Meet the team
Core Investigators
Arc Core Investigators are fully funded with complete freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research agendas. They may also hold faculty positions at our partner institutions - Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCSF.
Executive Director and Core Investigator
Silvana Konermann
Silvana is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford. Her research laboratory aims to understand the molecular pathways that drive the development of Alzheimer’s disease using next-generation functional genomics, with the long-term goal of developing rationally targeted therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from MIT. Silvana’s pioneering work on tools to directly perturb the transcriptomic landscape of the cell using CRISPR has been recognized by her faculty appointment as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and Hanna Gray Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Cofounder and Core Investigator
Patrick Hsu
Patrick Hsu is Co-Founder of the Arc Institute and Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Deb Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. The Hsu lab works at the intersection of biology, engineering, and AI to develop technologies for biological programming and design. Patrick received A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and the Broad Institute, where he was an early pioneer of CRISPR-Cas9 technologies for genome editing. His research has been recognized by MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35, the Amgen Young Investigator Award, Forbes' 30 Under 30, the NIH Early Independence Award, and the Rainwater Prize for Innovative Early Career Scientist.
Core Investigator
Lingyin Li
Lingyin Li is an Associate Professor in the Biochemistry Department and the ChEM-H institute at Stanford. She received her Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Dr. Laura Kiessling and performed postdoctoral studies with Dr. Timothy Mitchison at Harvard Medical School. The Li Laboratory has pioneered the development of chemical tools to define and manipulate new modulators of the innate immune STING pathway. Dr. Li is the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award in 2017, the Ono Pharma Foundation Breakthrough Science Initiative Award in 2017, and the 2022 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.
Core Investigator
Luke Gilbert
Luke Gilbert is an Associate Professor of Urology and of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, and is affiliated with the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Innovative Genomics Institute. He received his Ph.D. from MIT and completed his postdoctoral training at UCSF. Dr. Gilbert was an early pioneer in applying CRISPR technology to edit the epigenome (CRISPRi and CRISPRa), and continues to develop new strategies for editing and understanding human genetics and epigenetics at large scale, with a particular focus on cancer. Dr. Gilbert’s research has been recognized by a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Pew-Stewart scholar for cancer research award, and the AAAS Martin and Rose Wachtel Cancer research award.
Core Investigator
Hani Goodarzi
Hani received his Ph.D. in quantitative and computational biology at Princeton University. He is an Associate Professor for the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He has received the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise and the AACR-MPM Transformative Cancer Research Award. He is also a past recipient of the Martin and Rose Wachtel Award in Cancer Research and an American Cancer Society scholar. Hani has led his own research group at UCSF since 2016, working at the intersection of machine learning and cancer biology. His team brings together a mix of students and researchers across a range of backgrounds and experiences to tackle fundamental challenges facing life sciences. In a number of studies, his lab has used computational tools to show how RNA-encoded information is over-written by cancer cells to drive pathological progression of this disease. These discoveries have uncovered new ways through which we can target human cancers.
Science Fellows
Arc Science Fellows are outstanding early career scientists who have the vision and exceptional track record to transition into a principal investigator role directly after doctoral training.
Science Fellow
Jingtian Zhou
Jingtian recently received his Ph.D. through the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology program at the University of California, San Diego, where he was supervised by Joseph Ecker at the Salk Institute. During his PhD, he explored the gene regulatory landscape of the mammalian brain through large-scale, integrative analysis of multimodal single-cell omics measurements. His research has charted epigenomic atlases of the human and mouse brain, and contributed to our understanding of how neuronal epigenomics directs brain connectivity. At Arc, Jingtian will develop single-cell multi-omics technologies and computational tools for quantitative modeling of gene expression dynamics to deepen our understanding of the complex regulatory networks governing brain function and disease.
Technology Centers
Arc Technology Centers are biotech-like R&D hubs that focus on technology invention, refinement, and benchmarking in five technological areas: Multi-Omics, Genome Engineering, Cellular Models, Mammalian Models and Computation. In parallel, they partner with our Core Investigators and their labs to unlock new discoveries across human complex diseases. You can learn more about our Technology Centers here.
MULTI-OMICS
Nianzhen Li
Nianzhen leads Arc’s Multi-Omic Technology Center. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Iowa State University followed by post-doctoral research in Bioengineering at University of Washington. She started her career at Fluxion Biosciences and has held various leadership positions at Fluidigm, Mission Bio, and Deepcell.
Operations
The Arc Operations team provides the necessary infrastructure and support so that our scientists have the space to focus on tackling their most important ideas.
Board member
Nat Friedman
Nat was the CEO of GitHub and the cofounder and CEO of Xamarin (acquired by Microsoft). Nat also cofounded the GNOME Foundation, an organization to support the GNOME project goals of an open source computing platform.
COO
Alden Woodrow
Alden leads operations at Arc. He has built teams and technologies in various industries including energy, aerospace, and transportation. Previously Alden held product management roles at Nuro, Uber, Google, Makani, and was the co-founder and CEO of Ike.
General Counsel
Julia Kazaks
Julia leads the legal team at Arc. She brings leadership experience from public company executive roles and two decades of work at Skadden.
University Relations & Academic Affairs
Lynn Hendrickson
Lynn leads university partnerships for the Institute. Previous to Arc, Lynn held roles at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Addgene, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
BRAND & COMMUNICATIONS
Jessica Adkins
Jessica leads brand, as well as external and internal communicatons at Arc. She brings extensive experience from the consumer products and health industries, including AB InBev and Amy's Kitchen.
Systems
Nicolle Seuss
Nicolle leads operations projects across operational systems at the Institute. She comes from Director roles at two Fortune 100 Insurance carriers.
Finance
Rose Harris
Rose leads finance operations for the Institute. Formerly, Rose worked in the healthcare sector, most recently as a Vice President at Aetna.
People
Therese Costello
Therese is the Head of People at Arc Institute. She spent the last decade company building at mission driven organizations, including Good Eggs and most recently Collective Health.
Talent Acquisition
Sarah Logia
Sarah leads our talent acquisition team and efforts to recruit innovative scientists to Arc Institute. Her recruiting leadership experience spans start ups to big tech with roles in NextRoll, Airbnb and Meta.