Hi! I’m Lenny McCline.
I am a builder whose creative mediums span data platforms, biology, AI, biosecurity, business, and startups.
I believe effective leadership is built on emotional clarity—my favorite example is Abraham Lincoln.
I love history and learning from the best that other people have already figured out.
Work
I currently lead a team of software engineers building the data & analysis platform for Portal, a protein sequencing company which I joined as employee ~12 and has since grown to >75 people.
Previously, I worked with Convergent Research on a metagenomic sequencing technology roadmap currently used for BlueDot Impact’s Biosecurity course. Before that, I researched pathogen-agnostic sample enrichment for pandemic early warning systems at MIT.
I have a degree in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from UCLA. I grew up in San Diego, California.
Things
Some things I like thinking about:
- Proteoformics! Humanity is surprisingly bad at measuring the proteins in cells, despite proteins being the central working machinery of biology. If we were better, we might be able to target drugs at far more nuanced disease states.
- How do we build a world that is safe from biological threats? What is the set of technological interventions required?
- How can we massively accelerate R&D in human health & longevity? How do we empower humans & AI to play to their strengths in such a system? What existing/historical patterns can we learn from?
- How do we generalize cellular dynamics predictions like linking genetic perturbations with transcription expression? What are the real degrees of freedom missing from existing training sets?
- In recent years I’ve gone deep into Art of Accomplishment. It is also my favorite podcast. I am currently taking their year-long Old Students program.