Jason Key

Background

About Jason Key

I’ve spent my career operating at the interface of biology and computing. I am a structural biologist by training, with expertise in crystallography, NMR, and drug discovery. Since 2014, I’ve led a cross-functional team of scientists, software engineers, and DevOps professionals to create tools, infrastructure, and training that support computational biology at a global scale. At SBGrid, I’ve overseen the design and deployment of research computing platforms used worldwide by scientists across academia, government, and industry. We curate and distribute over scientific applications for macOS, Linux, HPC clusters, and cloud platforms and build data repositories and support pipelines for complex experimental workflows. My role is fundamentally translational: bridging the gap between researchers and technical teams to design systems that are intuitive, scalable, and aligned with real scientific needs. I’ve seen firsthand how supporting scientist-developers, integrating their tools, and broadly connecting with the user community accelerates science. As a lecturer in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (BCMP) at Harvard Medical School, I help the next generation of scientists become proficient in software and high-performance computing. I teach workshops in computational biology and molecular modeling. As the integration of AI/ML-based approaches in structure prediction and design continues to grow, it is essential that students are equipped with the knowledge necessary to effectively use these approaches and data sources.