning Representations (@iclr_conf). This work aims to model the natural antibody affinity maturation process to guide Bayesian optimization of synthetic antibodies. This is accomplished by building large language models of putative clonal families of antibody sequences and then combining these models with BigHat-generated lab data to design mutations which improve both binding and stability. This work builds on the contributions of @AlanNawzadAmin, @gruver_nate, @KuangYilun, and Lily Le from @andrewgwils's lab, as well as @peytongreenside, Hunter Elliott, Aniruddh Raghu, and Calvin McCarter at BigHat. Access to the paper can be found at arxiv.org/abs/2412.07763

Hunter Elliott (Sr. Director, Machine Learning) will give his invited talk “Generative and Predictive Machine Learning for Iterative Multi-Objective Therapeutic Antibody Optimization” at the Biologic Summit 2025 in San Diego on January 15, 2025. In this talk, Hunter explores how BigHat's innovative Milliner™ platform seamlessly integrates predictive and generative models with high-throughput wet labs to address complex protein engineering challenges in antibody therapeutics. He will share several case studies showcasing novel predictive and generative ML methods deployed on Milliner™ to solve real-world therapeutic engineering problems. #HunterElliott28992" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">biologicsummit.com/predicting-bio…

BigHat is excited to kick off 2025 with a productive @jpmorgan Healthcare Conference 2025! On Tuesday, January 14, 2025 our CEO, @MarkDePristo, will speak on the Next in Tech Bio | Computational Strategies for Drug Discovery panel (⏰ 7:00PM @ 📍 Benchling) and CBO, Liz Schwarzbach, is thrilled to be hosting an Executive Roundtable at @WuXi_AppTec's #WuXiGlobalForum (⏰ 1:30PM @📍Continental Ballrooms (4-6) | Hilton Union Square) wxpress.wuxiapptec.com/detail/927/wux… We can’t wait to see you there! 👋

This holiday we’re thankful for the expertise and hard work of our talented employees, advisors, partners, board of directors and investors. Please know we appreciate each and every one of your contributions. Thank you for being a BigHatter! BigHat Biosciences will be completely shut down over the holidays, starting December 23rd, in order to foster a healthy work environment. We will reopen on December 30th, 2024, fully committed to advancing our mission of developing better biologics faster through ML-guided design. Wishing you a healthy and happy new year, The BigHat Team

BigHat’s VP of Discovery Medicine, @ryan_henrici, will be giving his invited talk "Machine Learning-guided Design of Logic Gated and Avidity-driven T Cell Engagers for Solid Malignancies” at the @AntibodyEngIC Conference on December 17th at 11 AM PST in San Diego. The talk will cover how machine learning supports efficient T cell engager (TCE) design to target co-expressed tumor antigens while sparing healthy tissues, even at high receptor densities. This approach integrates AI/ML with rapid wet-lab validation to advance safer and more effective therapies for solid tumors. Join the session to explore how data-driven methods are improving TCE development: lnkd.in/gFKs7-Fb In addition, Ryan shared his insights with AE&T last week into his journey from medical training to leading cutting-edge antibody engineering at BigHat, all fueled by a mission to create safer therapies. To watch the full interview: lnkd.in/gzGsyZzV

Hunter Elliott, BigHat’s Sr. Director of Machine Learning, as well as @AlanNawzadAmin, from the @andrewgwils lab at @nyuniversity, will be presenting a paper titled, “Bayesian Optimization of Antibodies Informed by a Generative Model of Evolving Sequences” at the @NeurIPSConf 2024 AIDrugX workshop, in Vancouver from December 10-15 This work aims to model the natural antibody affinity maturation process to guide Bayesian optimization of synthetic antibodies. This is accomplished by building large language models of putative clonal families of antibody sequences and then combining these models with BigHat-generated lab data to design mutations which improve both binding and stability. Read paper: openreview.net/pdf?id=BMiHsF6… Conference: neurips.cc Workshop: sites.google.com/view/newmodali…

We welcome Sebastian Ober, Fah Sathirapongsasuti and Nicholas Young. Sebastian joins BigHat’s Machine Learning team as Senior Machine Learning Scientist I. Sebastian will focus on improving BigHat’s integration of multimodal experimental data in Bayesian Optimization for antibody design. Sebastian completed his PhD in the Machine Learning Group at @Cambridge_Uni , where he focused on representing uncertainty in deep learning and active learning. Prior to that, he completed his undergraduate and Masters degree in engineering, also at Cambridge. Before joining BigHat, Sebastian worked at @AstraZeneca and @SecondmindAI. Fah Sathirapongsasuti joins as BigHat's new Senior Director of Data Science. Fah brings over a decade of biopharma experience, specializing in computational biology for target and drug discovery. At @23andMe's Therapeutics Division, Fah was a founding scientist and pioneered the use of human genetics for drug target identification and prioritization. He has also led bioinformatics and data science teams as Director of Bioinformatics, Genetic Medicine at @MedGenomeLabs and Director of Computational Biology at @AlloyTx, focusing on data organization and tool development for next-generation therapeutics. Fah holds a PhD in Biostatistics from @Harvard and BS/MS degrees in Mathematical and Computational Science/Computer Science from @Stanford. Nicholas Young joins as Scientist I, to our External Programs. Nick will be performing and developing assays to support our internal and partnered programs. Nicholas is a chemical biologist with an interest in dissecting sequence-function landscapes of proteins. During his graduate work, he developed methods for the high-throughput screening and functional characterization of proteases, small molecules, and antibodies. He earned his PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from the @UCSF, and a BS in Chemistry from the @penn_state. In addition, Nicholas previously worked as a Postbaccalaureate Fellow at the @NIMHgov and as a Protein Biochemistry Intern at Denali Therapeutics. Welcome to the team, Nicholas, Fah and Sebastian! bighatbio.com/about

