Vladimir Vacić - vacic.org

I was born and grew up in Belgrade, Serbia. I graduated from the School of Mathematics (Matematička gimnazija) and spent a year at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Architecture.

In 1998 I moved to the United States for college: first to Bridgeport, then to Philadelphia, and finally to Riverside, where I defended my Ph.D. in Computer Science exactly ten years and a day after I first arrived in the US. Along the way I interned for about half a year each in Indianapolis and Princeton. Between the moves for school and the internships, I did my fair share of driving across the country.

In 2008 I moved to New York for a postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (statistical genetics, psychiatry, neurodevelopment), then at Columbia (statistical genetics, neurodegeneration). From 2012 to 2015 I worked at the New York Genome Center, where I was one of the founding scientists, saw the center grow from 20 to 160 people, and ended up managing a cancer genomics group.

In 2015 I switched coasts again and moved to San Francisco. I joined 23andMe to support the newly formed Therapeutics Division, and later moved into the group, where I stayed until it was wound down in 2024. I've seen 23andMe grow from about 200 employees to more than 800, enter an exclusive 5-year drug discovery collaboration with GSK, get listed on Nasdaq, acquire Lemonaid Health, and then in a sharp reversal of fortunes, shed 99% of its value and 80% of its employees, have all independent directors resign from the board, file for Chapter 11 and get delisted from Nasdaq. All I can say is, what a ride.

I love maps, and these are some I've made. Running: