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Careers at Biographica

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🌽 Safeguarding the future of food<br><br>We’re on a mission to accelerate the development of more productive, sustainable, nutritious & climate-resilient food sources. 

How? By building the world’s first ML-driven target discovery platform for crop gene-editing. <br><br>🧬 From drug target discovery to crop target discovery<br><br>While gene-editing of crops is becoming ever more efficient, identifying which genes to edit and how remains a significant challenge. 

To overcome this bottleneck, we use cutting-edge deep learning to accurately and efficiently identify high value genetic targets for crop gene-editing. 

Our approach draws inspiration from recent advancements in the drug discovery space, incorporating LLMs, transformers and graph-based technologies to build a best-in-class discovery platform for plant sciences.<br><br>

About Us

Cecy studied Biological Sciences at Oxford University and has an MSc in ML from Imperial College London, specialising in graph-based biological modelling. At Biographica, Cecy leads strategy and business development, leveraging prior experience in drug manufacturing and supply chain at GSK as well as market access strategy consulting for gene-editing technologies.

Cecily Price

Dom has Masters degrees in Maths and Stem Cell Biology, as well as a PhD in Computational Genomics, from Cambridge. In his PhD, and later as an ML researcher at Relation Therapeutics, Dom applied graph ML to target discovery. He leads platform development at Biographica, drawing inspiration from drug discovery to design efficient target discovery methods for crop gene-editing.

Dominic Hall

Meet the Founders

Gallery

We’re driven by curiosity and clarity. That means asking real questions, challenging assumptions, and changing our minds when the evidence points somewhere new. We care more about learning than being right, and we share what we find along the way.

Seek the truth

Responsibility here is about showing up and making things happen. We take initiative, follow through, and we care about the outcome.

Own it&nbsp;

When something needs doing, we lean in, start small, and learn quickly. Speed matters, but only when it’s directed. We focus on what’s most important, make deliberate trade-offs, and move forward with clarity and purpose.

Act fast with intention

We work as a team, not a collection of individuals. That means helping each other succeed, communicating with honesty and respect, and making space for different voices to shape where we go, to get to the outcomes - for the company and for individuals.

Show up for each other

We’re here to solve real problems, not just ship features. We stay focused on work that makes a difference - ambitious, practical, and grounded in the impact it can have on the world.

Build what matters

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Our Values

<html><head></head><body><h2><span style="font-family: helvetica;">About us</span></h2>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">🌽 Safeguarding the future of food</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Biographica is on a mission to accelerate the development of more productive, sustainable, nutritious &amp; climate-resilient food sources. To achieve this, we're building the world’s first ML-driven target discovery platform for crop gene-editing.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">🧬 From drug target discovery to crop target discovery</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">While gene-editing of crops is becoming ever more efficient, identifying which genes to edit and how remains a significant challenge. To overcome this bottleneck, we use cutting-edge deep learning to accurately and efficiently identify high value genetic targets for crop gene-editing. Our approach draws inspiration from recent advancements in the drug discovery space, incorporating transformers, graphs &amp; causal-ML to build a best-in-class discovery platform for plant sciences.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">👥 Team</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Led by co-founders Dom (CTO) and Cecy (CEO), we are now a team of 10, including 2 ML engineers, 2 data engineers, 3 bioinformaticians. We primarily work together in person from our office in Spitalfields, London, 4 days per week but this role would be based in our new labs in Rothamsted research, Harpenden.</span></p>
<h2><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What we're looking for</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are setting up lab capabilities to generate data for our ML foundation models and experimentally validate our gene ID platform. You will be our first experimental hire, in charge of running daily operations in the lab, establishing and validating required molecular assays and communicating with our computational scientists to design experiments. Your first priorities will be:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">establishing protoplast reporter assays to validate and train our ML models</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">designing experiments for target validation in planta</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Core responsibilities</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Establish and validate protoplast gene expression quantification assay</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experimental design of medium-throughput protoplast reporter assays to validate predictions by Biographica’s ML models</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experimental design and supervision of experiments to evaluate predicted trait improvements in planta</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Data collection to train/fine-tune Biographica’s ML models</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Clear communication with computational scientists about experimental validation and design</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mentoring, guidance and training of more junior lab scientists</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Coordinate with Rothamsted’s horticultural service to ensure healthy plant material for experiments</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Additional responsibilities</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Day-to-day maintenance of lab equipment (we will use Rothamsted services as much as possible to free up time for scientific work)</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Core competencies</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">PhD in Plant Sciences and ≥2 years of PostDoc or industry experience</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Expertise in establishing, validating and troubleshooting protoplast reporter assays</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Expertise in cloning</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Appreciation for the importance of robust experimental design, rigorous data collection and documentation</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ability to communicate across disciplines. We are a machine learning-first company with a team of machine learning engineers, data engineers, computational biologist and bioinformaticians and we all have to find a common language to work on our shared goal of rapid and accurate gene discovery for agricultural traits</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience working with A. thaliana and Maize (or another monocot)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience mentoring more junior lab scientists</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Full professional proficiency in English</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Nice to have competencies</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with ELNs</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with phenotyping</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with collection of large omics data sets (WGS, RNAseq)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with sequencing work (illumina, ONT, pacbio)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with lab licences (e.g. DEFRA), phytosanitary certification and MTAs</span></li>
</ul></body></html>

