Gevorg Grigoryan, PhD, is a co-founder and chief technical officer at Generate Biomedicines. He is also a research associate professor of computer science, biological sciences, and chemistry at Dartmouth College. He received two bachelor’s degrees, in computer science and biochemistry, and went on to obtain a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,where he studied computational protein design and modeling of protein interactions. After completing his postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, Gevorg was appointed to the faculty at Dartmouth, where he obtained tenure in 2017.
A hallmark of Gevorg’s approach to science has been multidisciplinarity, combining elements from biology, computer science, chemistry, math, and physics. He is driven by the scientific problem at hand and comfortable crossing disciplinary boundaries to obtain satisfactory solutions. This principle has led him to develop multiple novel technologies and breakthroughs in the field of protein design and modeling, from unprecedented functional molecules to entire new paradigms for designing and reasoning about macro-molecular systems.Prior to co-founding Generate Biomedicines, Gevorg’s research at Dartmouthfocused on understanding the relationship between amino-acid sequence and structure, seeking rigorous ways of inferring principles governing proteinfolding, interaction, and function from data.
The powerful ideas that were discovered suggested a fundamentally new and promising paradigm for the design of macro-molecules that was based on general principles inferred from data. Armed with this new and powerful understanding, Gevorg envisioned the possibility of a company that uses the breakthrough of data-driven protein design, powered by Machine Learning, to transform therapeutic discovery towards a faster, more precise, and less expensive endeavor. Collaborating with colleagues at Flagship Pioneering brought this vision into reality, leading to the founding of Generate Biomedicines. The most enjoyable part of Gevorg’s role as the founding Chief Technology Officer at Generate has been to work with incredibly talented scientist on some of the world’s most challenging problems in molecular and therapeutic science.Gevorg has authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers, including in Nature, Science, PNAS, and other top journals and conferences, and his work has received awards and recognition from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.
