Vijay Satyanand Pande is a
Trinidadian-American venture capitalist. Pande is the former director of the biophysics program and is best known for orchestrating the
distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
disease research project known as
Folding@home
Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a volunteer computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements ...
.
His research is focused on distributed computing and computer-modelling of
microbiology
Microbiology () is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being unicellular (single cell), multicellular (cell colony), or acellular (lacking cells). Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, prot ...
and on improving computer simulations regarding drug-binding,
protein design
Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function. Proteins can be designed from scratch (''de novo'' design) or by making calcula ...
, and synthetic bio-mimetic polymers.
Pande became the ninth general partner at
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
in November 2015. He is the founding investor of their Bio + Health Fund.
Career
Pande is an Adjunct Professor of
Bioengineering
Biological engineering or
bioengineering is the application of principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically-viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number o ...
at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. Previously, he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
and Professor of
structural biology
Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, and as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every le ...
and of Computer Science. He was also director of the
Biophysics
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...
program.
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
CRISPR () (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments of bacte ...
company co-founded by 2020
Nobel Laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
Jennifer Doudna
Jennifer Anne Doudna (; born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a ...
. He has also been a founder and advisor to startups in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
.
Globavir Biosciences, Inc.
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
Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...
and
dengue fever
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms typically begin three to fourteen days after infection. These may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characterist ...
.
Pande Lab at Stanford University
Pande founded the Pande Lab at Stanford University. The lab brings together researchers from many departments, including
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
, Computer Science, Structural Biology,
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
, Biophysics, and Biochemistry.
Distributed computing
Dr. Pande is the founder of the Folding@home research project.
The
protein-folding computer simulations from the Folding@home project is said to be "quantitatively" comparable to real-world experimental results. The method for this yield has been called a "holy grail" in
computational biology
Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...
.
The Folding@home project was recognized by the
Guinness Book of World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
in 2007 as the most powerful distributed computing network in the world.
Pande directed the
Genome@home
Genome@home was a volunteer computing project run by Stefan Larson of Stanford University, and a sister project to Folding@home. Its goal was protein design and its applications, which had implications in many fields including medicine. Genome@ho ...
project with the goal to understand the nature of
genes
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
and
proteins
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
by
virtually
In mathematics, especially in the area of abstract algebra that studies infinite groups, the adverb virtually is used to modify a property so that it need only hold for a subgroup of finite index. Given a property P, the group ''G'' is said to b ...
designing new forms of them. Genome@home started to close as early as March 2004,
after accumulating a large database of protein sequences.
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.
Stanford Bitcoin Group and Bitcoin Mafia
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
Ryan Breslow is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and chairman of Bolt, a one-click checkout technology company; a co-founder of Eco, a digital cryptocurrency platform; a co-founder of Love, a crypto pharmaceutical startup, and the ...
, a founder of
Cognito, a developer at
Coinbase
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headquar ...
and then
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
, and a developer at
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
.
Early Life and education
Pande graduated from
Langley High School's class of 1988 while growing up in
McLean, Virginia
McLean ( ) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. McLean is home to many diplomats, military, members of Congress, and high-ranking government officials partially due to its proxim ...
. In 1992, Pande received his
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
.
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
awarded him a
PhD in 1995.
While in high school, Pande won fourth place in the 1988
Westinghouse Science Talent Search
Westinghouse may refer to:
Businesses Current companies
*Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees:
**Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services
**Westinghou ...
for a computer simulation of a space-based
ballistic missile defense
Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception, and also the destruction of attacking missiles. Conceived as a defense against nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), ...
.
After graduating from high school in 1988, Pande worked briefly at the
video game development
Video game development (or gamedev) is the process of developing a video game. The effort is undertaken by a developer, ranging from a single person to an international team dispersed across the globe. Development of traditional commercial PC a ...
company
Naughty Dog
Naughty Dog, LLC (formerly JAM Software, Inc.) is an American first-party video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. Gav ...
in the early 1990s in his late teens, serving as a co-programmer and designer on their 1991 release, ''
Rings of Power
The Rings of Power are magical artefacts in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, most prominently in his high fantasy novel ''The Lord of the Rings''. The One Ring first appeared as a plot device, a magic ring in Tolkien's children's fantasy nove ...
''. While Pande was attending MIT and Naughty Dog was based in Boston, he played the secret boss character in the
3DO fighting game
''Way of the Warrior''.
He is married, has two children and likes cats.
Awards
In 2002, he was named a Frederick E. Terman Fellow and an award recipient of
MIT's TR100
The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com
...
. The following year, he was awarded the Henry and Camile Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award.
In 2004, he received a Technovator award from Global Indus Technovators in its Biotech/Med/Healthcare category.
In 2006, Pande was awarded the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from
the Protein Society
The Protein Society is an international, not-for-profit, scholarly society with the mission to provide forums for the advancement of research into protein structure, function, design and applications.
History
It was founded in 1986, with the lea ...
. In 2008, he was named "Netxplorateur of 2008".
Also in 2008 he was given the Thomas Kuhn Paradigm Shift Award and became a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Pande received the 2012
Michael and Kate Bárány Award
The Michael and Kate Bárány Award for Young Investigators from the Biophysical Society in Rockville, Maryland, "recognizes an outstanding contribution to biophysics by a person who has not achieved the rank of full professor." The award was es ...
for developing computational models for protein and RNA.
He is the second person to ever win both the "Protein Society Young Investigator Award" and "Biophysical Society Young Investigator" award. In 2015, Pande received the
DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences, as well as the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Distinguished Chair in Chemistry.
References
Bibliography
* Ramsundar, Bharath (2019)
Deep Learning for the Life Sciences : Applying Deep Learning to Genomics, Microscopy, Drug Discovery, and More Peter Eastman, Patrick Walters, Vijay Pande (First edition ed.).
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...
, Inc.
* Pande, Vijay (2012). ''Physical chemistry principles'' (Second edition ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
* ''An introduction to Markov State Models and their application to long timescale molecular simulation''. Gregory R. Bowman, Vijay Pande, Frank Noé. Dordrecht. 2014.
Springer
Springer or springers may refer to:
Publishers
* Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag.
** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
.
* Grosberg, A. IU. (1994). ''Statistical physics of macromolecules''. A. R. Khokhlov. New York:
AIP Press.
External links
Folding@home websiteProfessor Pande's Stanford Faculty PageProfessor Pande’s Google Scholar PageInterview of PandeVijay S. Pandeat
MobyGames
MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pande, Vijay S.
1970 births
American biophysicists
American people of Indian descent
Living people
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
People from McLean, Virginia
Princeton University alumni
Stanford University Department of Chemistry faculty
Stanford University School of Engineering faculty
Stanford University School of Medicine faculty
American video game programmers
Naughty Dog people
Andreessen Horowitz
Scientists from Virginia