2025 Year Highlights

The end of the year is a natural time to reflect. For me, professional and personal journeys have always been closely intertwined.

This year marked several meaningful milestones. One of the major highlights was joining SandboxAQ. After a long and thoughtful interview process, I’m grateful to work along with a talented team (Jordan Crivelli-Decker, Kishore Anekalla, PhD, Srihari Radhakrishnan, Ph.D., Brook Santangelo and many others) and to apply my background in neuroscience and bioinformatics to neurodegeneration, while also learning new domains such as neuro-oncology. I am motivated by the problems we are tackling and excited for what is ahead — more updates to come.

Another highlight was participating in the Tahoe Therapeutics workshop and working hands-on with the Tahoe-100M dataset. Collaborating intensively with a newly formed team reinforced my belief that single-cell readouts provide a powerful way to measure biological perturbations and build models that go beyond batch effects to capture underlying biology.

This was also a year of focused learning. Throughout 2025, I participated in the Interview Kickstart Advanced Machine Learning program, balancing full-time work with 10-15 hours a week of studying, capstone projects, and collaboration with peers. Learning directly from Applied Scientists and ML Engineers across Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and many others industries was interesting, challenging, and very motivating.

This year also marked 10 years since completing my PhD in Computational Neuroscience at École Normale Supérieure, and 10 years since moving to the United States. My journey took me from Russia to France, and then to the U.S., guided by science and career opportunities. I have worked across academia, non-profit research, biotech, and tech — and I am especially grateful to now work in drug discovery, where my computational work can contribute directly to better therapies. Seeing one program (https://lnkd.in/gzbNqJBu) we worked on at Cajal Therapeutics closer to clinical trials makes me even more motivated.

Seeing others grow is one of the most rewarding aspects of leadership. I’m proud to see my former intern Temitope Adeoye graduate from the PhD program and start the new role at Regeneron.

And finally — the most important milestone of all — this year, I became a father.

Welcoming our daughter has reshaped how I think about time, priorities, and responsibility in a way that no professional milestone ever could.

I wish everyone to spend some time on self-reflection, do more meaningful work, and personal fulfillment in the year ahead.

Happy upcoming 2026!