PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Lucy Colwell

Lucy Colwell is a researcher who applies machine learning to biological sequences, protein function and molecule design. She earned a mathematics BA at Cambridge and an applied mathematics PhD at Harvard, worked as a postdoctoral researcher there, and held membership at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study before leading a chemistry group at Cambridge. Her research used reinforcement learning to design biological sequences, deep-learning models to annotate protein families, and ProteInfer for protein-function inference. She was a Simons Investigator in 2020, joined ELLIS as a Fellow in 2023, and coauthored machine-learning research on drug design in 2024. As of October 2026, she is a University Associate Professor in Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.

Timeline

  1. By 2018

    Cambridge mathematics and Harvard PhD

    She earns a BA in mathematics at Cambridge and completes a PhD in applied mathematics at Harvard in 2010, then works there as a postdoctoral researcher. Her career also includes membership at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.

  2. By 2019

    Cambridge chemistry group leader

    By 2019, she is a Clare College fellow and an assistant professor in Cambridge's Chemistry Department, where she heads her group in the Center for Molecular Informatics.

  3. 2020

    Biological sequence design by RL

    In 2020, she coauthors "Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Biological Sequence Design," using a simulator fitted to functional measurements from earlier rounds to train each policy.

  4. 2020

    A Simons Investigator

    In 2020, she is a Simons Investigator in the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems program. Her research develops methods to relate phenotype and genotype from high-throughput data on proteins, small molecules and nucleic acids.

  5. 2022

    Protein annotation with deep learning

    In 2022, she coauthors a Google article on neural networks for protein-function prediction; the models help add 6.8 million protein-region annotations to Pfam.

  6. 2023

    ProteInfer and an ELLIS Fellowship

    In 2023, she coauthors ProteInfer, a deep neural-network method for protein functional inference. ELLIS names her a Fellow in its ML for Molecule Discovery program.

  7. 2024

    Machine learning drug design

    In 2024, she coauthors a machine-learning study that designs dual agonists for GCGR and GLP-1R with enhanced biological potency.

  8. As of October 2026

    Cambridge associate professor

    As of October 2026, she is a University Associate Professor in Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. Her research combines theory and computation to infer relationships in data and predict protein structure and function from sequence alignments.

Career

  1. NowUniversity of CambridgeAssistant Professor
  2. Harvard UniversityPostdoctoral researcher
  3. Institute for Advanced StudyMember
  4. Clare College, University of CambridgeFellow

Education

  1. 2010Harvard UniversityPhD in applied mathematics
  2. University of CambridgeBA in mathematics

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Cambridge. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Cambridge. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes University of Cambridge. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  4. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes University of Cambridge. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.

Sources and credits

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  1. Dr. Lucy Colwell Examines Large Data Sets to Understand Chemistry kdnk.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. AI3SD Conference 2019 Abstracts & Speaker Bios ai4science.network. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Lucy Colwell research.google. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. How Lucy Colwell Finds Never-Before-Seen Proteins simonsfoundation.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Machine learning can help read the language of life blog.google. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Dr Lucy Colwell | Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry ch.cam.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. 33 outstanding machine learning researchers join ELLIS as Fellows and Scholars ellis.eu. Checked 20 October 2026.