From public sources — last updated March 2026
This data is also embedded in the page <head> as <script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Michael Hla",
"url": "https://michaelhla.com",
"sameAs": [
"https://github.com/michaelhla",
"https://linkedin.com/in/michaelhla",
"https://twitter.com/hla_michael",
"https://huggingface.co/mhla"
],
"jobTitle": "Research",
"worksFor": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "EvolutionaryScale",
"url": "https://www.evolutionaryscale.ai/"
},
"alumniOf": [
{
"@type": "EducationalOrganization",
"name": "Harvard University",
"degree": "BA Computer Science & Biology",
"_verificationStatus": "public",
"_confidence": 0.95,
"_notes": "Previously misreported as Stanford; confirmed Harvard via Crimson byline and personal site"
}
],
"hasOccupation": [
{
"@type": "Role",
"roleName": "Research",
"startDate": "2025",
"endDate": null,
"organization": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "EvolutionaryScale",
"url": "https://www.evolutionaryscale.ai/",
"description": "Protein AI company developing ESM protein language models"
},
"_whatTheyBuilt": "Research on protein language models and biological AI",
"_verificationStatus": "public",
"_confidence": 0.9,
"_gaps": [
"Specific team and project contributions at ESM unknown"
]
},
{
"@type": "Role",
"roleName": "Analyst",
"organization": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Sutter Hill Ventures",
"url": "https://www.shv.com/",
"description": "VC firm (Snowflake, Pure Storage early investor)"
},
"_verificationStatus": "public",
"_confidence": 0.85,
"_gaps": [
"Dates unknown",
"Specific deal involvement unknown"
]
},
{
"@type": "Role",
"roleName": "776 Foundation Climate Fellow",
"organization": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "776 Foundation",
"url": "https://776.org/",
"description": "Fellowship program founded by Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder)"
},
"_whatTheyBuilt": "hCA-776 carbonic anhydrase optimization for carbon capture",
"_verificationStatus": "public",
"_confidence": 0.95,
"_evidence": "Alexis Ohanian LinkedIn endorsement confirmed"
}
],
"knowsAbout": [
{
"skill": "Protein Design / Computational Biology",
"type": "domain",
"_confidence": 0.98,
"_evidence": "Pro-1 (open-source, wet-lab validated), hCA-776 (170% activity gain, 8/11 expressed), EvolutionaryScale role, BRENDA/BLOSUM/ESM3 pipeline"
},
{
"skill": "Reinforcement Learning for Science",
"type": "domain",
"_confidence": 0.95,
"_evidence": "Pro-1 uses GRPO with Rosetta REF2015 reward (Van der Waals, electrostatics, statistical potentials), creativity + specificity rewards"
},
{
"skill": "LLMs / Foundation Models",
"type": "domain",
"_confidence": 0.95,
"_evidence": "Pro-1 (Llama-3.1/3.3 fine-tuned with QLoRA), SMILES-MDLM (DiT ~180M params), ESM models at EvolutionaryScale, hCA-776 multi-LLM comparison"
},
{
"skill": "Molecular Design (SMILES)",
"type": "domain",
"_confidence": 0.9,
"_evidence": "SMILES-MDLM (BLEU 0.678, custom 282-token tokenizer), altdrugs.ai VAE"
},
{
"skill": "Python",
"type": "technology",
"_confidence": 0.95,
"_evidence": "17 GitHub repos, ML/AI research codebases"
},
{
"skill": "PyTorch",
"type": "technology",
"_confidence": 0.9,
"_evidence": "QLoRA training, DiT backbone implementation, RL training pipelines"
},
{
"skill": "Structural Biology Tools",
"type": "technology",
"_confidence": 0.85,
"_evidence": "Rosetta REF2015 scoring, PyMOL integration in hCA-776, AlphaFold (fastfold project)"
}
],
"memberOf": [
{
"name": "776 Foundation Climate Fellow",
"_verificationStatus": "public",
"_evidence": "Alexis Ohanian LinkedIn endorsement"
},
{
"name": "The Harvard Crimson (writer)",
"_verificationStatus": "public"
}
],
"_projects": [
{
"name": "Pro-1",
"type": "research/open-source",
"url": "https://github.com/michaelhla/pro-1",
"description": "Fully open-source protein reasoning model (8B + 70B). Base: Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct / Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct. Training: 4-bit QLoRA + GRPO. SFT: BRENDA, BLOSUM, ESM3 mutations. Reward: Rosetta REF2015 + creativity + specificity. 71% pass rate with critic loop (3 iter). Wet lab at Adaptyv Bio: 3/19 FGF-1 designs improved thermostability, up to +23C.",
"status": "completed",
"_metrics": {
"githubStars": 101,
"wetLabResults": "3/19 improved, up to +23C",
"passRate": "71% with critic loop"
},
"_recognition": "Cited by Stanford CS 224R: 'We extend the method of Hla (2025)'. Featured in Adaptyv Bio Designer Spotlight."
