Erika Alden DeBenedictis

I’m a computational physicist and molecular biologist. I’m interested in solving big problems using evolution. Today I’m a serial founder supported by The Astera Institute’s Residency program.

I received a PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT in 2021 and a BS in Computer Science from Caltech in 2014. I did a postdoc in David Baker’s Lab, where I worked on machine learning for protein design, and ran an academic lab at the Francis Crick Institute in London. I’ve also worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Sandia National Laboratories, Dropbox, and D. E. Shaw Research.

Top of the mind: An interview where I talk about the origins of life.