David Nickle

David Nickle joined Flagship Pioneering in 2026 and serves as Senior Vice President, Genetics and Genomics for Pioneering Medicines. He leads genetics- and genomics-driven strategies to support therapeutic hypothesis generation, target validation, and portfolio decision-making through collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and data types.

Before joining Flagship, David held leadership roles across biotechnology and pharmaceutical research in genetics, computational biology, translational medicine, and biologics discovery. At Merck, he led genetics efforts across respiratory disease, infectious disease, and immunology. At Gossamer Bio, he led translational medicine in respiratory disease and oncology and directed biologics programs, including antibody and vaccine design. He also served as Vice President of Analytics at Monoceros Bio, leading computational biology and data science across multiple therapeutic areas, and is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington.

David is a computational biologist and evolutionary geneticist with more than 25 years of experience in drug discovery and therapeutic development. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, is an inventor on seven patent families, and has developed statistical methods for understanding viral latency, persistence, and evolution.

David holds an MSc from the University of Nevada and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.