Erika Alden DeBenedictis
I’m a computational physicist and molecular biologist. I’m interested in solving big problems using evolution.
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. I’ve also worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Sandia National Laboratories, Dropbox, and D. E. Shaw Research.
Top of the mind: A essay I wrote about the future of predictive models in biology, and a podcast where I talk about starting a lab.
Check out a rundown of my past projects.
Most recently
Pioneer Labs
I am the CEO of Pioneer Labs, a nonprofit startup engineering microbes for Mars.
The Biodesign Laboratory
I run an academic lab at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK. We use Robotics-Accelerated Evolution to push the limits of biotech for use on Earth and in Space.
The academic lab is closing by 2027, and projects are moving into Pioneer Labs.
Align to Innovate
I founded Align to Innovate, a nonprofit on a mission to improve life science research through programmable experiments. Our first program was the Bioautomation Challenge, a grant program that offers academics access to fully-programmable cloud labs.