Institute for Protein Design

Designing tomorrow

The company trains researchers from around the world at all career stages. Located at the University of Washington in Seattle, its Member and Affiliate Labs are led by professors with access to ideas, software, and instruments in their fields.

David Baker directs the Institute for Protein Design and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, a biochemistry professor, and an adjunct professor in several fields.

Bryan White co-founded Sahsen Ventures, which invests in and supports enterprises focused on life sciences, education, social justice, and the environment. From 1994 to 2016, he co-founded and served as chief investment officer of Quadra/Quellos.

The Institute for Protein Design is headquartered in the Molecular Engineering & Sciences and Nanoengineering & Sciences buildings on the University of Washington’s main Seattle campus. The buildings are not open to the public.

Institute for Protein Design – Designing tomorrow

The University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD), led by Nobel laureate David Baker, releases **RFD4-Proteina**, its first AI protein model co-developed with Nvidia. The open-source tool accelerates protein design with lower computational demands than prior methods, enabling applications in medicine, sustainability, and biotechnology. IPD previously developed protein-prediction tools like RoseTTAFold and RFdiffusion, and has spun out 11 companies, including vaccine developer Icosavax. A UW predoctoral candidate used RFD4-Proteina to design a pesticide-degrading enzyme outperforming prior work by months.

Oct 2026GeekWireNews article

Booking Holdings launches **Vayo**, a Seattle-based AI travel startup led by serial entrepreneur Mike Fridgen. The company aims to develop AI agents specialized for travel planning, positioning itself as a more tailored alternative to general-purpose assistants like those from OpenAI and Meta. Vayo will receive an initial $100 million investment from Booking Holdings.

Oct 2026GeekWireNews article

The UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design receives nearly 7 million GPU hours from the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, expanding its AI-driven protein research. Accessed through CoreWeave using Nvidia GPUs, the yearlong allocation lets researchers test model architectures and training data more systematically than their limited in-house cluster allowed. The institute develops open-source tools including RoseTTAFold and RFdiffusion for protein prediction and design.

Oct 2026GeekWireNews article