TEAM

The people behind Atoms for Humanity.

AFH brings together scientific research, software engineering, technology, and institutional experience around a shared mission: building a more sustainable molecular future.

LEADERSHIP & BOARD

03 PEOPLE

Colton Hicks

Founder & CEO · Director

Colton Hicks is the founder and CEO of Atoms for Humanity. He earned his PhD in theoretical chemistry from Stanford University, where his work focused on distributed system design for quantum chemistry simulation, high throughput molecular analysis using group- and graph- theory, and organocatalyst design. Prior to his PhD, Colton worked as an analytic chemist building high throughput pipelines for DNA/RNA synthesis, as a researcher at Harvard in macroeconomics and clinical psychology, and as a software engineer building automated trading systems at a hedge fund and scalable data systems at a medtech startup. His work at AFH sits at the intersection of scalable infrastructure, advanced molecular research, and high-performance computing. Colton is also a Resident at the Astera Institute.

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Maryanna Saenko

Director

Maryanna Saenko is co-founder of Future Ventures and an early-stage venture capitalist investing in frontier technologies with the potential to improve human and planetary outcomes. Previously, she worked at Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Airbus Ventures, Lux Research, and Cabot Corporation. Her experience spans advanced materials, aerospace, energy, agriculture, healthcare, and artificial intelligence. She holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering and a BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Mel van Londen

Director

Mel van Londen is the CEO and co-founder of Develop Health, an AI-driven healthcare technology company working to reduce administrative barriers to medication access. He has deep experience building and scaling software products across healthcare technology and a background in open-source software development.

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RESEARCH TEAM

01 PERSON

Jan Estrada Pabón

Lead Computational Research Scientist

Jan Estrada Pabón holds a PhD in theoretical chemistry from Stanford University and leads Atoms for Humanity’s computational research in automated reaction-path and reaction-network discovery. His doctoral work used high-throughput simulation to uncover complex reaction networks and chemical pathways beyond those initially hypothesized by researchers. At AFH, he applies these approaches to catalyst design, sustainable chemistry, and large-scale reaction discovery, while developing scientific workflows that both leverage and help shape AFH’s computational infrastructure. Jan is also a Resident at the Astera Institute.

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