Jack Boylan joined the AI-Powered Biological Design accelerator at the Allen Institute in April 2026 after earning a M.Sc in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Penn State University. During his graduate program, he worked on diverse projects in stem cell engineering, protein modeling, and metabolic enzyme kinetics. His thesis work investigated the putative role of microtubules in scaffolding an enzymatic condensate in de novo purine biosynthesis. Prior to his graduate studies, Jack spent three years at the University of Maryland Baltimore’s Institute for Genome Sciences where he specialized in PacBio long-read sequencing and helped operate a Maryland-sponsored high-throughput COVID PCR testing facility. He received his B.Sc in Biochemistry from Penn State where he was an undergraduate and post-bacc researcher in the Benkovic Lab group exploring transcriptome changes in purine biosynthesis deficient cells.

Jack is excited to return to NGS and the genomics field at the Allen Institute and determined to apply his broader scientific skillset towards developing machine learning models to untangle the intricate grammar of DNA enhancer regions and generate improved, cell-specific synthetic designs. When he’s not at the lab bench, he can be found running, cycling, and preparing food appropriate for a medieval fantasy tavern.