Google’s Dave Burke joins Arc as first Chief Technology Officer
At Arc, we're working to solve important challenges in biomedicine by combining fundamental insights from curiosity-driven science with goal-oriented engineering at industrial scale. We believe that important new scientific programs will be enabled by such an organizational model, where AI and biology can be integrated to reveal hidden patterns in living systems, opening up new frontiers in our understanding of complex disease.
To advance this vision, Dave Burke is joining us today as Chief Technology Officer. He will lead our engineering efforts across computational technology development and machine learning to progress our understanding of biology.
Dave joins us following a decade-long tenure as Vice President of Engineering for Google’s Android division, where he was instrumental in building and launching new technologies that reach billions of people. His technical leadership, combined with his PhD in biomedical engineering and longstanding interest in biomedicine, makes him distinctly suited to advance Arc's vision of merging cutting-edge computation with experimental life sciences research. Alongside his role at Arc, Dave will continue to advise on special projects at Google.
"AI-enabled biology is at an inflection point, with the potential for exponential acceleration over the next decade," said Dr. Burke. "The real unlock comes from bringing together multidisciplinary experts under one roof. I'm excited to join the world class team of scientists and engineers at Arc Institute to advance the frontiers of scientific understanding and applications.”
At Arc, Dave will be central to expanding the computational exploration that underpins our research. He’ll begin by spearheading efforts to build a computational model of the cell—a collaborative, institute-wide initiative that could transform how we predict and generate healthy and diseased cellular states. It’s just one of the projects he’ll lead to apply machine learning to create new ways to understand the interplay of environmental and genetic disease risk factors, and ultimately help us identify new and effective treatment avenues.
"We're tackling questions that have challenged scientists for a long time," said Dr. Silvana Konermann, Arc Co-Founder, Executive Director, and Core Investigator. ”By combining experimental biology with advanced computation, we can transform how we research and eventually treat or prevent complex diseases like Alzheimer’s. Dave's leadership will help us build the capabilities needed to unlock these breakthroughs."
"Experimentation with living cells and organisms means that testing a single hypothesis can take months to years of lab work," said Dr. Patrick Hsu, Arc Co-Founder and Core Investigator. "At Arc, we hope to accelerate this process by simulating dynamic biological responses with AI. We look forward to Dave applying his product development leadership to engineer biology at scale.”