Geoffrey von Maltzahn is an American biological engineer, 🏷️#scientist, and serial 🏷️#entrepreneur working at the intersection of biology and data science. A general partner at Flagship Pioneering since 2009, he co-founds and leads companies through Flagship Labs, the firm's venture-creation foundry. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from MIT, an M.S. in bioengineering from UC San Diego, and a PhD from the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and is listed as an inventor on more than 200 patents and patent applications.
Through Flagship, von Maltzahn has co-founded companies spanning therapeutics, agriculture, and generative biology — including Indigo Agriculture, Tessera Therapeutics, Generate:Biomedicines, Sana Biotechnology, Seres Therapeutics, Quotient Therapeutics, and 📝Lila Sciences — which have collectively reached over $10 billion in aggregate market capitalization. He served as founding CEO of Tessera Therapeutics, where he led development of its Gene Writing platform, and of Indigo, where he built the plant-microbiome platform behind commercial products now used across millions of acres. His technical work centers on genome engineering, the microbiome, bioengineering, and nanotechnology, and he has co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed articles. Among the ventures he has helped launch, Seres Therapeutics developed a treatment for recurrent C. difficile infection and Generate:Biomedicines produced the first generative-AI-designed antibodies to reach the clinic.
He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Lila Sciences, which is building what it calls "scientific superintelligence" to accelerate discovery across the life, chemical, and materials sciences. In 2026 he delivered the commencement address to graduates of 📝Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s School of Engineering and Schwarzman College of Computing, closing with 📝The Prayer of Sir Francis Drake.