We’re excited to announce that Dr. Benjie Chen has joined Cypher AI as an Advisor.
Benjie is a world-class expert at the intersection of software and biology. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from MIT, where he worked on distributed systems and networks. He co-founded Addgene in 2004, helping it grow into a global leader in sharing plasmids and DNA around the world.
As one of Ginkgo Bioworks’ earliest hires in 2011, Benjie served 14 years in roles such as Chief Software Engineer and Principal Foundry Engineer. During that time he made huge, foundational impacts designing and scaling both their experimental workflow software and genetic engineering software, and also instrumental in creating Ginkgo’s Build Platform for large-scale high throughput DNA assembly and strain-construction pipelines.
What sets Benjie apart is not just his technical accomplishments but his broad perspective, from core distributed systems to DNA sharing, from lab automation workflows to engineering biology at industrial scale. He bridges “dry-lab” and “wet-lab” in ways few can, building tools that really work for scientists.
Benjie has already been advising Cypher on platform strategy and product direction. His insight anchors our efforts to build Cypher AI into the most capable “software engineer for scientists,” enabling discoveries that are faster and smarter.