Management
Huafeng Xu, Ph. D.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Prior to founding Atommap, Huafeng Xu was the Chief Technology Officer of Roivant Discovery and its predecessor Silicon Therapeutics until its $450M acquisition by Roivant Sciences, where he oversaw the development of the computational platform and its application in internal drug discovery projects, led the business development for platform-based collaborations, and served as a key decision maker on the target selection committee. Before Silicon Therapeutics, he was a scientist in D. E. Shaw Research, where he was one of the founding developers of the DESMOND molecular dynamics simulation software and the binding free energy prediction program that laid the foundation of FEP+. He earned a Ph. D. from Columbia University and a B. S. from Peking University.
Jesus Izaguirre, Ph. D.
Co-founder and Chief Computational Scientist
Before co-founding Atommap, Jesus Izaguirre was the Senior Vice President of advanced simulations in Silicon Therapeutics and then Roivant Discovery, where he led the development of enhanced sampling methods and the computational platform for modeling and design in targeted protein degradation. Prior to joining Silicon Therapeutics, he was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame for 17 years, the co-director of its Computer-Aided Drug Design Core, and then a scientist in D. E. Shaw Research. He was a recipient of the NSF Career Award and the Fulbright Fellowship. He earned his Ph. D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Yujie Wu, Ph. D.
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Before co-founding Atommap, Yujie Wu was the Director of Free Energy Methods in Roivant Discovery, overseeing the method development of binding free energy calculations and the software development of automated workflows to support multiple drug design and prediction campaigns. Previously, he worked in Schrodinger for 15 years, where he was the main developer and engineer manager of the FEP+ program. He has contributed to multiple free energy methodologies, including scaffold-hopping, net-charge changing, irreversible covalent inhibition, and large scale network-based free energy calculations. He also contributed to other molecule dynamics based products--such as WaterMap and Desmond--that are widely used in the drug and material discovery industry. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Utah.