A 2026 look at three bio-ML opinions I had in 2024

Summary

Note: I am in San Francisco right now and, in an extraordinary coincidence, I stumbled across two of the people whose work I mention in this article! Very grateful to John Bradshaw for chatting about reaction prediction and Gina El Nesr for chatting about molecular simulation. A second note: while here in SF, I will be co-hosting an event on Friday, Jan 16th, from 6-9pm, w/ Tamarind Bio! It will be at Southern Pacific Brewing, here is the link to the invite. You should come by!IntroductionGenerative ML in chemistry is bottlenecked by synthesisMolecular dynamics data will be essential for the next generation of ML protein modelsWet-lab innovations will lead the AI revolution in biologyThere are two memories that I have to imagine are particularly heartwarming for any parent. One, seeing their child for the first time, and two, gleefully showing photographs of that child to an older version of that child, shouting, look how small you used to be! So small! Do you know how hard I worked to take care of you? You were so difficult! But it’s okay, because you were so, so tiny. I will do something similar to this today. This blog has been operating for the exceptionally long period of 1.7~ years, which means I finally have blog posts that I wrote back in 2024 to resurface, dust off, and proudly present back to you, giving you an update on how things have shifted in the 1~ years since they were written.I will do this for three articles, back when my cover images were stranger:It’s fun looking back at these three in particular, because they all feel intellectually significant. All of them were, essentially, predictions of where the future in a specific subfield of bio-ML may go. The first was the first time I’d ever seriously engaged in the small-molecule design space, the second for the molecular dynamics space, and the third for what are durable startup plays. Each one required multiple conversations with multiple people, many of whom I’d talked to the first time ever, and ...