Ex-DeepMind researcher co-founds Polyphron to train RL models that grow human tissue
vqctran · x · 2026-09-17
After 10 years at Google, researcher vqctran has left Google DeepMind to co-found Polyphron with Matthew Osman and Fabio Zehnder. The startup trains frontier models to autonomously explore, understand and physically reproduce human tissue biology, with the grand vision of growing tissues realistic enough to match human drug responses and restore organ function when transplanted. He frames the company as one giant RL problem — propose a tissue growth recipe, sample life itself, reward directly against tissue functionality — arguing that 'the more directly you can optimize your end goal, the better' is a lesson missed in drug discovery and computational biology. The team is hiring AI and life scientists in NYC.
Related event: Ex-DeepMind researcher leaves after 10 years to co-found Polyphron(2 posts)→
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