About this blog
My aim here is to cover all the portmanteaus: Biotech, TechBio, BioML, CompBio, TradBio, LongBio. My shortlist of initial ideas includes a deep dive into a longevity company, a hot take on single-cell foundation models and a tale from the trenches of agentic biological data curation.
Why am I starting a blog? In short, to clarify my thoughts, to meet new people and to share my curiosity-driven projects.
Who should read my work? Anyone at the intersection of ML and Bio, whether you’re a biologist curious about LLMs or a software engineer who just opened their first biology textbook.
About me
I am Maarten. Originally from the Netherlands, I studied Statistics at Harvard, and I now work at Cellarity, an AI drug discovery startup in Boston. My LinkedIn is good for the polished summary, but I’m hoping that this Substack provides a way for people to get to know me a little bit better.
In that spirit, some fun facts about me1:
In 2016, I spent a year as a caregiver to my mom after her stroke.
Obviously not a “fun” fact, but very meaningful nonetheless. My mom’s story is so jaw-dropping she wrote a book about it. The experience certainly spurred my interest in healthcare, but most importantly I learned that a good idea can come from anywhere, even if it’s “outside the system”.
While at Harvard, I got obsessed with metabolic health (before it was cool).
I am a certified Heroic Coach, though few people ask me for advice :)3
More recently, I attended LBF in Berkeley and I have been going down the longevity rabbit hole.
I’m particularly interested in partial reprogramming and the players in that space.
What if I’m wrong?
I will undoubtedly make mistakes. Please do point them out (I will Venmo you $10 for every error you catch)4! I am always happy to change my mind, set the record straight and give credit where it is due. Even then, I am prepared that no matter what, someone will be annoyed at you, and that’s OK! Let’s try to be reasonable, kind and give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Please reach out!
If you read my stuff and you think we might get along, please do reach out!
I’m sure most of these will crystallize into posts in due time.
The idea is a low-carb alternative to Ensure. I fondly remember standing in our dorm room and painstakingly measuring all the ingredients in a blender. That said, in terms of actually getting this off the ground as a company, 100% of the credit belongs to my friends Mauricio and Andrés!
I highly recommend this program for learning “life skills they don’t teach you in school”
Thanks to Nathan Cheng for this idea
