The Berkeley Genomics Project is hiring. If you're hard-working, reliable, ready to learn, and highly motivated to help build the emerging sector of reprogenetics, consider applying for the role of operations lead. Other roles include research & writing, policy & lobbying, and media. Also reach out if you might like to collaborate in a smaller way, or just want to meet.
Please share this post with people who might be a great fit.
Hiring & collaboration form: https://airtable.com/app7J6q9B0tBrmQ9D/pagly64GdDtsAnL49/form
Summary
Reprogenetics means technologically enabling parents to make some genomic choices on behalf of their future children. Reprogenetics offers enormous potential benefits, both by way of alleviating suffering, disease, and death due to genetic causes, and by way of increasing intelligence and other capacities. There are major obstacles, both technical and social, to bringing this area of biotechnology to full fruition. Many of these obstacles are neglected, important, and tractable.
This situation presents an opportunity to create something of worldwide importance for humanity, approximately from the ground up, on the shoulders of and in collaboration with giants. Currently, BGP is me, plus a network of allies and contractors. I'm looking to increase the size, number, and throughput of projects that BGP takes on, by hiring one to three excellent teammates.
Our work will involve a variety of different types of projects, including a conference, technical roadmapping, expository media, active grantmaking, and other kinds of organizing and advocacy.
If you're interested, please fill out the form: https://airtable.com/app7J6q9B0tBrmQ9D/pagly64GdDtsAnL49/form
The rest of this post:
Hiring
The main role I'm hiring for is operations lead. The following subsections describe how I expect hiring to go, general criteria for what I'm looking for, and specific roles in more detail.
Hiring process
Here's how I currently intend the hiring process to go:
- You fill out the form: https://airtable.com/app7J6q9B0tBrmQ9D/pagly64GdDtsAnL49/form
- I may reach out to have a phone call to discuss.
- Then we might do a work trial for a few weeks.
- If we decide to work together for a longer period of time, we'll orient around longitudinal investment: getting you up to full capacity, including understanding the field, understanding the strategic situation, having resources to develop new directions and projects, etc.
Note that pay may not be competitive. If we prove ourselves effective, hopefully we will be able to raise more funds. My hope is to find people highly motivated by the mission. My current intention is that BGP won't pay you less than it pays me. You will be paid at least $60k / year, probably more. If you're a strong candidate and money is a major determinant, please reach out and I'll see what I can do.
If you're interested in these roles but probably can't make substantial time commitments, I'm still interested in connecting with you. We could explore possible future collaborations, small or large.
General hiring criteria
Note: If you're less established in your skills or career, but otherwise might be a good fit, definitely apply. Credentials or a track record are good to have of course, but I will seriously consider good candidates without those things.
An ideal hire:
- Can work full-time (at least half-time is a requirement; full-time is ideal).
- Is generally reliable, trustworthy, competent.
- Is generally enthusiastic about the mission.
- Can thrive in a work context that is fast-paced, multi-thread, and multi-domain.
- Is ambitious and motivated; our goals will not be easy to achieve.
- Is ready to learn.
- Has a serious intention to stay in the sector for multiple years, in order to recoup start-up costs and execute important projects that take years.
- Is in Berkeley (this is very much not a requirement; just a nice-to-have).
Role: operations lead
This is the main role I want to hire for. Note: This role requires being in the Bay Area for at least 10 days in the summer, for the conference (lead-up, event, cleanup).
In general, this role will try to take on any task that I can offload. At first I would be involved in most tasks, but in some cases may rely on you more and more over time. Crucially, I would offload "the ball" to you in many cases.
Concrete activities:
- Lead organizer for the Reproductive Frontiers Summit. I would be heavily involved in planning, copy-writing, recruiting speakers, marketing, sponsorships, and so on; you would be responsible for coordinating volunteers, the venue, catering, badges, tickets, speaker logistics, managing finances, contractors (A/V etc.), and other operational elements. For the first year we would broadly share those responsibilities so that you learn the ropes.
- Usual operations work:
- Handling payments (contractors, consultants, etc.) and coordinating with our fiscal sponsor
- Organizational setup (e.g. setting up a formal nonprofit)
- Keeping us organized (task tracking, follow-ups)
- Various kinds of networking, e.g. sending out cold emails (hiring searches, donor / investor searches, connecting with other organizations)
- Various kinds of outreach (finding and coordinating with podcast guests, parents, advocacy groups, students in relevant areas, etc.)
- A bunch of other tasks
Beyond specific tasks I assign to you, we'll work together on whatever comes up. Over time, according to interest and ability, you'd gradually learn the ropes of BGP's activities, goals, overall mission, and areas for future work. You could execute projects semi-autonomously, conceive your own projects, and maybe grow into the role of Executive Director.
