# Raphael Townshend

> Raphael Townshend is the founder and CEO of Atomic AI, a South San Francisco biotech fusing machine learning with structural biology to make RNA a druggable target. A Stanford AI Lab PhD who trained 18 known RNA structures into a model that beat far larger labs, he turned a Science cover paper into a company that has raised $42M to build ATOM-1, a foundation model for RNA structure. Forbes 30 Under 30, ex-DeepMind AlphaFold, ex-Google.

- **Role:** Founder & CEO at Atomic AI
- **Organizations:** Atomic AI, Stanford University, DeepMind, Google, UC Berkeley
- **Education:** PhD in Computer Science (thesis: Geometric Learning of Biomolecular Structure), Stanford University, BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Lead author of 'Geometric Deep Learning of RNA Structure' published in Science (2021), training a model on only 18 known RNA structures, Best Paper award at NeurIPS 2021 for ATOM3D: Tasks On Molecules in Three Dimensions, Oral presentation at ICLR 2021 for Learning from Protein Structure with Geometric Vector Perceptrons

## Career timeline

- **2012-2014** — Undergraduate Research Assistant and Student Instructor, UC Berkeley
- **2014** — Software Engineering Intern, Google (Search team)
- **2014-2020** — PhD Fellow, Stanford AI Lab, advised by Ron Dror
- **2018** — Head TA, Stanford CS229 (Machine Learning), 750+ students
- **2019** — Research Scientist Intern, DeepMind (AlphaFold team)
- **2020** — General Chair, Machine Learning for Structural Biology Workshop at NeurIPS
- **2021** — Lead author, 'Geometric Deep Learning of RNA Structure' in Science
- **2021** — Founded Atomic AI (May 2021)
- **2023** — Launched Atomic AI publicly with $35M Series A; named Forbes 30 Under 30

## Achievements

- Lead author of 'Geometric Deep Learning of RNA Structure' published in Science (2021), training a model on only 18 known RNA structures
- Best Paper award at NeurIPS 2021 for ATOM3D: Tasks On Molecules in Three Dimensions
- Oral presentation at ICLR 2021 for Learning from Protein Structure with Geometric Vector Perceptrons
- Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science (2023)
- Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (2019-2020)
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2015-2018)
- Founded the inaugural Machine Learning for Structural Biology workshop
- Raised $42M total for Atomic AI to build ATOM-1, a foundation model for RNA structure

## Latest updates

- **2023-01** — Atomic AI launched publicly with a $35M Series A led by Playground Global, bringing total funding to $42M.
- **2025-06** — Speaker at SynBioBeta / Synthetic Biology Summit and BIO International Convention 2025, presenting Atomic AI's RNA platform.

## Links

- Website: https://raphael.tc.com/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-townshend-9154962a
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/raphaeljlt
- GitHub: https://github.com/raphtown

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/raphael-townshend
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-08