Dr. Robert Chen, PhD

Antibody Engineer at Chai Discovery

Speaker

Robert is currently working on antibody engineering applications at Chai Discovery, a de novo protein design startup in San Francisco founded in 2024. Previously, he was a Senior Scientist at Cartography Biosciences, a company discovering novel targets through scRNA-seq, where he spent four years after joining as an early employee. For CBI-1214, Cartography's lead program LY6G6D×CD3 T-cell engager for colorectal cancer, he served as the engineering lead for the TAA half. There, he helped in moving the program rapidly from initiation of binder discovery to development candidate declaration in 14 months. Later, Robert served as the antibody lead on the project core team for the novel target program "CB02" in solid tumor indications. Prior to Cartography, Robert earned his PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford University in Howard Chang's Lab. The circular RNA technology he developed spun out into Circ Bio, which was acquired by Orbital Therapeutics, which itself was subsequently acquired by BMS in October 2025.