Daphne Koller

Daphne Koller was born on August 27, 1968, in Jerusalem, Israel.⁠[1]

TED’s speaker profile describes her as a third-generation PhD.⁠[2]

She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, completing her first degree, a double major in mathematics and computer science, at 17.⁠[3]

She completed her master’s program at the age of 18.⁠[4]

She earned her PhD at Stanford University in 1993, was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry from 1993 to 1995, joined Stanford’s computer science department as an assistant professor in 1995, and became an associate professor in 2001.⁠[5]

In 2004, aged 36, she was named a MacArthur Fellow; the foundation cited her development of “probabilistic relational models” combining logical and statistical representations.⁠[5]

In March 2012, Stanford announced a partnership with Coursera, the online education start-up she founded with Andrew Ng, to launch five free online courses in mid-March, including her Probabilistic Graphical Models.⁠[6]

In June 2012 she gave the TEDGlobal 2012 talk “What we're learning from online education,” describing how Coursera turns every keystroke, quiz and peer-graded assignment into data on how people learn.⁠[7]

By September 2014 she was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.⁠[4]

Having served as Coursera’s CEO and later president, she announced in August 2016 that she was leaving to join Calico, a GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry-funded R&D company focused on slowing aging, as chief computing officer, while remaining co-chair of Coursera’s board with Andrew Ng.⁠[8]

At the time Coursera offered more than 1,300 courses to more than 20 million registered users.⁠[8]

In 2018 she founded the drug discovery company insitro, hoping to create a space where data scientists and molecular biologists could work together as equals.⁠[3]

insitro combines machine learning and genomics, generating much of its own training data with in vitro disease models and automated lab equipment. She said: “We can do experiments in a matter of weeks instead of years.”⁠[9]

By September 2019 insitro had raised more than $100 million from investors including Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, GV, ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Capital, and had partnered with Gilead Sciences to look for a NASH treatment; ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry described her as the first machine learning professor at Stanford.⁠[9]

On May 5, 2020, she appeared on episode 93 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, “Biomedicine and Machine Learning”; the outline covers whether all disease could be cured, longevity, her personal journey to medicine, insitro’s “disease-in-a-dish” models, Coursera and education, and AGI and AI safety.⁠[10]

On October 28, 2020, insitro entered a five-year discovery collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia, receiving $50 million upfront plus $20 million in near-term operational milestones and more than $2 billion in potential milestones and royalties.⁠[11]

On March 15, 2021, insitro announced a $400 million Series C led by CPP Investments. She said: “For insitro, 2020 was a year of incredible growth and progress toward our founding vision.”⁠[12]

On March 9, 2022, insitro and Genomics England announced a collaboration bringing insitro’s machine-learning embedding search to Genomics England’s histopathology images and genetic data, letting users find cases by biologically and clinically relevant similarity.⁠[13]

In September 2024 she was named to the TIME100 AI list. She said: “I've had this increasing sense of urgency to make an actual direct impact in the world.”⁠[14]

On October 9, 2024, insitro signed three metabolic disease agreements with Eli Lilly and Company: insitro may option Lilly’s GalNAc delivery technology for its own siRNA molecules, and the companies will jointly discover an antibody against a third target.⁠[15]

On December 18, 2024, insitro said it had received $25 million from Bristol Myers Squibb for discovery milestones and the selection of the first novel ALS target; its platform uses more than 200 engineered and patient-derived ALS cell lines.⁠[16]

On September 9, 2025, insitro announced a collaboration with Lilly to build machine learning models for small molecule drug discovery, offered to biotech companies through Lilly’s new TuneLab platform.⁠[17]

On January 12, 2026, insitro announced it would acquire CombinAbleAI, a biologics AI team in Israel, to form its TherML design platform spanning drug modalities; she noted colleagues in the U.S., Poland and Malaysia.⁠[18]

On February 2, 2026, insitro released a genome-wide association study of brown adipose tissue quantified with computer vision, validating the target BAT-01, whose knockdown cut body weight by 15% in diet-induced obese mice while preserving lean mass.⁠[19]

On June 8, 2026, at the American Diabetes Association’s 86th Scientific Sessions, insitro presented preclinical data showing its AI-discovered MASH candidate had an anti-fibrotic signal beyond liver-fat reduction; she said its Virtual Human platform used AI-derived liver fat and fibrosis phenotypes to find causal drivers.⁠[20]

On August 26, 2026, insitro launched the Substack publication Deep Phenotype, opening with her essay “Drug Discovery Has No Magic Wands.”⁠[21]

On September 8, 2026, insitro appointed Hideo Makimura as chief medical officer to lead its transition to a clinical-stage company; she said he had taken more than a dozen programs into the clinic.⁠[22]

On October 6, 2026, insitro’s machine learning models for predicting small molecules’ in vivo pharmacokinetics became available in Lilly TuneLab; she said the models make a molecule’s in vivo behavior “a computational question first.” The release said the company was backed by more than $750 million in capital.⁠[23]

On October 15, 2026, insitro entered a worldwide exclusive research collaboration with AstraZeneca on MASH and cardiomyopathies, receiving $40 million upfront and eligible for up to about $1.46 billion in milestones.⁠[24]

As of October 2026 she is founder and chief executive officer of insitro and an adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford University.⁠[25][26]

The first course of her Probabilistic Graphical Models series on Coursera has more than 95,000 enrolled learners.⁠[27]

X: Public account: https://x.com/daphnekoller (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

insitro: Official website: https://insitro.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

Stanford University: Official website: https://www.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[26]

Coursera: Official website: https://www.coursera.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[27]