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Who is Tom Leung?
A co-founder of BenchSci. BenchSci's about page, checked in September 2026, lists him as Chief Science Officer, and Inovia Capital's founder page (July 2022) also calls him co-founder and Chief Science Officer. Victoria College at the University of Toronto describes him the same way on its page for his October 2023 Vic One lecture.
How did Tom Leung start BenchSci?
BenchSci's about page, checked in September 2026, says that in 2015, as a PhD student, he lost rare patient samples because of a bad antibody. He took the problem to machine learning experts David Chen and Elvis Wianda at the University of Toronto, and they built a prototype. Liran Belenzon then joined as co-founder and CEO through the Creative Destruction Lab. Club SciWri told a similar story in January 2017.
What is Tom Leung's academic background?
He earned an MSc in virology and a PhD in epigenetics at the University of Toronto, according to his May 2018 interview with ecrLife and Victoria College's 2023 event page. His PhD research looked at how repressive genetic bookmarks are passed on during cell division.
What does Tom Leung do at BenchSci?
Victoria College's 2023 page says he heads R&D and directs the company's bioinformatics ontologies and machine learning model development. Club SciWri reported in January 2017 that, as CSO, he handled the life science side of product development and designed the scientific reasoning behind the platform, rather than writing the code himself.