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Vijay S. Pande

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Vijay S. Pande
A portrait of Vijay Pande, looking straight ahead. His ethnicity is Indian. He has medium-length black hair, black-rim glasses, and a short mustache and beard. He is wearing a blue polo shirt under a black suit coat.
Pande in 2012
Born
Trinidad
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materLangley High School
Princeton University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of California, Berkeley
Known forFolding@home, Genome@home
AwardsBárány Award (2012)
DeLano Award (2015)
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry, computational biology, molecular biology
InstitutionsStanford University
Academic advisorsPhilip Anderson, Daniel S. Rokhsar
Notable studentsJeremy England
Websitea16z.com/author/vijay-pande/

Vijay Satyanand Pande is a Trinidadian–American scientist and venture capitalist. Pande is best known for orchestrating the distributed computing protein-folding research project known as Folding@home.[1] His research is focused on distributed computing and computer-modelling of microbiology, and on improving computer simulations regarding drug-binding, protein design, and synthetic biomimetic polymers.[2][3] He is currently a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Career

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Pande is an adjunct professor of structural biology at Stanford University. Previously, he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry and professor of structural biology and of computer science. He was also director of the biophysics program.[4]

In 2015, Pande became the ninth general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He is the founding investor of their Bio + Health Fund.[5] Recently, he handed a16z biotech leadership Vineeta Agarwala and moved on to an AI role. However, he may still be involved in the biotech domain given his perspective on the synergies between life science and AI, “In life sciences, the combined existence of large amounts of complex, multimodal data paired with labor-intensive, high cost tasks creates an optimal opportunity for AI to fundamentally change the future of an entire field.”[6][7]

Pande serves on the boards of Apeel Sciences, Bayesian Health, BioAge Labs, Citizen, Devoted Health, Freenome, Insitro, Nautilus Biotechnology, Nobell, Omada Health, Q.bio, and Scribe Therapeutics, a CRISPR company co-founded by 2020 Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna. He has also been a founder and advisor to startups in Silicon Valley.[8]

Pande has written for Time,[9] STAT News,[10] Fortune,[11] and the New York Times,[12] among others.

Globavir Biosciences, Inc.

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In 2014, Pande co-founded Globavir Biosciences, an infectious disease startup addressing antibiotic resistance threats in developed countries as well as needs in viral infections around the world, including Ebola and dengue fever.[5][13]

Pande Lab at Stanford University

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Pande founded the Pande Lab at Stanford University. The lab brings together researchers from many departments, including chemistry, computer science, structural biology, physics, biophysics, and biochemistry.[4]

Distributed computing

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Pande is the founder of the Folding@home research project.[4] The protein-folding computer simulations from the Folding@home project are said to be "quantitatively" comparable to real-world experimental results. The method for this yield has been called a "holy grail" in computational biology.[14][15] Folding@home was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007 as the most powerful distributed computing network in the world.[16]

Pande directed the now-defunct Genome@home project with the goal to understand the nature of genes and proteins by virtually designing new forms of them. Genome@home started to close as early as March 2004,[17] after accumulating a large database of protein sequences.[17][18]

Some of the programs and libraries involved are free software with GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses, but the Folding@home client and core remain proprietary.[19]

Stanford Bitcoin Group and Bitcoin Mafia

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With colleague Balaji Srinivisan, Pande supervised the Stanford Bitcoin Group, a bitcoin research team born of hackathon activities in Pande and Srinvisan’s Stanford CS 184 class. The Stanford Bitcoin Group consisted of seven core members and included Ryan Breslow, a founder of Cognito, a developer at Coinbase and then Netflix, and a developer at Google.[20]

Early life and education

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Pande graduated from Langley High School's class of 1988 while growing up in McLean, Virginia.[21] In 1992, Pande received his B.A. in physics from Princeton University.[2][22] He received a PhD in physics from MIT in 1995.[2]

While in high school, Pande won fourth place in the 1988 Westinghouse Science Talent Search for a computer simulation of a space-based ballistic missile defense.[23]

After graduating from high school in 1988, Pande worked briefly at the video game development company Naughty Dog in the early 1990s while in his late teens, serving as a programmer and designer on their 1991 release Rings of Power.[24][25] While Pande was attending MIT and Naughty Dog was based in Boston, he portrayed the secret boss character in the 3DO fighting game Way of the Warrior.[26]

He is married, has two children and likes cats.[1]

