Michael Skinnider earned his MD and PhD from the University of British Columbia (Canada). He was a visiting PhD student and then a postdoctoral fellow at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). He completed his undergraduate studies at McMaster University (Canada), where his work led to the formation of a successful start-up company to accelerate the discovery of bioactive small molecules from nature.
Skinnider’s research interests are broadly at the intersection of applied machine learning for problems in biology, chemistry and medicine, with a particular interest in the discovery of novel small molecules. His award-winning essay, “Hallucinating hallucinogens,” describes how he developed an AI-based approach to identify new designer drugs wreaking havoc in a growing number of communities around the world
