Rich Hickey, PhD

Rich builds and extends complex software systems to help accelerate scientific discovery.

Rich began his career as a paramedic, serving in Chicago for 8 years and transitioning into research based on a desire to create solutions for unmet healthcare needs. He holds a B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Ohio State University. Funded by the NSF graduate research fellowship program (GRFP), Rich published and patented new nanomaterials for carrying oxygen in the absence of blood transfusions. He also produced several computational tools for process control, molecular simulation and data analysis.

Prior to joining Foresite Labs, Rich served as a scientific software engineer at Loxo Oncology (part of Eli Lilly), where he developed custom workflows for a number of scientific domains under the umbrella of biological drug discovery. His focus remains on designing multidisciplinary and evidence-based systems to produce insights which rapidly translate back to the clinical arena.