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At Gandeeva, we aim to revolutionize the drug discovery paradigm by employing ground-breaking advances in machine learning and cryo-EM imaging to develop precision medicines for our most challenging diseases with unmet needs.
We are an interdisciplinary team with a shared ambition: to use our diverse expertise and combined experience to create precise, effective therapeutics that improve the lives of patients and their caregivers.
We offer a stimulating, diverse, vibrant, and fun company culture that provides meaningful personal and professional growth experiences for all employees. We value your passion, perspective, experience, and ideas.
“My work at Gandeeva Therapeutics is very satisfying, because we’re solving difficult, interesting problems that have a downstream impact on people’s health,” said Abhishek Mukhopadhyay. “We take the protein structures our colleagues generate using cryo-EM and build AI models to predict what changes the protein must undergo to meet our target design objectives, which is a very iterative, complex process. Because of the nature of the data, our methods must be optimized, and we need to work together, breaking big problems into tractable pieces and working across disciplines to find solutions that will ultimately benefit patients.”
Abhishek is Associate Director, Protein Sciences, and leads Gandeeva’s AI and computation team in developing structure-guided protein optimization methods using generative AI. His creative approach leverages the potential of machine learning techniques for drug discovery, a challenge he enjoys for its complexity and cross-functional collaboration.
Abhishek earned his PhD in computational biophysics at Virginia Tech, where he studied the role of water in protein structure and function. He joined Gandeeva in 2022 to direct the development of machine learning tools and methods that enable structure-guided drug discovery.
“When I finished school, I knew that I wanted to work in industry, specifically drug development,” said Gates. “The unique benefit of working at Gandeeva is that I can swivel my chair and ask someone in another research area what they are doing and let that inform what I’m working on; the result is that the process of drug development can happen in days. Because we’re a small team, but also a very friendly team, we can update each other about what we’re working on in real time and move the process along much more quickly than if we were separate and working in a more structured environment.”
Ellen Gates is a biochemist on Gandeeva’s in vitro biology team who spends much of her time preparing compounds and developing or optimizing assays to determine their effectiveness and potency. Her work is a critical piece in Gandeeva’s development cycle: from testing a drug with its target to advanced testing in cellular models to determine a drug’s mechanism of action, she is deeply involved throughout the process.
Ellen always knew she would follow her dad into the sciences; at the University of Saskatchewan, she developed an interest in physiology and pharmacology, following her passion to the Okanagan campus of The University of British Columbia to complete her Master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.
“I wanted to find a role where I can use my knowledge and experience to make a bigger impact on the world, and I feel like using cryo-EM for drug discovery at Gandeeva is an opportunity to do just that,” said Dr. Lyons. “I am really excited to be a part of the highly collaborative process of bringing a drug to market, from setting up our brand new microscopes to developing novel imaging techniques that enable us to solve interesting and complex problems.”
Dr. Bronwyn Lyons is a structural biologist who performs experiments using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM); to collect data to inform our drug development process, she optimizes samples for cryo-EM, then takes millions of snapshots of each sample in order to develop a 3D model that will help Gandeeva’s protein team to narrow their search for key compounds to test further. As a Master’s student at the University of Guelph, she studied x-ray crystallography, and later attended The University of British Columbia to complete her PhD and hone her expertise in crystallography and cryo-EM.
For Bronwyn, working at Gandeeva offers the opportunity to leverage her skills to do meaningful work.
“I was drawn to a career at Gandeeva at first because I have such respect for (CEO) Sriram Subramaniam and his vision,” said Rhodes. “It is wonderful to work with such innovative and creative people in a culture that enables everyone to not just thrive but also to grow.”
Katherine Rhodes is the Senior Operations Manager at Gandeeva Therapeutics. Her day-to-day work ranges from managing significant infrastructure projects, including the renovation of Gandeeva’s 22,000 square-foot head offices and research facilities, to developing processes and systems to support our scientific teams in their work. Katherine’s no-nonsense approach to procurement and facilities management ensures that everyone in the building has what they need to succeed, and that business operations run smoothly.
Katherine joined Gandeeva in 2021 to lead a massive renovation project that included retrofitting the space to accommodate highly technical – and sizeable – research equipment, as well as wet labs, computational space, and room for our administration and operations teams to expand.
