Alex Zhavoronkov

Alex Zhavoronkov (born Aleksandrs Zavoronkovs) and, as of 2024, is the director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, a UK-based think-tank for aging research. Zhavoronkov has published a substantial number of papers, and books including The Ageless Generation: How Advances in Biomedicine Will Transform the Global Economy.

Biography Early life, education, and career Born in Latvia, He received a master's degree in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University, , he was an adjunct professor of artificial intelligence at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Zhavoronkov was named as a co-inventor on a patent issued in May 2013 for "systems and methods for communicating with a computer using brain activity patterns".

AI and medical research In 2014, Zhavoronkov began work towards using "massive data sets and Al to significantly speed up the drug discovery process", and established Insilico at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis were early investors in Zhavoronkov's efforts.

In 2022, Zhavoronkov participated in a round of financing for Insilico Medicine that raised $60 million for the venture. Zhavoronkov asserted at the time that the industry was "in 'biotechnology winter' where many companies are running out of cash and are dying", and that his fundraising was positioning the company for a coming "biotech spring".

In June 2023, Zhavoronkov led Insilico's development of what he described as "the first fully generative AI drug to reach human clinical trials, and specifically Phase II trials with patients". In 2024, he moved the headquarters of the company to Boston, Massachusetts.

Other AI and internet activities In 2016, Zhavoronkov was the chief science officer for Beauty.AI, an artificial intelligence technology that evaluate people's external appearance through certain algorithms. In this role, he responded to concerns about ethnic bias in results generated by the platform by attributing them to a lack of data provided to it.

In 2022, Zhavoronkov was an author of a paper titled Rapamycin in the context of Pascal's Wager: generative pre-trained transformer perspective, which was described as one of the first peer-reviewed published papers to formally credit ChatGPT as a coauthor. Zhavoronkov reported that when he asked ChatGPT itself whether it should be named as a coauthor, "it responded with multiple compelling reasons as to why it should not".

Publications Since 2010, Zhavoronkov has authored or co-authored over 250 scientific articles published in refereed journals and referenced in PubMed.

Books

Articles Zhavoronkov, A., et al., "Deep learning enables rapid identification of potent DDR1 kinase inhibitors", Nature Biotechnology 37 (9) (2019), p. 1038-1040.