BigHat Biosciences is featured in @statnews today’s “Who to Know: 7 companies to watch in AI protein design.” Read more about our work and how we’re advancing the field of next-generation biologics: statnews.com/2024/11/05/who…

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that BigHat is developing a best-in-class ADC that combines our cutting-edge ML-guided antibody design platform with @Synaffix B.V. (“Synaffix”), a @LonzaGroup company’s (SWX:LONN) site-specific linker-payload technology. With these next-gen ADCs, we are excited to improve patient outcomes and deliver safer and more effective therapies to patients in need. Learn more about this license agreement and its potential impact: bighatbio.com/news/lonzas-sy…

Noelle Huskey, Principal Scientist, Translational Research at BigHat, will give her invited talk, “Functional and in vivo validation of next generation antibodies designed with a machine learning-driven synthetic biology platform” at the 16th annual Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit (PEGS) Europe, in Barcelona, Spain on November 5, 2024. In this talk, Noelle will explain how BigHat leverages cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies combined with advanced synthetic biology methods to design safer, more effective antibody therapies for patients suffering from today’s most intractable diseases. #NoelleHuskey" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">pegsummiteurope.com/optimisation-d… #PEGSEurope

We welcome Taylor, Richard and Hector! Richard Gavan joins us as a Senior Software Engineer I, Lab Systems. Richard will play a key role in developing innovative software solutions for our Lab Systems team, collaborating across science and engineering to accelerate the design and testing of therapeutic antibodies. Richard Gavan is a software engineer with extensive experience in full-stack development, bioinformatics, and life sciences solutions. Before joining BigHat, he co-founded and served as the CTO at Eucalyptus Bio, where he built the software and IT infrastructure from the ground up, including a CRISPR therapeutic design platform and an NGS analysis pipeline. Previously, as a Solutions Architect at @Perficient, he developed systems for clinical data warehousing and analytics. Richard holds an MSc in Computer Science from @GeorgiaTech and a BA in Philosophy and Psychology from @UCSB. His diverse expertise drives innovation at the intersection of software engineering and biotechnology. Taylor Skokan joins us as Scientist I to the translational research team. Taylor will be supporting our internal portfolio of next-gen therapeutic antibody programs, bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our mission. Taylor received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the @UCSF. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training at @Harvard and @pfizer Centers for Therapeutic Innovation. Taylor’s work has centered around regeneration and disorders associated with tissue injury and inflammation, spanning diverse biological systems. Hector Franco joins BigHat as a Senior Research Associate as part of the Display Technologies team. At BigHat, Hector will contribute to our naive discovery efforts and will generate data to help power our machine learning models. Hector Franco is a @ucsc graduate with a diverse and well-rounded background in biotechnology. His expertise spans across multiple disciplines, including CLIA laboratory operations, antibody engineering, next-generation sequencing (NGS), and tissue culture. He has multiple years of phage display experience as he was part of the antibody engineering team at @TwistBioscience and most recently at Dextera. Welcome to the team, Taylor, Richard and Hector! bighatbio.com/about

@peytongreenside, BigHat’s Co-founder & CSO, will be speaking at @a16zBioHealth BUILD 2024 on AI’s role in shaping the future of biology. She will highlight how BigHat leverages cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies combined with advanced synthetic biology methods to design safer, more effective antibody therapies for patients suffering from today’s most intractable diseases. 🗓 October 10 | 10:50–11:20 A.M. MT 💡 AI’s Next Frontier in Biology 📍 Featuring: - @vijaypande | General Partner, @a16z - Edward Chang | CEO and Co-founder, Echo Neurotechnologies and Professor of Neurological Surgery, @UCSF - @peytongreenside | Co-founder & CSO, BigHat Biosciences a16z.com/events/bioheal…

We’re excited to share that Liz Schwarzbach, CBO of BigHat Biosciences, will be participating in a panel at Tough Tech Week 2024, titled Partnering for Speed & Progress in Human Health. In this discussion, Liz will draw on her experience to highlight how partnerships are essential in driving biotech innovation. The panel will explore the vital role of collaborations between startups, venture capital, and large pharmaceutical companies in overcoming challenges such as regulatory hurdles and navigating clinical trials. Liz will be joined by industry leaders Stacy Coen (CBO, ImmunoGen) and Rachel Sha (CEO, @Vaxess) on the panel, which will be moderated by Ann DeWitt, General Partner at @engineventures. 💡 Panel Discussion: Partnering for Speed & Progress in Human Health 🗓 October 08 | 2:00 P.M. ET 📍 Location: Tough Tech Week 2024 [Boston/Cambridge, MA] toughtechweek.xyz

We’re thrilled to announce that Charbel Eid, VP of Platform at BigHat Biosciences, will be giving an invited talk at the upcoming @LRIG_ORG event! Charbel will be sharing insights into how BigHat is revolutionizing the development of next-generation antibody therapeutics through AI-guided design. He’ll dive into the power of BigHat’s Milliner™ platform, which integrates a cutting-edge, high-speed wet lab with AI/ML to accelerate antibody discovery and optimization. To register: lrig.org/chapters/bay-a…