Introducing Yen-Hsiang Wang, Antheia’s VP of Strategy and Partnerships
As the Vice President of Strategy and Partnerships, Yen-Hsiang Wang is the strategic powerhouse behind Antheia, tasked with bringing its technology and pipeline of products from ideation into realization. As a catalyst for the commercial viability of Antheia’s technology into the pharma world, this scientific innovator-turned-business leader combines his deep bench of scientific expertise in synthetic biology with lessons learned in the business world to drive the company’s success. With some promising announcements on Antheia’s horizon, Yen-Hsiang recently sat down to share his thoughts on technology, innovation, strategy, and how safe workplaces support dynamic company growth. You wear many hats in Antheia – strategy, partnerships and finance – and are responsible for bringing its innovations to life in the commercial space. But you actually began your career as a biologist and engineer. What inspired you to move from research to strategy? I’ve always liked to design things, but I’ve also always been interested in deciphering biology, which is still in my opinion the most sophisticated system ever. I started off my career trajectory in undergrad while working with an economist on a neuroengineering project, where I designed a novel approach to underpin the neural mechanism for strategic thinking in our brain. Even then, I saw myself as an engineer specialized in the field of biology. That work was eventually published in Science, which helped get me into Stanford. It was 2008 when synthetic biology had just started to take off and engineering genetic information and designing proteins or enzymes in all living organisms was becoming more accessible. I was immediately “distracted” – if you can call being fascinated by this amazing field being distracted! – and enamored by the idea that you can take a structural approach to studying and building biology, and that you could even apply it in an effort to improve human wellbeing. However, it was also a period of time where the industry was navigating a better way to commercialize this cutting edge technology. By this point, I knew that I understood the fundamentals and rhythm of R&D, and I knew I could be a good scientist but I was curious to learn more about the business side of synbio. I wondered if I would be able to make a difference in bridging the gap between this technology and its real world applications. That’s what brought me to this point, and it’s what I strive to do. Make a difference by being the person who bridges the gap between business and deep science innovation in synbio. Once I took the leap toward the business side of things, I began experimenting with various business roles at McKinsey and later Tencent, which eventually led to Antheia. One would think that it’s important for people in your role to have a scientific background to truly understand the work. What does bridging the gap between deep science and business look like, in a practical sense, and how do you think your scientific and research background informs it? I’m a believer that everybody’s a scientist. Science is about being inquisitive and reasonable, and thinking through challenges in a structured approach. It’s critical thinking, and collecting and analyzing information before solving problems. What’s particularly important for anyone in this type of role is a desire to learn the science while embracing open and growth mindsets – because the most demanding type of startup is deep science innovation, and it requires all of those things. Working in any scientific field often means that there are many unknowns, but we’re driven toward exploration because we believe that what we’re doing can make the world better. Synthetic biology, machine learning, or quantum computing – you name it; experimentation, failure, and iteration are inherent to all of these fields and critical for driving innovation. It’s apparent to anyone who knows you that this lights you up, and is your passion. Absolutely. I get a lot of energy from those bridging moments where I have to consider our stakeholders, constraints, and opportunities, and within it, find a path forward. It is extremely rewarding to find those ways to make the equation work and bridge both sides – science and business – of innovation. It means our work will make a realistic and tangible impact. That’s the engineer in me – wanting to make the intangible, tangible. I also especially enjoy my role at Antheia because the constant leap between science and business requires almost a holistic, hawk-eyed perspective, and it’s one I’ve carefully honed in myself. As a scientist, you’re trained to think about problems from mostly bottom-up approaches, where you have to amass a lot of research before taking actions. When it comes to business, it is often hypothesis-driven and making decisions with limited, imperfect information. It took a lot of practice to integrate this duality of thinking, switching back and forth between the two perspectives. I find it very helpful and incredibly useful when brainstorming or offering insights to our team, understanding that each of the next-steps come with certain rewards and risks. To me, it is a privilege to drive those strategic decisions and creative solutions, while matching technological progress. What are Antheia’s greatest opportunities? And what are you most passionate about for Antheia’s future along that pathway? Personally, I just love Antheia’s technology so much. I’m a big fan of AI, robotics, and synthetic biology and how it allows us to design something hardcore. I like to point to my fandom of sci-fi films (e.g., Westworld) here, because it’s an imaginative world where innovative technology and biology comes together. What Antheia’s doing is a small piece of a similarly huge puzzle, only, it’s real. We’re engineering yeast, which is one of the tiniest and simplest organisms, and doing so at the cutting edge of a thriving deep science technology, all in a big biology setup. While it can still seem very uncertain, the flipside is that the possibilities are endless. That’s where Antheia’s biggest opportunity lies; we’re sitting within a very unique