<h2><span style="font-family: helvetica;">About us</span></h2>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">🌽 Safeguarding the future of food</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Biographica is on a mission to accelerate the development of more productive, sustainable, nutritious &amp; climate-resilient food sources. To achieve this, we're building the world’s first ML-driven target discovery platform for crop gene-editing.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">🧬 From drug target discovery to crop target discovery</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">While gene-editing of crops is becoming ever more efficient, identifying which genes to edit and how remains a significant challenge. To overcome this bottleneck, we use cutting-edge deep learning to accurately and efficiently identify high value genetic targets for crop gene-editing. Our approach draws inspiration from recent advancements in the drug discovery space, incorporating transformers, graphs &amp; causal-ML to build a best-in-class discovery platform for plant sciences.</span></p>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">👥 Team</span></h3>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Led by co-founders Dom (CTO) and Cecy (CEO), we are now a team of 10, including 2 ML engineers, 2 data engineers, 3 bioinformaticians. We primarily work together in person from our office in Spitalfields, London, 4 days per week but this role would be based in our new labs in Rothamsted research, Harpenden.</span></p>
<h2><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What we're looking for</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are setting up lab capabilities to generate data for our ML foundation models and experimentally validate our gene ID platform. You will be our first experimental hire, in charge of running daily operations in the lab, establishing and validating required molecular assays and communicating with our computational scientists to design experiments. Your first priorities will be:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">establishing protoplast reporter assays to validate and train our ML models</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">designing experiments for target validation in planta</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Core responsibilities</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Establish and validate protoplast gene expression quantification assay</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experimental design of medium-throughput protoplast reporter assays to validate predictions by Biographica’s ML models</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experimental design and supervision of experiments to evaluate predicted trait improvements in planta</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Data collection to train/fine-tune Biographica’s ML models</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Clear communication with computational scientists about experimental validation and design</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mentoring, guidance and training of more junior lab scientists</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Coordinate with Rothamsted’s horticultural service to ensure healthy plant material for experiments</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Additional responsibilities</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Day-to-day maintenance of lab equipment (we will use Rothamsted services as much as possible to free up time for scientific work)</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Core competencies</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">PhD in Plant Sciences and ≥2 years of PostDoc or industry experience</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Expertise in establishing, validating and troubleshooting protoplast reporter assays</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Expertise in cloning</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Appreciation for the importance of robust experimental design, rigorous data collection and documentation</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ability to communicate across disciplines. We are a machine learning-first company with a team of machine learning engineers, data engineers, computational biologist and bioinformaticians and we all have to find a common language to work on our shared goal of rapid and accurate gene discovery for agricultural traits</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience working with A. thaliana and Maize (or another monocot)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience mentoring more junior lab scientists</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Full professional proficiency in English</span></li>
</ul>
<h3><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Nice to have competencies</span></h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with ELNs</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with phenotyping</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with collection of large omics data sets (WGS, RNAseq)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with sequencing work (illumina, ONT, pacbio)</span></li>
<li style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Experience with lab licences (e.g. DEFRA), phytosanitary certification and MTAs</span></li>
</ul>