Brian Karlak, Founder and Principal Consultant of Zenkat, Inc., has been focusing on developing high-end cheminformatics and bioinformatics applications for the past twelve years.  Throughout his career he has lead numerous projects that combined cutting-edge science with top-notch software engineering.  These include:
 

• At Syrrx he managed the group responsible for implementing the enterprise-wide software system that directed the operations of their groundbreaking high-throughput crystallography pipeline , including the development of novel feature recognition and crystal detection algorithms based on neural networks.
• At MAG/Celera , he led the software development for the Panther Protein Classification system, which was used to perform the first whole-genome functional analysis of H. sapiens, D. melanogaster, C. elegans, A. thaliana , and S. cerevisiae .  The results of this Hidden Markov Model (HMM) analysis were a major component of Celera's historic publication of the human genome in the February 2001 issue of Science
• At Pangea Systems (later DoubleTwist), he led the development of their flagship bioinformatics platform, GeneWorld , which was deployed at several large pharmaceutical companies .  GeneWorld used a relational database system to integrate the results of multiple analysis algorithms for the prediction of gene structure, protein function, and protein family relationships.
• At Onyx Pharmaceuticals, he developed machine learning algorithms, heuristics and expert systems for high-throughput library design, pharmacophore detection, and combinatorial diversity synthesis.

[A complete list of Brian's projects can be found here.]

In all of these endeavors Brian has merged his two passions -- science and software.  At Pangea and Celera, he led small, focused teams of engineers in the implementation, testing, and deployment of software destined to be installed at some of the world's largest pharmaceutical clients.  On the scientific front, his solid understanding of molecular biology and genomics has allowed him to take on managerial roles at world-class pharmaceutical R&D companies like Syrrx and Perlegen.

When not plugged into his computer, Brian enjoys a variety of outdoor activities. Some of his accomplishments include an unsupported bicycling trek across Africa, flying a hang-glider 100 miles up the Sierras, and snowboarding down Mount Shasta .

You can find a more traditional CV for Brian here.