Role: research, writing
You should be able to process lots of academic papers—find, read, understand, extract relevant info, summarize into a report. Background in some relevant areas is a big plus but not strictly necessary. We'll decide together what you work on depending on interest, ability, importance, and urgency. Overall goals include:
- Roadmapping
- Active grantmaking
- Direct technical research
- Technical writing
- Expository writing
Role: policy, lobbying, industry organizing
I can't define the concrete goals and methods here very well, because I don't know much about the policy arena, but it seems very important. For example, we may want to interface with various professional orgs, trade orgs, biobank admins, public health departments, regulatory agencies, etc.; and we may want to do various organizational things, such as funding structures, trade consortia, a lobbying/advocacy organization, etc. Examples:
- third-party validators of commercial claims about polygenic scores (PGSes)
- making biobank data available for research
- organizing PGS companies to fund public-goods research
- producing reports for public health or regulatory officials
If you're an expert in this arena I'm very interested in discussing plans and potentially working with you.
There's a lot of public communication and outreach we could do. For example, podcasts, interviews, short videos, nice expository videos, debates, Twitter engagement, etc. I don't know much about this, but if you're interested we could discuss possibilities.
Why join the Berkeley Genomics Project
A brief case for reprogenetics fieldbuilding
Beneficial and impactful
Reprogenetics—i.e. human germline genomic engineering—can enable parents to give their children genomic foundations for healthy, long, capable lives. This could potentially avoid or alleviate millions of cases of a wide variety of genetically influenced diseases.
Further, parents will be able to choose to give their children genomic foundations that increase their cognitive capabilities. To the extent that parents make such a choice, those children will be more likely on average to make large beneficial contributions to the world through insights of many kinds (scientific, technological, philosophical, social, moral, etc.). In particular, some of them might choose to work on decreasing major risks to humanity, including existential risk from AGI.
There are several potential perils of reprogenetics, but overall I believe these can be largely avoided and are greatly outweighed by the benefits to everyone. Thus, reprogenetics can be hugely impactful and beneficial.
Neglected
Many elements of reprogenetics are not neglected. There are large and active fields for statistical genetics, assisted reproductive technology, psychometrics, cell reprogramming, gene editing, reproductive biology, and so on.
However, there's no coherently organized sector of reprogenetics as such. (The closest thing that exists is some polygenic embryo screening startups.)
For that reason, there are large gaps in what humanity is working on, relative to what would constitute a healthy, fast-paced sector of reprogenetics. See "Projects that might help accelerate strong reprogenetics" and the below subsection "What BGP does" for more detail about these gaps. They include: technical roadmapping, active grantmaking, events, professional self-regulation, media, lobbying, fundraising for public-goods science, and so on.
More abstractly, there is no one who "has the ball on making reprogenetics go well". In particular, there's no one who would notice important projects that aren't happening by default in academia and industry. There's also no one to take public responsibility for addressing problems of the sector as a whole and making reprogenetics be beneficial for everyone.
Thus, important aspects of reprogenetics are extremely neglected.
Tractable
Because many aspects of the nascent sector of reprogenetics are severely neglected, there are plenty of tractable, impactful actions to take. As just one illustration, the only conference focused specifically on the full scope of advanced reprotech and reprogenetics is the Reproductive Frontiers Summit, run in 2025 and 2026 by the Berkeley Genomics Project. Many first-rate academics in relevant areas, as well as representatives of industry leaders, parents, funders, and investors, got to meet each other and learn what's going on. No one had tried to run such a conference before, as far as I know.
More generally, there are many useful things to do in the sector that are not being done by default, but could totally be done now. See the next subsection "What BGP does" for more. In particular, there may be an influx of philanthropic money that wants to help but needs opportunities. Thus, reprogenetics is tractable to accelerate and to make go well.
What BGP does
Past activities
- Technical roadmapping.
- Project recommendations.
- Active grantmaking.
- That is, actively nucleating projects by conceiving them, finding interested experts, and getting funding for them.
- Events.
- The Reproductive Frontiers Summit, held twice so far in the Bay Area. The 2026 summit had over 140 attendees, including several leaders in relevant areas of academia and industry. The average response to "How strongly would you recommend next year's Reproductive Frontiers Summit to other people?" was 8.5 (n=16).
- Smaller events (mainly talks on genomics and reproductive technology).
- Ethics.
- Assorted networking, e.g. connecting investors with startups or funders with academics.
- Media.
(Note: some activities are private and so not listed here.)
Possible future activities
- More of the above, especially:
- The next Reproductive Frontiers Summit in 2027.