Awards

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In 2002, he was named a Frederick E. Terman Fellow and an award recipient of MIT Technology Review's TR100. The following year, he was awarded the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award.[3] In 2004, he received a Technovator award from Global Indus Technovators in its Biotech/Med/Healthcare category.[27] In 2006, Pande was awarded the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from the Protein Society. In 2008, he was named "Netxplorateur of 2008".[27] Also in 2008 he was given the Thomas Kuhn Paradigm Shift Award and became a Fellow of the American Physical Society.[2] Pande received the 2012 Michael and Kate Bárány Award for developing computational models for proteins and RNA.[2][27] He is the second person to ever win both the "Protein Society Young Investigator Award" and "Biophysical Society Young Investigator" award.[28] In 2015, Pande received the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences, as well as the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Distinguished Chair in Chemistry.[29][30]

References

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  1. ^ a b "The Setup / Vijay Pande". 2011. Archived from the original on 2012-08-01. Retrieved 2012-07-29.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Stanford University - Vijay Pande". Stanford University. 2011. Archived from the original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2011-10-25.
  3. ^ a b "About Me". 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-10-28. Retrieved 2011-10-25.
  4. ^ a b c "Vijay Pande's Profile | Stanford Profiles". profiles.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  5. ^ a b "Andreessen Horowitz Launches $200 Million Biotech Software Fund Led By New Partner Vijay Pande". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2015-11-19. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  6. ^ Philippidis, Alex (2024-01-18). "A16z's Vijay Pande Weighs in on M&A Activity, Obesity Drugs, Gene Editing, and AI". GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. Retrieved 2024-12-16.
  7. ^ "Exclusive: Vijay Pande hands a16z biotech leadership to Vineeta Agarwala, moves to AI role". Endpoints News. Retrieved 2024-12-16.
  8. ^ "Vijay Pande". Andreessen Horowitz. Archived from the original on 2023-02-27. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  9. ^ "To Make a Real Difference in Health Care, AI Will Need to Learn Like We Do". Time. 2023-05-03. Archived from the original on 2023-05-29. Retrieved 2023-05-30.
  10. ^ Pande, Vijay (2020-01-10). "Welcome to the bioengineering culture clash". STAT. Archived from the original on 2023-05-30. Retrieved 2023-05-30.
  11. ^ "A.I. fear-mongering won't make the world a better place, but a less hopeful one". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2023-06-14. Retrieved 2023-06-14.
  12. ^ Pande, Vijay (2018-01-25). "Opinion | Artificial Intelligence's 'Black Box' Is Nothing to Fear". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2023-05-30. Retrieved 2023-05-30.
  13. ^ Loizos, Connie (2015-11-18). "Andreessen Horowitz Gets A New GP, And A New Fund". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  14. ^ G. Bowman; V. Volez & V. S. Pande (2011). "Taming the complexity of protein folding". Current Opinion in Structural Biology. 21 (1): 4–11. doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2010.10.006. PMC 3042729. PMID 21081274.
  15. ^ "Bio-X Stanford University: Vijay Pande". Bio-X Stanford University. 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-10-19. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
  16. ^ Terdiman, Daniel. "Sony's Folding@home project gets Guinness record". CNET. Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2023-03-08.
  17. ^ a b "Genome@home Updates". 2002-03-04. Archived from the original on 2004-04-16. Retrieved 2011-09-05.
  18. ^ Pande Group. "Genome@home FAQ". Stanford University. Archived from the original (FAQ) on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2011-09-05.
  19. ^ "Pande Group Software". Stanford University. 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-05-23. Retrieved 2014-05-21.
  20. ^ Singireddy, Rahul. "The Stanford Bitcoin Mafia". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  21. ^ "Vijay Pande". Facebook. 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
  22. ^ "Vijay Pande". Stanford University. 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-10-21. Retrieved 2011-10-25.
  23. ^ Times, Special to the New York (1988-03-01). "2 in Manhattan School Are Top Science Winners". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
  24. ^ Naughty Dog (1991). Rings of Power (Sega Genesis). Electronic Arts. Scene: Credits.
  25. ^ "Vijay S. Pande". online.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  26. ^ "MobyGames". Archived from the original on 11 August 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  27. ^ a b c Pande Group (2011). "Folding@home - Awards". Stanford University. Archived from the original on 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2011-10-09.
  28. ^ Vijay Pande (June 29, 2012). "Re: Protein Folding Conference (F@h and experiments)". Archived from the original on March 25, 2014. Retrieved June 29, 2012.
  29. ^ "ASBMB News: 2015 ASBMB award winners". Archived from the original on 22 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  30. ^ "Stanford Department of Chemistry Faculty". Stanford University. 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-08-21. Retrieved 2015-07-22.

Bibliography

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