# Maureen Hillenmeyer

> Maureen Hillenmeyer is the founder and CEO of Hexagon Bio, a Menlo Park drug-discovery company that mines the genomes of fungi for hidden small molecules and engineers yeast to brew them into potential medicines. A former competitive swimmer turned computational biologist, she holds a PhD in biomedical informatics from Stanford and built the company out of a Stanford research program she led, raising more than $270 million to turn DNA sequence data into cancer and infectious-disease therapeutics.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Hexagon Bio
- **Organizations:** Hexagon Bio, Stanford University, University of Notre Dame
- **From:** Indianapolis area, Indiana, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A. in Biology, University of Notre Dame, Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Founder and CEO of Hexagon Bio, raising more than $270 million in total funding., Built a drug-discovery platform (HEx) that uses heterologous expression in yeast to biosynthesize fungal small molecules., Led the Genomes to Natural Products program at Stanford before spinning it into a company.

## Career timeline

- **Undergrad** — Recruited to University of Notre Dame as a competitive swimmer; majored in biology, took computer science classes, and did undergraduate research writing programs to analyze DNA sequencing data.
- **PhD** — Earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University.
- **Postdoc** — Stayed at Stanford as a postdoc in a lab focused on discovery and engineering of natural products.
- **Stanford** — Became Director of the Genomes to Natural Products program at the Stanford Technology Genome Center / Stanford School of Medicine, leading bioinformatics and synthetic biology for drug-like metabolite discovery.
- **2017** — Co-founded Hexagon Bio with Yi Tang, Brian Naughton, and Colin Harvey to commercialize the research.
- **2018** — Hexagon Bio named one of C&EN's 10 Start-Ups to Watch.
- **2020** — Hexagon Bio raised $47 million to mine fungal genomes for new drugs.
- **2023** — Hexagon Bio closed a $77.3 million Series B financing to expand its computational discovery platform.

## Achievements

- Founder and CEO of Hexagon Bio, raising more than $270 million in total funding.
- Built a drug-discovery platform (HEx) that uses heterologous expression in yeast to biosynthesize fungal small molecules.
- Led the Genomes to Natural Products program at Stanford before spinning it into a company.
- Hexagon Bio recognized as one of C&EN's 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2018.
- Pioneered a computational approach to sift hundreds of thousands of microbial genomes for therapeutically relevant molecules.

## Latest updates

- **2023-02** — Hexagon Bio raised a $77.3 million Series B financing and strengthened its leadership to expand its computational discovery platform and advance microbial genome-derived small molecules.

## Links

- Website: https://hexagonbio.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maureen-hillenmeyer
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/hexagonbio
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA2moIyJFP0

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/maureen-hillenmeyer
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-10