- More rigorous roadmapping, with more expert input. The proximal aim of this is to help effectively distribute philanthropic capital in this area.
- More active grantmaking, for the same reason.
- For example, I want to set up a third-party validator of claims about polygenic prediction.
- See the project recommendations linked in the previous bullet for many more examples of projects.
- More research on chromosome selection.
- New areas:
- Build dialogue bridges with various viewpoints (parents, group advocates, bioethicists, regulators, the public, etc.).
- Make various elements of reprogenetics more legible and legitimate. (E.g. surveys, popular explainers, reviews, academic papers, open letters, position statements, FAQs, etc.)
- Funder and investor outreach.
- Supporting innovation-positive regulation and governance. E.g. legalizing polygenic embryo screening in various countries, enabling biobank data access for polygenic screening, allowing gene editing research (without implanting an embryo), etc.
- Something about the talent pipeline? E.g. student seminars.
- Things we think of later.
The working ethos of BGP
- BGP is working to accelerate and co-create the nascent sector of reprogenetics, which may become a worldwide high-impact technology. So we will be aiming high: working hard, taking on ambitious projects, triaging to find the highest-impact projects, learning to operate in multiple domains, exploring, and so on. This will be a fast-moving work environment.
- BGP will maintain a reasonable degree of neutrality, as much as is feasible. That is, we will maintain the actuality and the appearance of not having a substantive financial or other biasing interest in any specific company in the sector, or in industry as a whole over academia. Thus, BGP and its current employees and projects won't accept or hold the following from companies in the reprogenetics sector: sponsorships, equity, commissions, salary, contracting payments, or similar.
- The sector of reprogenetics is for the sake of empowering future children, and empowering parents on behalf of their future children. In particular, AGI existential risk can be a background motivation, but that's not the goal of the sector. BGP won't act in pursuit of that goal at the expense of empowering future children.
- Reprogenetics will likely be a large, complex sector, with many different elements of science, tech, policy, etc., and many different stakeholders, playing out over decades. BGP thinks on that timescale.
- BGP is taking on a role of "organizer" for the sector. This comes with some ethical rules and responsibilities:
- Take overall responsibility for the sector going well. While the scientists, industrialists, and legal experts will be the only ones capable of doing most of the important work, no one of them is "holding the ball". BGP intends to hold the ball on things the sector really ought to do, e.g. making sure the technology is accessible, making sure the sector self-regulates in a trustworthy way, setting up systems to avoid harm, and so on.
- In particular, over time, many stakeholders will have criticisms and complaints about reprogenetics in general or about specific projects. BGP will take these as opportunities to understand and prevent potential problems with reprogenetics. This directly helps make the reprogenetics sector have fewer problems, and also indirectly helps fulfill the responsibility of the sector to operate corrigibly as part of society. In other words, BGP will try to pull the rope sideways as much as possible, rather than getting in a tug of war.
- Communicate with respect, empathy, and openness, even with people who are hostile to the sector of reprogenetics. Because there are many different concerns about reprogenetics, as well as social pressures, people may be hostile without understanding why they are hostile and without knowing how to communicate well or update their opinions. So one of BGP's responsibilities is to take on some of the burden of processing those concerns and social forces.
- Communicate with an appropriate level of humility. Genetics, stem cell biology, reproduction, personal reproductive choices, and the social impacts of technology are complicated. BGP aims to develop, present, explain, and argue for the strong cases in favor of reprogenetics—but only as part of a global epistemic process that trends toward the good and the true. When you don't know something, don't act like you do know it. This way we don't have to issue corrections later, and people can rely on what we say, including the surprising and important statements.
- BGP intends to make good use of LLM AI tools to make operations easier, to run initial literature searches, and so on. However, BGP will not use LLM AI tools to replace human reading, writing, analysis, or judgement, because that would result in poor quality and unaccountable assertions.
- BGP is opposed to "scientific racism". That is, BGP is opposed to using the science of genetics to justify racist social attitudes, government policies, or other actions.
- BGP is opposed to eugenics. That is, BGP is opposed to population-level goals about the gene pool, racist genetic criteria, coercion about reproductive or reprogenetic choices, and non-pluralistic attitudes about "good and bad traits/genes". (See "Genomic emancipation contra eugenics".)
About BGP
I'm BGP's only full-time person. Rachel Wallis runs smaller events as a volunteer.
We're funded by donations and small grants. Funding is not necessarily stable. I'm currently fundraising.
At the moment, BGP is a fiscally sponsored project. We may soon rebrand and then get set up as a 501(c)(3). At first, hires would technically be a contractor, as I am.
