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Our people are at the core of what makes Iso such a unique and exciting place to work. Hear from Isos themselves on why they joined the team, what inspires them, how they relate to our mission and what a day is like at Isomorphic Labs. We are actively recruiting the diverse, inclusive and multidisciplinary team that will redefine drug discovery and realise the promise of digital biology. Please visit here to learn about available roles.
Joanna Yoo, Machine Learning Engineer
“There’s a recognition at Iso that no one knows everything. Whether that’s a colleague teaching us something we don’t know, or reading a paper to get our heads around a subject we aren’t familiar with, everyone acknowledges that we need to keep learning and not just rely on what worked for us in the past. Maybe it sounds like a small thing, but for me, it signals that although we’re working with urgency, it’s okay - and actually mission-critical - to invest time in understanding others’ perspectives. I love, for example, working with our chemists. They see things from a completely different point of view that makes my work even better. This makes Isomorphic Labs stand out from many other companies.”
Lizzie Pinkney, People Partner
“I think about our mission a lot and what we’ll have to do to accomplish it. Everyone came to Iso with so many professional achievements, but completely revolutionising the drug discovery process is something no one has ever done before. There are a ton of questions we hope to be the first to answer, and many questions we don’t even know we need to ask yet. It’s really encouraging to see how much people embrace this uncertainty and stretch outside of their comfort zones. It creates a real sense of community knowing that we’re all in it together.”
Rebecca Paul, Team Leader, Drug Discovery
“One of the most exciting parts of working at Iso is that everyone has a voice. We’ve brought together this incredibly talented team of scientists and engineers and we work closely together in a very collaborative environment, united by our commitment to transform drug discovery. It’s an environment that is buzzing with ideas and innovation. But whether you’re in a senior leadership position or this is your first foray into the drug discovery industry, everyone brings unique skills and creativity. We all have the ability to shape the direction of our future research - it’s an incredibly exciting place to be.”
Benedek Rozemberczki, Research Scientist
“It can sometimes be a bit intimidating meeting people who are at the top of their field. I think there’s a sense - particularly in science and technology - that the most successful people are inaccessible or unapproachable. For me, the really special thing about Iso is that despite having some of the best scientists, technologists, and operations professionals in the world on the team, everyone is incredibly down to earth. Our success really depends on us being able to get the best out of each other, and use our expertise as a group to revolutionise drug discovery. People are really willing to invest in one another - whether it be in their personal relationships or their professional development - and I feel like we’re always helping each other grow.”
Catherine Tong, Research Scientist
“It hasn’t been long since I joined Iso, but already, I love being a part of this team. When we’re in group meetings, everybody is really interested in what you have to say and provides meaningful feedback. That feedback gives me a ton of energy: everybody is focused on the same goal, and even though we're working on different parts of the project and have different backgrounds, we find ways to genuinely collaborate and help each other. It's such a step change from what it was like during my PhD, which at times could be pretty isolating. I just love that feeling and really look forward to the interactions I have with my colleagues.”
Martin Lakatos, Talent Acquisition Coordinator
“I really love that I can be my authentic self at Iso and feel safe. For companies doing hard science, there’s often a perception that comes with it: you have to have a certain background to be successful, or do things a certain way to fit in. It’s not like that here. Iso really wants you to be yourself, and I've found that everyone here is determined to create an inclusive environment. People are kind, and they welcome and respect the differences I bring to Iso. It’s such a weight off my shoulders to know that I have the support of my colleagues and to feel like I belong. At Iso, I know that it’s okay to just be me."
Join us at Isomorphic Labs, where you can build a career while you build a company, and help realise the promise of digital biology.
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Isomorphic Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, today announced the first phase of its management team. The company, established in November, was launched from Alphabet’s DeepMind to build on the success of AlphaFold, DeepMind’s work in protein folding that was heralded as the “Breakthrough of the Year” by Science and “Method of the Year” by Nature in 2021. Isomorphic Labs’ mission is to use AI and machine learning methods to accelerate and improve the drug discovery process. The company is a pioneer in the emerging field of “digital biology” and aims to usher in a new era of biomedical breakthroughs in order to find cures for some of humanity’s most devastating diseases.
