SEATTLE, WA, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — When a field’s founding figure signs on to guide a nonprofit’s strategy, it signals a deepening commitment to the underlying science. That’s the case at Sage Bionetworks, which has announced that Lawrence (Larry) Hunter, PhD, is joining its Board of Directors.
Hunter currently serves as a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, a role he took on in 2024 following a 23-year tenure at the University of Colorado. His career has been instrumental in shaping computational biology as a recognized discipline. In 1997, he established the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), presiding over it until 2000. He also co-founded two of the field’s most significant gatherings: the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference and the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB).
His current academic work zeroes in on biomedical knowledge graphs and their potential synergy with large language models. Hunter served as senior author on the paper introducing PheKnowLator, an open-source knowledge graph ecosystem built for the life sciences. He also co-authored “Desiderata for a biomedical knowledge network,” a publication that emerged from the NIH Knowledge Graph Working Group. Additionally, his team developed an “ignorance base,” a unique system designed to mine scientific literature for gaps—identifying what researchers explicitly state is still unknown.
Also worth a look: Originality.ai unveils AI detectors built for mixed human-AI and humanized text and GEIOS partner Rybach brings nano-scale fix for hot rock to IAH 2026 congress.
“I am delighted by this appointment as the culmination of my long relationship with Sage. I’m excited to help this unique organization continue to thrive,” Hunter says. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to support its critically important mission in open science and radical collaboration.”
“Larry helped create the field that Sage works in, and his research goes right to a question underneath much of what we are building now: how to keep what a model produces tied to what is known and verifiable,” says Luca Foschini, PhD, President & CEO of Sage Bionetworks. “We are thrilled to welcome him to the Board.”
With Hunter’s addition, the full roster of Sage’s Board of Directors includes:
- Stephen H. Friend, MD, PhD: Board Chair & Sage Bionetworks Co-Founder
- Eric Schadt, PhD: Director & Sage Bionetworks Co-Founder
- Luca Foschini, PhD: President & CEO
- Jennifer Goldsack, MChem, MA, MBA, OLY: Interim Treasurer
- Brian J. Fox: Director
- Carole Goble, CBE, FREng, FBCS, CITP: Director
- Andrea Varsavsky, PhD: Board Secretary (non-voting member)
Why it matters: Hunter’s expertise in grounding AI outputs in verified biomedical knowledge arrives at a critical moment for the nonprofit sector. His presence on the board could help steer Sage’s initiatives toward greater scientific rigor, ensuring that machine learning models remain accountable to established research. This appointment underscores a growing trend of bringing foundational scientists into governance roles as AI reshapes biomedical discovery.
Mackenzie Wildman
Sage Bionetworks
communications@sagebionetworks.org
