David Baker
Researcher · Founder
Now Advisor, Transfyr; Founder, Xaira Therapeutics
Latest on AI4S.fyiTimeline · Oct 26A designed protein scaffold binds a metal photocatalyst, and five evolved mutations turn it into an enantioselective enzyme reaching 50,000 turnoversPhotos come from each person's X account, their own site, lab or team page, a conference page that lists them as a speaker in the same role, or Wikimedia Commons under the licence credited, so some may be out of date. Anyone can ask for theirs to be replaced or removed. Contact →
Affiliations
Current
- Advisor · Transfyr
- Founder · Xaira Therapeutics
Also named in the companies' announcements: Baker lab / IPD
Current roles come from these dated records, not from the bio below. Each links the page it was read from.
Honours
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for computational protein design
Prizes and academy memberships, kept apart from roles. Each links the page it was read from.
About
David Baker is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, an HHMI investigator and director of its Institute for Protein Design, where his lab writes protein design software, lately including machine-learning methods that generate functional proteins. He did his PhD in biochemistry at UC Berkeley and postdoctoral work in biophysics at UCSF. He received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design, and Xaira Therapeutics names him as a co-founder.
Read on 2026-09-29; for current roles see Affiliations above. Read at: ipd.uw.edu ↗ · biospace.com ↗
Selected work
- De novo design of protein structure and function with RFdiffusion ↗
A diffusion model that designs new protein structures, with a subset of designs tested in the lab.
Each byline was read on the paper itself. Only people on this record are named, not the full author list, and a shared byline does not say who did which part.
Founded
Xaira TherapeuticsDrug discovery · 1 round on record · Round (unnamed) more than $1 billion in committed capitalBackground: University of Washington Institute for Protein Design (co-founder) (as the company's own announcements put it)
Co-founders: Hetu Kamisetty, Marc Tessier-Lavigne
On the timeline
- 2026-10-26A designed protein scaffold binds a metal photocatalyst, and five evolved mutations turn it into an enantioselective enzyme reaching 50,000 turnovers
- 2026-10-21A single protein-design model from Baker's lab and NVIDIA beats the best specialist tools on four design tasks, and its designs were made and measured in the lab
- 2026-10-14Designed from scratch, 13 of 69 cysteine proteases cut the peptide backbone where told, and designs cut their targets in cells
- 2026-10-14Zinc proteases designed with RFdiffusion cut chosen peptide bonds, and some cut TDP-43 and amyloid-beta
- 2026-10-09Prompteina designs all-atom protein structures from written prompts, and nine of its GM2A designs bind in the lab, the strongest at 107 nM
- 2026-10-02Baker lab designs two working enzymes with complex active sites, one with a 2.7 Å crystal structure
- 2026-08-26Transfyr launches with a $25M seed led by General Catalyst to record how lab work is actually done; ARPA-H's founding director is a co-founder
- 2026-08-18GenBio AI, co-founded by a Nobel laureate, releases a preview of AIDO Cell, a model that simulates a human cell from DNA to whole-cell behaviour
- 2025-11-20AI Proteins raises a $41.5M Series A for AI-designed miniprotein drugs, and will spin programs out as subsidiaries
- 2024-10-09The Chemistry Nobel recognizes protein design and AlphaFold
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