DeepMind vet vqctran leaves after 10 years to co-found biology AI startup Polyphron
infoxiao · x · 2026-09-18
After 10 years at Google/DeepMind, researcher vqctran has left to co-found Polyphron with Matthew Osman and Fabio Zbinden. The startup aims to train frontier models that autonomously explore and physically reproduce human tissue biology — growing tissues realistic enough to match human drug responses and restore organ function when transplanted. Yi Tay penned a warm farewell, and vqctran shared his meta-lesson: the more directly you optimize your end goal, the better the outcome.
Related event: Ex-DeepMind researcher founds Polyphron to model human tissue(3 posts)→
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