Molly Gibson

Molly Gibson is a principal at Flagship Pioneering, working as part of a team of entrepreneurial scientists to conceive, create, resource and develop the next generation of Flagship’s first-in-category ventures. She joined Flagship from Kaleido Biosciences, a Flagship company, and brings expertise in computational biology and computer science to the Flagship team.

At Kaleido, Molly played a key role in establishing a data science platform from the ground-up and successfully integrating robust quantitative learnings into all aspects of research. In this role, she created the first computational platform for drug discovery and a predictive understanding of pharmacological control of the human microbiome. Molly has also held engineering and consulting roles at Boeing and The BALSA Group.

Molly received her Ph.D. in computational and systems biology from Washington University in Saint Louis. Her graduate research led to novel methods for studying the transmission of antibiotic resistance genes between the environment and clinical pathogens. Molly applied these methods to model the emergence of antibiotic resistance in the developing infant gut microbiome in response to specific durations and classes of antibiotic treatments. Molly’s research was supported by several competitive fellowships, including a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and she is co-author on multiple papers in top-tier journals.

While at Washington University, Molly was a leader in science outreach and education. She served as director and was on the board of the Young Scientist Program for three years, leading over 100 active volunteer scientists with the mission of bringing inquiry-based science to disadvantaged K-12 students. At the graduate level, Molly conceived and developed a bioinformatics course that is now standard for all incoming graduate students in biology and biomedical sciences.

Molly holds a B.S. in computer science from Truman State University in Missouri.