Laurence Midgley

Laurence Midgley is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ångström AI, a biotechnology artificial intelligence startup based in the Bay Area with additional operations in South Africa. Prior to launching the Y Combinator-backed software company, he worked as a research engineer at InstaDeep, an enterprise AI firm that was acquired by BioNTech in 2023. Midgley earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge, where his academic research focused on training generative models directly from physical equations without relying on external data. During his doctoral studies, he developed the FAB method to apply generative models to Boltzmann distributions. His current technical focus involves deploying generative AI to accelerate physically accurate molecular dynamics simulations for thermodynamic observables, specifically targeting solvation free energy and binding affinities to substitute wet lab experiments in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.