Darren Zhu

Yale Scientific Magazine’s 2012 profile describes him as the son of a professor and an engineer.⁠[1]

The same profile states that his interest in science grew through science fairs and classes at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, and that he gained research experience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Established by an act written in 1789, it admitted its first students in 1795, describes itself as the first public university in the United States, and is part of the UNC System.Open the full entry during his senior year of high school.⁠[1]

The Davidson Institute’s list of 2009 Davidson Fellows places him among the $10,000 scholarship recipients in the Science category, giving his age as 17 and his hometown as Winston-Salem, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry; his project was titled “Synthesis & Characterization of Self-Assembled Monolayers of Isocyanides on Ferromagnetic Thin Films.”⁠[2]

A statement by Mr. Grassley in the Senate section of the Congressional Record recognizes the 19 recipients of the 2009 Davidson Fellows Award, scholarships given by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, and describes his research: to develop more efficient data storage technologies, he explored nanofabrication methods for spintronics, incorporated molecular self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) into spintronics, and performed surface analyses that found isocyanide-based SAMs to be a viable candidate for nanoscale spintronics fabrication; the statement says his work has strong applications in nanotechnology, specifically in nanolithography.⁠[3]

Yale Scientific Magazine published in 2012 a photograph courtesy of Zhu whose caption states that it shows him speaking at the 2009 Davidson Fellows Ceremony in Washington, D.C.⁠[1]

Yale Daily News and Yale Scientific Magazine both identify him as a member of Yale University’s Class of 2013. Yale Scientific Magazine wrote in 2012 that the previous year he had been a sophomore chemistry major, while the member profile of the 2011 Yale iGEM team states that he was a sophomore at Yale College majoring in Chemistry and Mathematical Economics.⁠[4][1][5]

Yale Scientific Magazine writes that at Yale he explored chemistry, mathematics, economics, computer science and biology and was a member of the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs; he helped start and run Yale’s iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) team, which engineered E. coli to produce a new anti-freeze protein, an experience that drew him into synthetic biology and brought his interests together at the intersection of science, technology and business.⁠[1]

The project page of Yale’s 2011 iGEM team states that it was Yale’s second year in iGEM; the team studied RiAFP, a hyperactive antifreeze protein from the Siberian beetle Rhagium inquisitor, expressed and purified it in E. coli, and described improved post-freezing survival of E. coli expressing RiAFP and dose-dependent inhibition of ice recrystallization. The team’s member profile notes that he also worked full-time that summer.⁠[6][5]

On May 25, 2011, TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry published the list of Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry’s first 24 “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellows, each of whom would receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation during a two-year tenure; he was listed in the biotech group with Laura DemingLaura DemingLaura Deming is a biotechnology venture capitalist and entrepreneur who founded The Longevity Fund in 2011 to invest in longevity and age-related disease companies, co-founded its successor fund age1, and co-founded Until Labs (formerly Cradle), which develops reversible cryopreservation technology, with Hunter Davis, serving as its CEO.Open the full entry and Alexander Kiselev.⁠[7]

Yale Daily News wrote that he, Daniel Friedman, Paul GuPaul GuPaul Gu is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Upstart, an AI lending platform, and a member of the first class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry and David LuanDavid LuanDavid Luan is an artificial-intelligence entrepreneur who was selected for the first Thiel Fellowship class in 2011; he served as VP Engineering at OpenAI, co-founded Adept and served as its CEO, and from 2024 to 2026 worked at Amazon, where he led its San Francisco AGI Lab.Open the full entry, all Yale University students in the Class of 2013, were among the 24 members of the first Thiel Fellowship class. The article states that a May 25 press release by the Thiel Foundation said he planned to build a diagnostic biosensor; he explained that his project lay in synthetic biology, creating “useful and innovative biological systems” through bioengineering, and that specifically he hoped to build a “synthetic biology-based biosensor” able to detect a certain infectious parasite by recognizing enzymes that the parasite produces.⁠[4]

He said at the time that he was looking for lab space in Silicon Valley for his research and reaching out to researchers and biotech entrepreneurs with whom he could collaborate; in biotech, he said, launching a start-up “takes a really long time” and would generally happen after earning a Ph.D. and doing research in an academic lab. “Coming into college in general I was really interested in entrepreneurship and start-up work,” he said, adding: “This could be an opportunity for me to pursue my dreams of setting up a company early on.” He said he was “definitely still open to returning to Yale,” though his plans would depend on what happened over the next two years.⁠[4]

The 2011 Yale iGEM team’s member profile states that he was then taking a leave of absence from Yale to pursue a start-up venture in Silicon Valley.⁠[5]

Yale Scientific Magazine writes that after receiving the Thiel Fellowship he went to Palo Alto, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, to launch a start-up, and that he teamed up with David Luan, a fellow Yale student and Thiel Fellow, to found Dextro, a biotech robotics company that aimed to automate large-scale experiments. The article states that the two later abandoned the project: the high cost of the system’s infrastructure limited the market to large biotech companies, and many potential customers planned to cut research and development spending.⁠[1]

The same article writes that his Yale suite had been replaced by a house in Palo Alto shared with seven other start-up entrepreneurs; he said that being away from Yale made him appreciate the constant collaboration and social engagement there. Of starting a company he said: “you truly have to be a jack of all trades to found a start-up.”⁠[1]

The Gates Foundation’s Global Grand Challenges website records a Grand Challenges Explorations project titled “Microbial Biosensor for Diagnosing Leishmaniasis” with him as principal investigator at Synbiosys, LLC of Palo Alto, California, in the round “Apply Synthetic Biology to Global Health Challenges (Round 7),” with a funding date of October 8, 2011. The project description states that he aimed to produce a low-cost diagnostic platform able to diagnose leishmaniasis rapidly in field conditions, engineering a bacterium with cell-surface receptors that are activated and amplified by the presence of Leishmania proteases to produce a colorimetric readout; it adds that the biological system could be extended to the rapid diagnosis of other infectious diseases.⁠[8]

On December 6, 2011, TechCrunch wrote that the Thiel Fellowship had announced that day that Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that lets researchers test unorthodox ideas addressing persistent health and development challenges, had awarded him a $100,000 grant. The article states that he founded Synbiosys, LLC, a synthetic-biology company focused on building foundational tools to make biological systems easier to engineer and to commercialize their downstream applications, and that he and Synbiosys would pursue a global research project aimed at producing a low-cost diagnostic platform for leishmaniasis, which it describes as an understudied infectious disease affecting more than 14 million people.⁠[9]

Yale Scientific Magazine wrote in April 2012 that he had recently received a new $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and planned to focus on synthetic biology for at least the next 12 to 18 months, developing an in vivo diagnostic biosensor: engineered microbes coated with surface receptors specific to various antigens that would detect disease, replacing chemical and microscopy-based diagnostics. Asked whether he would eventually return to Yale, he answered “Of course,” adding, “but only if I run out of money or ideas.”⁠[1]

On April 23, 2013, a Yale University news release described Yale undergraduates’ study of the antifreeze protein of the Siberian beetle Rhagium inquisitor: the work began as an undergraduate research project for the iGEM competition; the researchers expressed and purified the protein in E. coli and used X-ray crystallography to find an extremely flat surface that helps it bind to ice and inhibit ice formation; the paper was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and featured on the cover of its April 26, 2013 issue. The release lists “Darren F. Zhu” among the other Yale authors.⁠[10]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]