A curious generalist who went down the rabbit hole of gene editing and proteins, and ended up founding Mandrake to build hypercompact editors from scratch. Beyond work, he's a hardcore sci-fi nerd because who knows, we might actually be living in a black hole.
Dr. Kutubuddin Molla
Chief Scientific Advisor
Dr. Kutubuddin Molla
Plant genome engineer and CRISPR scientist He guides Mandrake’s agricultural applications and wet-lab strategy, helping translate new editor designs into practical tools for crop improvement
Ananaya Jain
Member of Technical Staff
Ananaya Jain
Computational biologist who swims across disciplines (and actual pools) With a biotechnology degree from SNU and research roots at IIT Bombay and IIIT Hyderabad, she blends AI, structural biology and genomic data to build pipelines for functional protein design
Aryan Chandak
Member of Technical Staff
Aryan Chandak
AI/ML researcher working across generative models, structural modelling and protein design He builds computational methods that reason over protein conformations and turn structural detail into better design decisions
Kamalnayan Pathak
Member of Technical Staff
Kamalnayan Pathak
AI engineer building Mandrake’s internal bio-platform and multi-agent systems He works across LLM reasoning, research automation and the infrastructure that helps scientists move from questions to experiments
Karan Janthe
Generalist
Karan Janthe
Working across strategy, operations and market intelligence, Karan keeps one eye on the science and the other on where it can matter He connects Mandrake’s research with partnerships and the wider biotech landscape
Dr. Simran K. Kushwaha
Member of Technical Staff
Dr. Simran K. Kushwaha
Computational metagenomicist with a PhD in CRISPR–Cas systems from BITS Pilani As the creator of Mandrake TerraBase, she mines global microbiomes and maps genomic dark matter to discover the next generation of programmable gene editors
Dr. Surabhi Rathore
Member of Technical Staff
Dr. Surabhi Rathore
Computational structural biologist who thinks in 3D She completed her PhD at CSIR–IGIB before pursuing postdoctoral research in Andrej Šali’s lab at UCSF At Mandrake, she translates structural and biophysical insights into AI-driven frameworks for engineering programmable proteins
Tuhin Raut
Member of Technical Staff
Tuhin Raut
A nature nerd specialising in molecular dynamics and allostery, Tuhin completed his bachelor’s at IIT Delhi and previously worked on nanopores and GPCRs At Mandrake, he captures allosteric signals from protein structure and dynamics to guide protein design
Varshit Dusad
MLOps
Varshit Dusad
Data and infrastructure engineer behind Mandrake’s genomic data architecture He builds cloud systems, APIs and scalable pipelines that keep large biological datasets and computational workloads moving
Zeba Islam
Member of Technical Staff
Zeba Islam
A chirpy wet lab scientist with experience in developing assays in bacterial, mammalian and plant systems across diagnostics, therapeutics, gene editing & functional genomics An alumna of IIT Bombay and UW Seattle, she develops the foundational wet-lab methods needed to validate our novel protein designs
TARS
AI Structural Biologist
TARS
Built to never tire of a long paper or a complicated fold, TARS studies how proteins move, interact and change shape. At Mandrake, TARS turns structural data and scientific literature into insights that guide the design of next-generation gene editors.
Being built by a team from
Backed by
Angels and advisors
Dr. Vijay Chandru
Paras Chopra
Sanjiv Rangrass
Vatsal Dusad
We're a small team turning biology from discovery into engineering, designing gene editors with AI and proving they work in our own wet lab, every hire moves that thesis forward
The best problems in biology are still open Whether you build models, design proteins, or run the assays that prove them out, there's a seat