Today, a good smartphone is available for `4,000. This was made possible by the commoditisation of powerful processors and sensors. While this commoditisation and falling prices are doing wonders to consumer electronics, the scientific community is still lagging behind in applying that computing power to ground-breaking research.
Many well-intentioned start-ups and investors tried to change that by investing directly in traditional research, particularly in biotech, and no one saw much of a success. Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wants to change that by investing in software companies that will ‘enable and address’ biotech ideas. And to do that, it has entrusted a $200 million fund to its newest general partner Vijay Pande. Pande has a BA in physics from the Princeton University and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on his thesis under the aegis of Nobel laureate Philip Anderson.
Now as the Chair of Stanford University’s chemistry department, Pande works in chemistry, structural biology and computer science and is popular for using computing for microbiology. His most famous disease research project was the Folding@home distributed computing project, whose results and methodology have been described as the ‘holy grail’ of computational biology.
With the coming convergence of information technology and biotech industries, Pande is at the forefront of innovation and is hoping to bring his expertise to the wider world through his fund.