Michaela

Computational Chemistry · University of Cambridge

Hi, I am Michaela

Currently: PhD Resident, X, The Moonshot Factory · Mountain View, CA

I am currently a PhD Resident at X, the Moonshot Factory (formerly Google X), working on early-stage investigations in AI lab automation. I'm also a PhD candidate in Computational Chemistry at the University of Cambridge (Vendruscolo Lab), building AI-driven drug discovery 💊 pipelines for difficult targets, such as disordered amyloid fibrils, and for disrupting protein-protein interactions (PPIs), and exploring modalities such as covalent inhibitors and subtype-selective inhibitors.

Previously, I was a Software Engineer at Google Health. See my CV for more.

Experience

Work

X, The Moonshot Factory (Google X)
Jul 2026 – Present
PhD Resident
University of Cambridge
May – Oct 2023
Research Assistant
Illumina
Aug – Nov 2022
Bioinformatics Intern
Google Health
Sep 2020 – Oct 2021
Software Engineer
Earlier Internships
2018 – 2020
CERN (ALICE Data Acquisition),
Google (Travel, Account)

Education

University of Cambridge
Oct 2023 – Present
PhD, Computational Chemistry (Vendruscolo Lab)
University of Cambridge
Oct 2021 – Nov 2022
MPhil, Computational Biology · Distinction
University of Edinburgh
Sep 2016 – Jun 2020
BSc Hons, Mathematics & Computer Science · First Class

Interests

💊 Drug Discovery 🤖 Lab Automation 🧫 Biosensors 🌱 Sustainability ⏳ Longevity 🫀 Body Health 🧬 Biosafety

Highlighted Projects

OmniBind: Proteome-Wide Promiscuity Predictions for Early-Stage Drug Screening
Hanke, J., Pujalte Ojeda, S., Cheong, R.W., Glasstetter, L.M., Baker, E., Lam, H.Y.I., Brezinova, M., Louet, A.A.B., Zhang, S. & Vendruscolo, M.
2026 · bioRxiv preprint
View preprint
Metadiffusion: Inference-Time Meta-Energy Biasing of Biomolecular Diffusion Models
Lam, H.Y.I., Pujalte Ojeda, S., Brezinova, M., Hanke, J., Ong, X.E., Mu, Y. & Vendruscolo, M.
2026 · bioRxiv preprint
View preprint
Identification of potent high-affinity secondary nucleation inhibitors of Aβ42 aggregation from an ultra-large chemical library using deep docking
Brezinova, M., Brotzakis, Z.F., Horne, R.I., Roy Chowdhury, V., Gregory, R.C., Bian, Y., González Díaz, A., Gentile, F. & Vendruscolo, M.
2025 · EMBO Molecular Systems Biology First author
View publication
DropFit: Determination of the Critical Concentration for Protein Liquid–Liquid Phase Separation
Brezinova, M., Fuxreiter, M. & Vendruscolo, M.
2025 · Journal of Molecular Biology First author
View publication
A Scale-Invariant Log-Normal Droplet Size Distribution Below the Critical Concentration for Protein Phase Separation
Amico, T., Dada, S., Lazzari, A., Brezinova, M., Trovato, A., Vendruscolo, M., Fuxreiter, M. & Maritan, A.
2024 · eLife
View publication

Patents

Detecting variants in nucleotide sequences based on haplotype diversity
Andrews, D.J. & Brezinova, M.
2024 · WO2025090883A1
View patent