The new leaders join founder and acting CEO Demis Hassabis, who is currently serving as CEO of both DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs. Together they comprise a truly multidisciplinary leadership team with expertise in domains across science, engineering, machine learning and business operations that will be needed to achieve the company’s goal of dramatically improving how drugs are discovered and developed. Drug development is currently a lengthy, expensive and high-risk process that is poised to benefit from advances in the application of AI and computational methods. Studies peg the cost of bringing a molecule to market at more than $2.5 billion per drug and timelines approaching a decade; in fact, only about 12 percent of drugs entering clinical trials are ultimately approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“We’re thrilled to announce the formation of our extraordinary multidisciplinary leadership team that will allow us to deliver on our ambition to reimagine the entire drug discovery process from first principles, with an AI-first approach,” said Hassabis. “The phenomenal success of AlphaFold demonstrated the huge impact that AI methods can potentially have on biology, and we plan to build powerful new predictive and generative models of biological phenomena to anticipate how drugs will perform and design novel molecules.”
The new additions to the Isomorphic Labs team include:
Dr. Congreve joins as Chief Scientific Officer from Sosei Heptares in the same role, where he pioneered Structure-Based Drug Design for G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). Previously he was director of chemistry at Astex Pharmaceuticals, helping to establish Fragment-Based Drug Design as a radical new approach to small molecule lead generation, and team leader at GlaxoSmithKline in medicinal chemistry and chemical technologies. In his 28-year career, Dr. Congreve has contributed to the design of 20 clinically evaluated drugs and he is co-inventor of Kisqali® (Ribociclib), a marketed treatment for breast cancers. He is co-author of over 180 publications and patents. In 2015, he was co-recipient of the RSC Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize for the seminal contributions to GPCR drug discovery made by Sosei Heptares. Dr. Congreve has a degree in biological chemistry from Leicester University and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from Cambridge University. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Dr. Yakneen joins as Chief Technology Officer, bringing over 20 years of experience in engineering, machine learning, product, life science, and medical research. Prior to this role he was senior vice president and chief technology officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, where he was responsible for the development and operation of a global AI-based molecular diagnostics and imaging software platform operating in more than 70 countries. He’s held senior roles at Amazon, where he launched the first Canadian software engineering center; at BPS Inc., where he developed a best-in-class Governance, Risk, and Compliance platform; at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, where he led the Technical Working Group of the Pan Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Project, the world’s largest cancer data analysis initiative; and at EMBL where he developed a cloud-based scientific workflow framework. Dr. Yakneen holds a degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Toronto and a PhD in computer science from Heidelberg University, where he developed novel distributed algorithms for analyzing cancer genomes.
Dr. Jaderberg joins as Director of Machine Learning from DeepMind, where he was a research scientist, leading the Open-Ended Learning research team and pioneering numerous algorithms bringing together large-scale deep learning and reinforcement learning to achieve breakthrough results with AI. Prior to that, he was CEO and co-founder of Vision Factory, a company that specialized in image recognition technology with deep learning, which was acquired by Google in 2014 and subsequently became part of DeepMind. He is widely published in the top journals and conferences, with work now part of textbooks. His research interests are in AI, deep learning, reinforcement learning and generative modeling. Dr. Jaderberg completed his undergraduate degree in engineering science at the University of Oxford and his PhD with the Visual Geometry Group at the University of Oxford, where he developed state-of-the-art algorithms for image understanding.
Ms. Richenburg joins as Director of People Operations from Eigen Technologies, where she was senior vice president of people. She is skilled in the development and implementation of innovative people strategies that drive business growth and performance. She has held a variety of human resources roles at companies including Meridian Life Sciences, Bioline and Evotec. Ms. Richenburg is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, medicinal and biological chemistry and earned a master’s degree in human resources management from Oxford Brookes University.
Join us
The company is continuing to scale and is currently seeking talent at various levels with a focus on scientific, engineering and operational roles, along with biologists, medicinal chemists, biophysicists, clinicians, computational scientists, and machine learning experts to contribute to our mission of using AI to accelerate the drug discovery process. For information on open roles, please visit: www.isomorphiclabs.com/join.
Isomorphic Labs is a subsidiary of Alphabet that was launched from Alphabet’s DeepMind in 2021, with headquarters in London. It was founded and is led by AI pioneer Demis Hassabis, who also co-founded and leads DeepMind. As pioneers in digital biology, the company’s mission is to use AI to accelerate drug discovery and ultimately find cures for some of humanity’s most devastating diseases. Using its AI-first approach to drug discovery and biology, the company’s ambition is to advance a new era of medical breakthroughs. For more information, go to www.isomorphiclabs.com.
