Alexander (Olek) Pisera

About Alexander (Olek) Pisera

Growing up in the working-class suburb of Bedford, Massachusetts, Alexander (Olek) Pisera would run and play outside until he heard his mom scream chodz tutaj! (“come here” in Polish) for dinner. Chodz tutaj became a neighborhood refrain. Olek’s parents immigrated from Lodz, Poland while it was still under a communist regime, seeking opportunities beyond what was possible there.

Olek developed an early love for biology, biking through forests, and wondering how the same material and evolutionary forces could make life forms so different from each other. Olek graduated with honors in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked to immerse himself in molecular biology. Through working often overlapping stints in an algae lab, cancer research lab, Synthetic Yeast Project, directed evolution lab, a bacterial engineering company, and a CRISPR company, Olek found that he was most interested in developing precise, powerful, and practical biotechnologies. At Hopkins, Olek also played on the rugby team and expanded his pet passions through a radio show with his friends.

After undergrad, Olek continued developing his scientific repertoire at a CRISPR company, immuno-oncology startup, and gene therapy company. Returning to earn his independence as a scientist, the PD Soros fellowship supported Olek’s PhD in Biomedical Engineering at UC Irvine, where developed a first-in-class continuous gene library evolution system and flipped a condo on the side. Olek is currently in Cambridge, MA, building an NSF SBIR supported startup applying his evolution system to dramatically expand humanity’s protein production capacity and enable new medicines.