Johan combines personal experience with M. abscessus and eight years at Google in machine learning to drive breakthroughs in phage therapy. Under his leadership, Tolka’s lab achieved the first discovery of lytic phages for smooth M. abscessus, positioning the company as a leader in tackling antibiotic-resistant infections.
Dr. Hopkins is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious disease and has held clinical and product development positions over 30 years at FDA, Merck, Aeras, BARDA and multiple biotech companies. Prior to Tolka AI Therapeutics, Dr. Hopkins was the Chief Medical Officer at Adaptive Phage Therapeutics and Ocugen, where he led clinical development and medical affairs activities. He has approved multiple therapeutic and prophylactic products in the infectious disease space. He is passionate about finding solutions to difficult-to-treat infections, including those due to non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and M. tuberculosis (TB).
Dr. Chaudhry is an interdisciplinary scientist with a PhD in Phage Therapy and four years of postdoctoral training in Phage Ecology and Evolution at Emory University. As Principal Scientist at Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Dr. Chaudhry played a pivotal role in developing a phage bank for ESKAPE pathogens, process development, analytical testing, and advancing GMP-grade phage manufacturing.
Thomas is a seasoned biology researcher, entrepreneur, and Thiel Fellow with extensive lab and leadership experience. His work spans cancer research, age-related diseases, and microbiology workflow automation. At Parallel Health, he built a comprehensive phage-bacteria library, automated assays, and developed high-throughput systems that accelerated research efficiency.
Volodymyr combines expertise in software engineering, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Formerly a Senior Software Engineer at Google, he specialized in large-scale NLP systems. At Tolka, he develops software pipelines for genome analysis, protein structure prediction, and machine learning applications in phage therapy. He also develops and maintains Tolka's proprietary phage data platform.
