Science Lead, Intercept

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the team 

This role is on the Intercept team, which is part of Stripe's broader collection of public goods initiatives, including Frontier.

Respiratory viruses kill 1 million people a year, cost us $600B annually, disrupt everyday life, and periodically threaten civilization. Recent breakthroughs may make it possible to develop and deploy broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies that defend against common respiratory infections. Intercept is a $500M philanthropic initiative that aims to radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and eventually eliminate them altogether. Learn more about Intercept via our launch post and our website

What you’ll do

Intercept is looking for an exceptional scientist to join our team. We’re working to bring into existence a portfolio of broad-spectrum preventatives needed to radically reduce the burden of respiratory viruses. Our goal is to advance 2+ products that meet our target product profile through Phase 2. We make both grants and investments, using the most capital-efficient tool to advance our target product profile.

This role will focus on conducting research, managing projects, and supporting diligence across our grant and equity pipelines. This work requires shaping and building out our internal points-of-view across a wide range of modalities that are relevant to respiratory viruses, which include innate immunity, adaptive immunity, direct-acting antivirals, host-directed therapeutics, and physical formulation barriers for the upper respiratory tract. The role will generate high-quality theses to guide our approach to grant and equity investments as well as engage with a wide range of scientific experts, investors, funders, and other key stakeholders in the ecosystem to make sure Intercept is funding the best high-conviction ideas, concepts, and platforms. 

We need someone who can (1) evaluate the quality and value of the science for impact vs probability of success, and (2) zoom out to synthesize what that means for our capital deployment plan and long-term goals. A successful candidate will be action-oriented and comfortable working independently (vs. waiting to be told what to do) and a great communicator who can translate complex science for diverse audiences.

Intercept is a small team; you'll work with the entire team, under Intercept’s Head of Science, many partners, and wear many hats. You'll own specific outcomes end-to-end and have a chance to contribute to BSP strategy over time.

Responsibilities

• Develop theses on technological approaches to inform capital deployment. Generate high-quality research outputs to inform investment theses. Support the development of internal points of view for the most promising approaches that have the potential to meet our TPP. Experience with thinking through high-value experiments, technical data scrutiny, and triaging a wide funnel of ideas into the highest quality theses will be essential. 
• Identify scientific gaps and promising-but-underexplored ideas. Accelerate progress by identifying the questions that would most accelerate progress if answered. Hunt for the promising ideas that aren’t yet being fully explored. 
• Support diligence of grants and investments. Help review and triage inbound submissions received through our published RFP, identifying the most relevant projects and ideas that could result in the optimal broad-spectrum preventative. Help update our RFP material and/or launch specialized calls based on the current state of the field/portfolio.
• Diligence pipeline opportunities. Support early and deep / technical diligence of our grant and equity pipeline: evaluating science quality, development plans, team, and fit against our TPP. 
• Engage a network of experts and primary literature to keep our strategy current. Engage networks (researchers, investors, founders, funders, etc.) to track research priorities, forecast trends, and identify cutting edge areas of science that Intercept should pursue. 

Who you are

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum requirements 

• Must have a PhD and/or MD in immunology and/or infectious disease with 3+ years of post-grad work experience (post-doc, academia, biotech, pharma, VC, or consulting)
• Demonstrated capacity to explore and evaluate a broad range of scientific topics and experience with scientific curation (e.g., oversight of a research portfolio, grant making experience, investment experience, etc.)
• Experience with the grant process, either success with receiving grant funding or awarding grants 
• Familiar with early-stage product development, ideally with some experience / contribution
• Experience with project management from launch to completion / project quarterback with a high openness to getting hands dirty
• Extremely self-directed, diligent, very fast learner, excellent communicator, very action oriented (vs talking about things)
• Compelled by our mission to greatly reduce the burden of and risks from respiratory viruses 

Preferred qualifications 

• Experience with capital allocation, either with grants and/or investments 
• Experience with portfolio management, including portfolio construction and post-award management 
• Direct product development experience (optimally with candidate nomination, CMC, IND-enabling studies, and Ph I trial launch)