Stephen Z. Lu

Hi! My name is Stephen and I am a first year PhD student at UC Berkeley supervised by Prof. Yun S. Song. I completed my undergraduate studies at McGill University in my hometown of Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦.

My research focuses on developing computational methods to navigate the energy and fitness landscapes that govern molecular function and evolution.

More concretely, my current research projects include:

• Building deep models of protein sequence evolution with applications to design and optimization
• Exploring methods to accelerate atomistic simulations and approximate quantum mechanical properties

I have previously worked on:

• Small molecule generative models for phenotypic drug discovery ([1], [2])
• Flow-based generative models for protein conformational sampling ([3], [4])
• Benchmarking LLM agents on scientific discovery tasks in biology ([5])

In my free time, I love playing pickup basketball, composing mostly funky (and a few serious) songs on the piano, discovering new hiking trails (my profile pic above was taken atop Mt. Wakakusa in Nara, Japan), and spending time with my family and friends.

Feel free to reach out stephen.lu@berkeley.edu if you’d like to chat about research or meet for coffee in the Bay Area!