Human Longevity Hires Data Scientist Away from Microsoft

David Heckerman, a computational biologist who led the genomics team at Microsoft over the last several years, has joined Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), the San Diego startup with the ambitious goal of creating the world’s most comprehensive database of human genomic information.

Heckerman, a medical doctor with multiple degrees in computer science, physics, and mathematics, will lead an advanced analytics team at HLI’s Mountain View, CA, office, according to a statement today from the company. He will report to J. Craig Venter, the human genome pioneer who co-founded HLI and now serves as executive chairman.

Heckerman steps into a role that was previously held by Franz Och, who left his job as HLI’s chief data scientist late last year to join Grail, the Bay Area startup founded by San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) to develop a blood test for cancer. Before that, Och gained recognition at Google as the chief architect of Google Translate. He left Google in mid-2014 to join HLI.

HLI hired Heckerman not only because he is an expert in machine learning, but also due to his deep experience and knowledge about genomics, HLI spokeswoman Heather Kowalski wrote in an e-mail this morning. “He’s the full package in one person,” she said.

At Microsoft, Heckerman led the company’s first research team to focus on machine learning and produced Microsoft’s first content-based spam filter and other software tools. Later, he led the first research team to focus on computational biology, designing a vaccine for HIV as well as many algorithms for biology and health, with increasing emphasis over time on genomics.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.