Start from the whole system
Define the system, interfaces, and highest-risk assumptions early so individual design choices reinforce the platform rather than constrain it.
Scientific systems builder · R&D executive
Daniele Malleo, PhD
I build zero-to-one scientific platforms where software, automation, and AI meet the physical world.
For more than 17 years, I’ve built complex scientific platforms from the ground up. My scope has grown from hands-on architecture to product launch, R&D leadership, strategic partnerships, and fundraising—without losing the engineering discipline underneath.
Exploring: CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, and Head of R&D opportunities
3 major platforms
Cell Shuttle, Cell Q, and Alinity hq advanced through launch
100+ people
Multidisciplinary R&D organization built and led
$637M+
Financings supported alongside the CEO and CFO across Series B–D
18 invention families
Across automation, microfluidics, and single-cell systems
How I work
Build the system. Prove it. Build the company around it.
I bring science, hardware, software, automation, and teams together into coherent platforms that work reliably in the real world.
Systems engineer at heart. Executive in scope.
Systems engineering is the discipline behind how I lead: define the problem and interfaces, surface assumptions, retire risk early, and validate with evidence. I apply the same approach to architecture, organizations, company strategy, and capital.
Reduce ambiguity with prototypes
Use prototypes, experiments, and direct user contact to retire the highest risks before scaling.
Grow product and company together
Build the team and operating model around the product, while creating the partnerships, IP, and financing story needed to scale.
Selected work
Platforms built, launched, and scaled.
Zero to scale · Cellares
Building Cellares from first architecture to commercial scale
Senior Vice President, R&D · Joined immediately after Series A
- Joined with fewer than 10 employees, personally defined the Cell Shuttle architecture, and drove successive prototype iterations.
- Took Cell Shuttle and Cell Q from early prototypes through customer-backed programs and commercial launch. The platforms integrated robotics, software, data, fluidics, analytics, and GMP-ready controls.
- Built and led a multidisciplinary R&D organization of more than 100 people as Cellares grew to roughly 200 employees.
- Played a primary technical role alongside the CEO and CFO in the $82M Series B and $255M Series C. I also contributed to work that supported the $300M+ Series D announced after my departure.
- Initiated and led multi-year technology partnerships with Sony Biotechnology for advanced imaging and cell sorting and with 908 Devices for at-line analytics.
- Led the technical presentations, demonstrations, and diligence supporting a Bristol Myers Squibb development and supply agreement valued at up to $380M.
Founding-stage architecture
Prototype to launch
100+ person R&D
Fundraising
Technical partnerships
10+ patents
Company inception · Berkeley Lights
Taking the Beacon platform from first architecture to market
Technology Lead / Systems Architect
- Joined Berkeley Lights at inception and, in under three years, led the systems work that took the Beacon from a blank sheet through prototype, development, and commercial launch.
- Generated and evaluated system architectures for a platform integrating optics and imaging, motion stages, fluidics, sensors, software, and semiconductor consumables.
- Developed processes and workflows for customer-specific applications in close collaboration with cell biologists, biochemists, and bioengineers.
- Worked across marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and external vendors to turn a complex prototype into a manufacturable and commercially viable product for massively parallel single-cell analysis.
Founding engineering team
Prototype to launch
Customer workflows
10+ patents
View the Beacon platform →
Regulated platform launch · Abbott Diagnostics
Architecting Alinity hq through clinical launch
Chief Architect → Senior R&D Manager
- Owned requirements, systems architecture, technical-risk retirement, integration, verification, and validation for Abbott’s flagship clinical hematology analyzer.
- Coordinated decisions across hardware, software, quality, clinical, manufacturing, marketing, and service to bring Alinity hq through commercial launch in two years.
- Built and led post-launch sustaining and reliability programs, resolving line-down, ship-hold, CAPA, and recall events through systematic root-cause analysis and generating more than $10M in savings.
Clinical diagnostics
Regulated development
Systems architecture
Reliability engineering
Visit the Alinity hq platform →
What I’m building now
AI and autonomous systems in practice.
Professional work · Lila Sciences
Architecting the AI Science Factory as a learning system
Vice President, AI Science Factory Product
I own product strategy and architecture for Lila’s AI Science Factory—the integrated, instrumented, robotically orchestrated physical platform where AI systems design and execute experiments across life and materials science.
- Define the Factory as a learning system, closing the loop from AI-generated hypotheses through automated execution and verification so experimental results improve models and decision policies.
- Set cross-domain capability roadmaps and deployment sequencing across instrumentation, robotics, data, software, and AI/ML, aligning customer needs with internal scientific and technical priorities.
- Formulated the global expansion strategy for multiple AI Science Factories, including repeatable site architecture, capability phasing, operating assumptions, and regional deployment priorities.
- Developed the productization and IP strategy, defining product boundaries, build-versus-partner choices, protectable differentiation, and models for deploying platform capabilities with external customers and partners.
- Lead customer and partner discovery and represent Lila in technical and strategic discussions with pharmaceutical, industrial, government, and research stakeholders.
AI Science Factory architecture
Closed-loop experimentation
Global deployment strategy
Productization & IP
External partnerships
Visit Lila Sciences →
Independent build · dailybrief.fyi
Agentic systems in practice
I built and operate dailybrief.fyi, an agentic research framework that monitors news and economic data, conducts primary-source research, and publishes a daily briefing.
Operating it means solving practical problems in orchestration, source quality, verification, failure recovery, and turning machine-generated research into something people can trust.
Agentic orchestration
Primary-source research
Trust and verification
Visit dailybrief.fyi →
What I’m seeking
A role where I can build the system and the team.
Role shapes
CTO / founding technical executive
VP Engineering
Head of Engineering
Head of R&D
Head of Platform
Frontier-lab technical leadership
Best environments
Pre-product to Series A
High technical ownership
Founding team / cofounder opportunity
Exceptional frontier labs
Mission areas
Health & medicine
Scientific discovery
Energy
Environment
- Build and lead. I want to stay close to architecture and system design while owning the team, roadmap, and outcome.
- Start early. I do my best work when the core technical decisions are still open, the product is taking shape, and the team is being built around it.
- Solve consequential problems. I’m drawn to health, science, energy, and environmental challenges where AI and software must produce trustworthy real-world results.
Career snapshot
Seventeen years building scientific platforms.
Lila Sciences
Vice President, Product · AI Science Factories
2025–present
Cellares
Senior Vice President, Research & Development
2020–2025
BD Biosciences
Senior Manager, Systems Engineering
2019–2020
Abbott Diagnostics
Senior R&D Manager / Chief Architect · Alinity hq launch
2015–2019
Berkeley Lights
Technology Lead / Systems Architect · Founding engineering team
2012–2015
Fluxion Biosciences
Senior Systems Engineer
2011–2012
Oxford Gene Technology
Senior Research Engineer
2008–2011
Technical foundations
Invention and education.
Selected intellectual property
Named inventor across 18 distinct invention families, including roughly 12 granted U.S. patents and 16 published U.S. applications.
Education and executive development
- Wharton — Chief Technology Officer Executive Program
- University of Southampton — PhD, Electronic Engineering
- UC Berkeley — Graduate Visiting Scholar, Bioengineering
- University of Southampton — MSc, Microelectronics, with Distinction