Michael Retchin

Building scientific intelligence. past: founding team @cellaritybio, ML researcher @Cornell, investor @pillar_vc, advisor @nucleateHQ

[Erik Reinertsen, MD, PhD @erikrtn]

The @OpenAI Foundation is hiring a Head of AI for Alzheimer’s. This is a founding role within the Foundation’s life sciences program. You will work closely with the Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases to shape strategy, identify high-potential opportunities, and help deploy significant resources over time into organizations and initiatives that can materially accelerate progress. https://t.co/S0KwgwKxHu

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@ronfleix @orakldotbio @NorrskenVC @singular__ Congrats!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@alazsengul @MartinHuntJr Congrats!

[robin @zebird0]

Four years ago a few of us at a16z started @speedrun to back founders at the earliest stages. A year ago I left to become one.

Today I can share what we’ve been building at LionBio: a nasal spray GLP-1 backed by a $6M pre-seed from SPC.

[lada @ladanuzhna]

Hosting a dinner in NYC Nov 22. Would love to meet people working on new therapeutic modalities, delivery, protein design beyond binders, and target discovery.

Who should I meet?

[Shahram Seyedin-Noor @ShahramSN]

The @CivilizationVC Fellowship Program is back, now in its 7th year!

We've trained 42 of the world's leading #PhDs and #MDs in the art of venture capital and company building, giving them an inside look at how decisions are actually made in venture.

We're now recruiting our #2027 Fellowship class!

Apply here: https://t.co/JNFyIWIvna

Former CV Fellows are now running their own companies as founders, working as investors at the world's top #biotech funds, and influencing public policy!

This is your opportunity. 🚀

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@feynmanpoint Run this eval on humans too. There are egregious chart crimes even in high profile papers!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@ADeAngelis_bio @Bloomberg Congrats!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@ashokaraj_ Congrats!

[lada @ladanuzhna]

Co-hosting a dinner with @kenbwork next Tue (10/27) for folks doing research at the intersection of AI × Bio!

Wish list for topic distribution: gLMs & seq2func, regulatory variant-to-gene mapping, de novo protein/RNA design, AI-guided experimental design & benchmarking models on practical scientific work

Would love to meet more people actively working on these! Reg: https://t.co/IUec4xW18R

[Kenny Workman @kenbwork]

Hiring for Members of Technical Staff to work on rigorous evaluation of AI in biology.

Our mission is to advance humanity's ability to engineer biology. We approach this by understanding and improving AI’s application to biology across basic research, drug discovery, and biosecurity. We are a team of engineers, scientists, and operations specialists who are driven by improving capabilities and interpretability. Some of our work is showcased on https://t.co/r8RSGCNpxA.

About this role
You’ll turn your understanding of a biological domain into a roadmap of benchmarks and design them with engineers. Then build and manage your own scientific team using your network and internal talent infrastructure.

You have
(1) deep scientific expertise and experience using AI tools
(2) or strong coursework in math/CS and experience working with scientists

This is a high-intensity, founder-type role. Our Members of Technical Staff have built companies, run drug programs and scaled complex technical projects.

Projects you might work on
- Design benchmarks with engineers and scientists, from selecting scientific questions and datasets to developing reliable graders.
- Work with engineers on large-scale computing and AI inference infrastructure to evaluate models and investigate their failures.
- Research new methods for evaluating scientific capabilities and measuring improvements from training.
- Work with our internal data generation and drug development teams to build tasks around real experiments and research decisions.

How we work
Our MTS team works in person in Mission Bay, San Francisco. We keep meetings to a minimum and are flexible about when you arrive or leave. Tight deadlines and customer commitments sometimes require late hours.

Our work in use
Frontier AI labs use our benchmarks to assess biological capabilities and safeguards. Our work appears in research announcements and model cards, including:

- https://t.co/UTIloCjBEw
- https://t.co/zhkgJcIJVI
- https://t.co/aAj0QcBlE6
- https://t.co/94kBug3SYv
- https://t.co/RfihFhhwxh

Hiring Process
Our process is typically completed within two weeks.

- Round 1: Introduction
- Round 2: Technical project matching
- Round 3: Take-home evaluation project (~2 hours)
- Round 4: Technical interview / live engineering session (1 hour)
- Round 5: Paid onsite project and presentation (2–3 days) - Offer

Compensation & Benefits
- 350K-500K+ OTE
- Equity
- Unlimited PTO
- Health, dental and vision insurance fully covered
- Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance
- 401(k)
- Office in Mission Bay, San Francisco
- Lunch and dinner provided

Apply at https://t.co/rn4TB3oNZK. Or send an email to kenny[at]latch[dot]bio

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@PrimaMente @nvidia @HannahMadan @ravi_sola Congrats @ravi_sola !

[Jacob Kimmel @jacobkimmel]

we're recruiting a leader for our RNA process & production team @newlimit

this role will have an impact on all the products in our portfolio. you'll explore frontier chemistry, train and lead talented scientists, & shepherd products to the clinic.

DM me if you're interested!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@alexkesin @approvedfm Well deserved!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@rgrchen @amlakhan Congrats!

[Roger Chen :: @rgrchen]

Excited to introduce Onyx and announce our $8M seed round led by Dimension to build a virtual immune system!

Onyx has always been a story of connection. The first connection was to my cofounder @amlakhan, a deeply curious technologist who I’ve been fortunate to call a friend for 19 years now. I've always said that working together was a cornerstone of starting Onyx, and it truly has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Connection is also at the heart of what Onyx does. We believe AI is key to making biological complexity tractable, ultimately transforming life sciences into an engineering discipline. But that requires the right data. AI performance compounds with context, and richer biological context comes from more connected data.

In biology, such context is often missing: molecular data, clinical history, and change over time are typically captured in isolated fragments. Onyx provides the substrate that connects them, pairing genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics with rich clinical histories. By studying these layers together in people over time, our data platform traces how real human biology changes in response to infection, inflammation, and treatment. Seeing how these trajectories differ across people brings us closer to understanding what drives disease—and to developing precision medicines that work better for real people.

Yet connecting data is only possible because of the people who have connected with our mission. Nearly a thousand members have already joined our research studies. They are more than research participants: they are difference-makers transforming how we understand some of humanity’s most complex and chronic diseases. I always say that our work is for people, but the truth is that people make our work possible. That connection comes full circle, and at Onyx, people will always come first.

Finally, as we raised our oversubscribed round, we sought more than just business partners. We wanted investors we felt a true connection to—not merely sources of capital, but co-conspirators in creating meaningful change. To that end, we feel incredibly fortunate to have joined forces with @_DimensionCap, @haystackvc, @refactor, @standard_vc, @robotventures, and many more.

Now back to building!

[Prof. Nikolai Slavov @slavov_n]

A hallucinating AI can be caught.

What happens when AI gives us answers that are useful enough that we stop asking whether the questions, hypotheses and representations are themselves appropriate?

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@katclone @Y_Ryan_Lu Congrats!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@MattyKirsh @EdisonSci @ferment_co congrats!

[Michael Retchin @MichaelRetchin]

@merobiotech @Prof_Oak_ 👏