Norman Goodacre
Oakland,CA
Summary
Architecting the intersection of structural biology and generative AI. I leverage decades of expertise in protein-protein interactions as well as single cell modeling to build first-principles ML models for therapeutic discovery and, ultimately, synthetic biology.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
Work History
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Xaira Therapeutics
04.2024 - Current
- Architected machine learning workflows for generative protein modeling and structure prediction in a therapeutic discovery setting.
- Integrated generative ML approaches with molecular dynamics simulations to explore protein conformational landscapes for the majority of drug targets
- Led synthetic training data generation and model distillation efforts on difficult biological targets.
- Contributed expertise in single-cell modeling for virtual cell initiative
- Managed team of two engineers and one molecular dynamics scientist
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Orion Biomedicines (later Xaira Therapeutics)
10.2023 - 04.2024
- Helped establish machine learning infrastructure and modeling strategies during early company formation.
- Developed workflows integrating protein modeling systems with internal discovery pipelines.
- Collaborated with ML researchers and computational scientists to evaluate emerging modeling approaches for therapeutic design.
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Interline Therapeutics
11.2021 - 10.2023
- Designed computational systems for modeling protein interaction networks associated with disease genetics.
- Built scalable pipelines for protein complex modeling, structural prediction, and interaction analysis.
- Applied ML-enabled structural modeling approaches to problems such as short linear interaction motifs (SLiMs) and E3 ligase targeting.
Senior Data Scientist / Data Scientist
3T Biosciences
06.2018 - 11.2021
- Built entire computational infrastructure supporting an early-stage TCR-T immunotherapy platform.
- Developed pipelines spanning yeast display screening, protein interaction prediction, NGS-based protein engineering workflows, and single-cell RNA-seq analysis.
- Integrated experimental and computational datasets to guide therapeutic discovery programs.
- Was essential "gatekeeper" of all computational processes and data
ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
05.2015 - 05.2018
- Developed the Reference Viral Database (rVDB) to improve detection of viral contaminants in biologics manufacturing.
- Designed sequence models for identifying previously unannotated endogenous retroviral elements.
- Created computational tools used in regulatory evaluation of vaccine production systems.
Education
PhD Bioinformatics - Biochemistry / Bioinformatics
Georgetown University
Washington, DC2014
MPhil Computational Biology -
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK2007
BS Biology With Biotech Concentration -
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA2005
Skills
- Extremely creative and resourceful veteran of SF tech world (~8 years) with a passion for trailblazing work, driven by curiosity and exploration
- Machine Learning Architecture for Biology: model selection, generative protein modeling, training data strategy and evaluation
- ML Approaches: transformers / protein language models, diffusion and flow-based generative models, graph neural networks, structure prediction systems
- Computational Infrastructure: Python, Nextflow, AWS / scalable compute, ML research pipelines
Languages
English (Native)
French (Advanced)
German (Advanced)
Timeline
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Xaira Therapeutics
04.2024 - Current
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Orion Biomedicines (later Xaira Therapeutics)
10.2023 - 04.2024
Principal Bioinformatics Scientist
Interline Therapeutics
11.2021 - 10.2023
Senior Data Scientist / Data Scientist
3T Biosciences
06.2018 - 11.2021
ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
05.2015 - 05.2018
PhD Bioinformatics - Biochemistry / Bioinformatics
Georgetown University
MPhil Computational Biology -
University of Cambridge
BS Biology With Biotech Concentration -
George Mason University