Askar Kleefeldt
Joint mentorship with Askar Kleefeldt
Projects
Research Direction: MCM resilience, AI uplift, and bottlenecks
Therapeutics may have durable advantages over pathogens even in the limit of technological progress, as it is more difficult to design complex, self-replicating machines than to make wrenches that break them. Rapid, responsive therapeutic development during a pandemic or biorisk scenario is key to exploiting this defensive advantage.
We are interested in turning this theoretical advantage into practical capabilities:
Resilience: How can therapeutic development and manufacturing be made resilient under biorisk scenarios? While global drug discovery R&D and manufacturing is large, not all parts of it may continue equally under disruption. Projects in this area include identifying interventions which would maintain the ability of drug development in a pandemic, paths towards self-sufficient drug discovery labs, and mapping global manufacturing capacity for the deployment of therapeutics in an emergency.
AI uplift: How can AI progress be maximally leveraged for defense? AI progress may be rapid in the coming years, with paths to AGI increasingly plausible. AI progress increases biorisk but also technological capabilities for defense. What are the main bottlenecks to leveraging the defensive benefits of AI that could shift the offense-defense balance? Projects in this space could including mapping bottlenecks (cognitive, data, infrastructure, legal) to the use of AI in rapid-responsive therapeutic discovery, or building prototype computational infrastructure that could help leverage the cognitive uplift from advanced AI for defense.
We may also be open to hosting a fellow who might want to do more conceptual work around the role of therapeutics in biodefense or the offense-defense balance of AI progress, or people who are interested in exploring concrete opportunities for technical work on prototype pathogens or pre-pandemic, broad spectrum therapeutics.
We have a special interest in peptides as a therapeutic modality as they combine many features that could be beneficial in risk scenarios. Projects may look at peptides specifically or therapeutics more broadly.
What I'm looking for in a Mentee
The ideal mentee will have a strong interest in pandemic preparedness, biosecurity, AI, and the role of rapid-response therapeutics in shifting the offense-defense balance.
We are especially interested in candidates with backgrounds in one or more of: therapeutic development, computational biology, AI-for-bio, peptide/protein science, drug manufacturing, supply-chain resilience, or technology policy. Prior expertise in all areas is not expected, but the fellow should be intellectually curious, technically serious, independent, and able to produce clear, decision-relevant written work.
Strong candidates might produce outputs such as a map of bottlenecks in AI-enabled rapid-response therapeutic discovery, an analysis of resilient therapeutic manufacturing capacity, concrete proposals for self-sufficient discovery labs, or a prototype computational tool for AI-enabled therapeutic response.
Bio
Askar is Co-Founder of SynX Therapeutics, a London-based biotech start-up developing a rapid drug discovery platform for peptide therapeutics. His work spans synthetic biology technology development across drug discovery, medical countermeasures, and synthetic genomics. During his doctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, Askar developed methods for megabase-scale DNA assembly and whole-genome synthesis of E. coli. He has also worked on policy questions related to biosecurity and the bioeconomy.
