Yann LeCun, Bob Langer, Jens Nielsen and Fabian Theis Join Cellular Intelligence Scientific Advisory Board

Turing Award Laureate, Moderna Co-Founder, BioInnovation Institute CEO and Helmholtz Munich Computational Health Director to Advise on Decoding the Logic that Governs How Cells Change and Carrying That Knowledge Into Medicine

BOSTON, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellular Intelligence, the AI company building a universal foundation model of cell signaling, today announced that Yann LeCun, Robert "Bob" Langer, Jens Nielsen and Fabian Theis have joined its Scientific Advisory Board. Langer joins the company's Board of Directors as an observer.

Between them, the four hold a Turing Award, more than 1,500 patents, the founding of Moderna, the leadership of the Novo Nordisk Foundation's BioInnovation Institute and Germany's highest research honor. Their work and expertise tie directly to the key problems Cellular Intelligence was founded to solve: learning predictive models from complex systems, and turning that understanding into therapeutic applications.

"We are bringing together people who have changed what is possible in AI, biology and medicine to tackle a shared question: can we learn the rules that govern how cells change, and use that knowledge to help patients? Yann, Bob, Jens and Fabian bring the scientific imagination and rigor this challenge demands. Their perspectives will be invaluable as we connect predictive models to experiments and, ultimately, to therapeutic development," said Micha Breakstone, Ph.D., Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Cellular Intelligence.

Yann LeCun received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for foundational work in deep learning, founded Meta's Fundamental AI Research lab (FAIR) and served as the company's Chief AI Scientist from 2013 to 2025. He is Executive Chairman of AMI Labs, the world-model company he co-founded, and Silver Professor at New York University. His research centers on AI systems that learn how the world works and predict what happens when they act on it.

"The models that interest me learn how the world works from data and predict what happens when we act on it. Living cells present an extraordinarily rich version of that challenge. What excites me about Cellular Intelligence is the combination of new methods for large-scale cellular data collection, new phenomenological and causal models of cellular dynamics trained from this data, and a team with the ambition to connect the two. The possibility of learning principles that transfer across biological contexts is especially compelling," said Yann LeCun, Scientific Advisory Board member.

Robert "Bob" Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT, the institution's highest faculty rank, and the most cited engineer in history. He holds more than 1,500 issued and pending patents, and as a co-founder of Moderna and some 40 other companies, he has received the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for work that turned drug delivery and tissue engineering into medicines that reach patients.

"I have been deeply impressed by the team Cellular Intelligence has brought together. What draws me to this company is the opportunity to connect a fundamental understanding of cell behavior with the practical work of developing medicines. If we can better predict how cells respond to an intervention, we can ask more precise questions, design better experiments and open new possibilities for patients. I am excited to help the team pursue that potential," said Robert "Bob" Langer, Scientific Advisory Board member and Board Observer.

Jens Nielsen is Chief Executive Officer of the BioInnovation Institute, the Novo Nordisk Foundation's DKK 3 billion-plus engine for founding and scaling life-science companies in Copenhagen, and Professor of Systems Biology at Chalmers University of Technology. Author of more than 900 scientific publications and founder of several biotech companies, he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2019 and is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

"Understanding a cell means understanding how its many systems work together. Cellular Intelligence is bringing quantitative models and carefully designed experiments to that problem at an ambitious scale. I am excited by the opportunity to help turn that understanding into more predictable cell engineering and new therapeutic possibilities," said Jens Nielsen, Scientific Advisory Board member.

Fabian Theis is Director of the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, Scientific Director of Helmholtz AI and Professor of Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems at the Technical University of Munich. A co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas and a member of its Board of Directors, he received the 2023 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany's highest research honor, for machine-learning methods that predict how cells develop and respond to drugs, and is a member of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, and EMBO.

"Progress in modeling cells depends on the quality of the questions our data allow us to ask. What excites me about Cellular Intelligence is its ambition to build rich experimental data and predictive models together. That combination creates an opportunity to test how well models generalize across biological contexts and to learn systematically from where they fall short," said Fabian Theis, Scientific Advisory Board member.

The appointments follow Arjun Raj's arrival as Chief Scientific Officer and scientific co-founder, and the company's acquisition of STEM-PD, an investigational Parkinson's disease cell therapy with FDA Fast Track designation, from Novo Nordisk in May 2026. Manufacturing and clinical data from the program flow back into the company's models. The company's investors include Khosla Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Novo Nordisk.

About Cellular Intelligence

Cellular Intelligence is a clinical-stage AI company building a universal foundation model of cell signaling to understand, predict and ultimately control cellular behavior. Based in Boston, the company runs experimental biology, machine learning and therapeutic development as a single program, with regenerative medicine at its core. Learn more at www.cellularintelligence.com.

STEM-PD is an investigational therapy. Its safety and efficacy have not been established.

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SOURCE Cellular Intelligence