Noubar Afeyan

I’ve been lucky to work in biotech almost since the beginning of the field. And that means I’ve seen a lot of change. But if I had a time machine and could bring the newest generation of scientists back to my early days in the labs at MIT, I don’t think it’s the analog equipment or the stacks of ​floppy disks that would stand out.

You would notice that the lab was almost uniformly men.

On this International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we can be proud that we have progressed from those days. Today at Flagship Pioneering, women make up nearly half of our team both at Flagship and at our Flagship Labs companies.

- Women make up 28% of our executives — a 55% increase vs 2024, and ~55% higher than a US biotech exec benchmark (Source: BioSpace: 18.3% women among named executive officers in 2023).

- Our senior leadership pipeline is shifting in the right direction: Women made up 51% of Sr Dir+ hires in 2025

- We’re bringing women in at senior levels at increasing rates: Among women hired in 2025, 24% were hired into Sr Dir+ roles (vs 18% of men), more than doubling the female leadership hiring trend in 2024 (when 11% of women hires were Sr Dir+).

- In our labs, many leadership teams are already approaching parity: 11 of 19 lab companies (58%) have Sr Dir+ leadership teams that are at least 50% women.

I don’t cite these stats to suggest that this is a problem that has been fixed. There is much more to do. This afternoon, Flagship will hold a summit bringing together women and allies from across our ecosystem to hear from leaders in the field — including my friend Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT and a cell biologist — and share best practices for everything from career advancement to AI at work.

Together we must continue to build a scientific enterprise that draws on the talents and experiences of the entire population, not just half of it.

Thanks to Richard Quest for having me on CNN to talk about what’s at risk when we begin to treat opinions as scientific facts — and why choosing science is so important not only for our health but for our economic and national security.

https://lnkd.in/eRZEXc72

There have been points in American history where the government and the populace faced a choice, and that choice ended up making a profound difference, for good or for ill.

The decision to build railroads across the country and to fuel the Industrial Revolution.
The decision to come to the aid of Europe and enter World War II.
The decision to throw tea in Boston Harbor!

I believe one such profound generational decision was the choice to invest heavily in a partnership between the government, academia, and the private sector to position the U.S. to lead the world in science and innovation. The prosperity we’ve enjoyed for 70-plus years – not to mention the inventions and cures that have resulted and bettered lives throughout the world – proceeded from that choice.

I wrote my 2026 annual letter on this topic because I fear we’re in the process of making a choice to abandon science and the scientific method. Whether we are consciously making that choice or sleepwalking into it is a matter of debate, but I wrote this letter because I think if we don’t reverse course and choose science, we will regret it for centuries.

Scientists traffic in optimism as well as skepticism, so I am going to choose to be optimistic that we will change course. I hope this letter helps to start some important conversations in Washington, and to change some minds.

https://lnkd.in/eDPeCNjx

Policymakers in DC are increasingly focused on the U.S.’ limited capacity to manufacture critical physical goods like medicines, and the threat that poses to our national and economic security.

But tomorrow, in a Senate HELP Committee hearing convened under the leadership of Sen. Bill Cassidy, they will turn their attention to an even more important problem: our leadership in discovering and designing the next generation of innovative medicines is also under serious threat.

In the article below, I’ve laid out a few thoughts on how we can reinforce America’s capacity to compete and win in the race for a new era of health, security, and prosperity.