Distinguished Scientist, Bioinformatics and Biosecurity
Twist Bioscience
James Diggans leads the biosecurity program at Twist Bioscience, a DNA synthesis company based in South San Francisco, CA. He holds a PhD from George Mason University in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and has worked in target discovery, molecular diagnostic development and biodefense. His research has included methods for adaptive detection of biological weapons release, machine learning-based cancer diagnosis, and novel algorithmic approaches to discerning intent in oligonucleotide-length DNA synthesis requests. At Twist, he leads development and operation of Twist’s biosecurity screening system and trade compliance programs to power safe, secure silicon-based DNA synthesis at record scale.