Kat Drake

Kat Drake is an accomplished data science and AI professional with significant experience in the life sciences sector. Currently serving as the VP of Data Science & AI at BranchLab since April 2025, Kat previously held the position of Head of Computational Biology Data Science at Verily from November 2018 to May 2024. In that role, Kat led a team focused on various projects, including immune profiling and wastewater epidemiology, emphasizing reproducible bioinformatics pipelines. Prior experience includes positions as Director of Informatics at Cytobank Inc., where strategic scientific services were developed for machine learning applications, and Staff Scientist at Gensignia Life Sciences, where efforts concentrated on improving lung cancer detection through innovative computational methods. Kat also served as a Bioinformatics Scientist at Prometheus Laboratories, focusing on biomarker data analysis. Educational credentials include a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science and Pharmacogenomics from the University of California, San Francisco, and an M.S. in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.