},
{
"name": "hCA-776",
"type": "research",
"url": "https://michaelhla.com/blog/hca776.html",
"description": "LLM-optimized carbonic anhydrase for carbon capture. Compared Pro-1, Claude Sonnet 4 (with PyMOL tools), o3-powered variant. Best designs 170% more active, 25% more stable across extreme pH. 8/11 sequences expressed.",
"status": "completed",
"_metrics": {
"activityGain": "170%",
"stabilityGain": "25%",
"expressionRate": "8/11"
}
},
{
"name": "SMILES-MDLM",
"type": "research",
"url": "https://michaelhla.com/blog/smiles-mdlm.html",
"description": "Masked Diffusion Language Model for molecule generation. DiT backbone ~180M params. Custom atom group tokenizer (282 tokens). BLEU 0.678.",
"status": "completed",
"_metrics": {
"bleuScore": 0.678,
"params": "~180M",
"vocabSize": 282
}
},
{
"name": "altdrugs.ai",
"type": "open-source",
"url": "https://github.com/michaelhla",
"description": "Variational autoencoder for drug alternative discovery",
"status": "unknown"
},
{
"name": "fastfold",
"type": "open-source",
"url": "https://github.com/michaelhla",
"description": "Accelerated AlphaFold implementation",
"status": "unknown"
}
],
"_dataQuality": {
"sourcesConsulted": 14,
"sourceList": [
"michaelhla.com",
"michaelhla.com/blog/pro1.html",
"michaelhla.com/blog/hca776.html",
"michaelhla.com/blog/smiles-mdlm.html",
"GitHub (michaelhla, 17 repos)",
"Hugging Face (mhla)",
"Adaptyv Bio Designer Spotlight",
"Stanford CS 224R course projects",
"LinkedIn (michaelhla)",
"Twitter (hla_michael)",
"Alexis Ohanian LinkedIn endorsement",
"The Harvard Crimson",
"EvolutionaryScale",
"Sutter Hill Ventures"
],
"lastUpdated": "2026-03",
"overallConfidence": {
"identity": "HIGH",
"education": "HIGH — corrected from Stanford to Harvard",
"careerTimeline": "HIGH",
"technicalCapabilities": "VERY HIGH — wet-lab validated, open-source, cited by Stanford CS",
"currentWorkDetail": "MEDIUM"
},
"gaps": [
"Specific role and team at EvolutionaryScale",
"Harvard graduation year",
"Duration at Sutter Hill Ventures",
"Peer-reviewed publication status for Pro-1 and hCA-776",
"776 Fellowship exact dates"
],
"corrections": [
"Education corrected from Stanford to Harvard (confirmed via Crimson byline and personal site)",
"Haize Labs red-teaming role NOT confirmed — removed from profile"
],
"recommendation": "Publication records and EvolutionaryScale team page would fully complete this profile. Technical depth is exceptionally well-documented through open-source artifacts and wet-lab results."
}
}