Darren Platt

Bioinformatics – Associate Director
Computational Target Discovery
Exelixis (California)

Bachelor of Science (Honours)
PhD in biocomputing

"I very much enjoy the chaotic combination of biological exploration and high-performance scientific computing."

As an undergraduate I had passion for both genetics and computer science. Both are programming problems, one with DNA and one with silicon. As a faculty scholar, I was able to pursue both disciplines but was forced to choose for my final Honours year (1991).

After a difficult decision I chose computer science. For my Honours year and subsequent PhD, I worked on biologically relevant problems from a computing point of view, including mapping algorithms for the Human Genome Project. At that stage, and to some extent still, it was very rare to find people familiar with both Computer Science and Genetics. After graduating from my PhD, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to work more directly on the Human Genome project at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, UK.

The Sanger Centre was ultimately responsible for sequencing a sizeable fraction of the genome, and the combination of computing in the same building as a number of different biological disciplines was stimulating.

For my post doctoral research at the Sanger Centre I worked on a number of image processing algorithms for handling both mapping and sequencing images. In late 1996 I discovered Exelixis, then a very small biotech company based in Boston with just 30 people.

Though there was much left to be completed on the genome, it was clear that small biotechnology companies were already taking advantage of the data. I joined Exelixis in 1997 as one of the founding members of the Informatics group. This group has grown to over 30 people in a company of over 600.

I currently direct the department and am directly responsible for the computational discovery of targets within Exelixis. I work with scientists who mutate fruit flies for a living and on many occasions have been the first human being to see genes that have lay hidden for billions of years in a particular organism. I enjoy the chaotic combination of biological exploration and high-performance scientific computing and expect to have an eventful, fun and unpredictable career.