Building a Diverse Workforce for Hypergrowth in Biotech

Synopsis: In this episode of Biotech2050, Vik Bajaj, Co-founder and CEO of Foresite Labs, delves into the convergence of tech and biotech, hyper-growth phases in biotech companies, changes in finance and capital markets, and lessons from global healthcare systems, particularly the UK. He highlights the transformative potential of technology in biotech and the challenges and opportunities of rapid growth. Biography: Vik is the founder and CEO of Foresite Labs, Foresite Capital’s entrepreneurial innovation hub. He is also managing director at Foresite Capital, evaluating and pursuing investments at the intersection of technology and life sciences, including in personalized and precision healthcare. Most recently, Foresite Labs, ARCH Venture Partners, and Dr. David Baker of the UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design teamed up to launch Xaira to deliver transformative medicines by harnessing AI for drug discovery and development. With $1B in funding, Xaira launched with one of the largest biotech funding rounds in history. He is also managing director at Foresite Capital, evaluating and pursuing investments at the intersection of technology and life sciences. Prior to joining Foresite Capital, Vik was the chief scientific officer of GRAIL, a life sciences company working to detect cancer early (acquired by ILMN). He is also the co-founder and former chief scientific officer of Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) and previously served as chair of its scientific advisory board. He is also a Director of Genomics England, an initiative of the United Kingdom’s Department of Health, and is a co-founder and director of numerous biotechnology companies. In the educational realm, Vik currently holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor at the Stanford School of Medicine. He was previously an affiliate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. He also served on the advisory board of the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Vik’s research interests lie at the interface of the physical sciences, engineering, and life sciences, including in the generation and use of large biomedical datasets and new AI/ML methods to productively harness them for product development. In his academic career, he and his collaborators have developed nanotechnology probes for the early detection and molecular imaging of disease, spectroscopic tools for imaging objects on the nanoscale, microfabricated and miniaturized analytical and imaging systems for point-of-care testing, methods and devices that dramatically enhance the sensitivity and specificity of MRI, and new tools for clinical bioinformatics and integrative systems biology. Aspects of this work have been commercialized through several startups. At GRAIL, Vik led laboratory and data science teams at the forefront of industrial cancer genomics and diagnostics development. He holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vik’s scientific and engineering awards include the Anatole Abragam Prize (2012), the R&D 100 Award for the most promising commercialized technologies (2011 and 2013), and the Department of Energy’s LBL Innovation Grant (2013).