Vinayak Kulkarni - Applied AI & Healthcare Innovation

Bridging AI and human health

I love adapting breakthroughs in computer science—algorithms, machine learning, data systems—to solve meaningful problems in biology and healthcare.

Over two decades, I've built and scaled AI platforms serving millions of users in highly regulated genomics and healthcare applications. From founding engineer through IPO at Invitae, to leading privacy-preserving AI at Illumina, to building generative AI healthcare agents—my work sits at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and human wellbeing.

As a member of South Park Commons, I help techbio founders refine their ideas and navigate the complex landscape of life science innovation.

20+ Years in AI & Biotech

$70M+ Revenue Generated

50+ Engineers Managed

A path through innovation

Cohere

2025 — Present

Member of Technical Staff, Applied ML

Partnering with enterprise customers to design and prototype solutions using foundation models—RAG, fine-tuning, tool use, and agents.

Specie Bio

2025

Head of AI

Architected an enterprise AI platform for biospecimen matching, enabling natural language queries against complex multimodal biomedical datasets.

Revelation Health

2023 — 2025

Co-founder & CTO

Built Nadia, a generative AI healthcare navigator managing oncology patient care. Created an AI phone system reducing care costs from $30/hr to $6/hr with 88% patient engagement. Raised $1M pre-seed.

Illumina

2021 — 2023

Technical Lead, Privacy Preserving AI

Led Illumina's AI strategy reporting to the CTO. Built an industry-first patient-centered AI marketplace. Pioneered privacy-preserving ML with NVIDIA Research, Microsoft Health Futures, and top cancer hospitals.

Invitae

2014 — 2021

Founding Engineer → Principal Engineer → Head of Algorithms

Founding engineer through IPO. Scaled from a handful of cancer tests/week to 10,000+/day. Reduced COGS from $5,000 to $300. Built ML algorithms for rare disease identification. Led 25+ engineers across oncology, cardiology, and pharma partnerships.

Agilent Technologies

2008 — 2014

R&D Engineering Manager

Led development of SureDesign—industry's first scalable web application for DNA chip design. 20K global users, $15M first-year revenue. Managed 50+ engineers across 3 continents.

Earlier

2005 — 2008

Merck Research Laboratories · UT Southwestern Medical Center

Where I create value

Applied AI & LLMs

Foundation models, RAG systems, fine-tuning, AI agents, and production ML pipelines for enterprise applications.

Healthcare AI

Generative AI agents for care coordination, patient navigation, and clinical workflow optimization in regulated environments.

Genomics & Diagnostics

ML algorithms for genetic testing, variant interpretation, and precision medicine at scale.

Technical Leadership

Building and scaling engineering teams, technical due diligence for acquisitions, and advising founders on product and AI strategy.