s n e s s AT s n e s s . n e t
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
sness.net LinkedIn Google Scholar Medium Github sness Github sness23 Sourceforge ResearchGate OpenReview ACM ScholarGPS IEEE AMiner
An interdisciplinary scientific programmer and computational biologist with a Ph.D. in Computer Science and over 30 years driving high‑impact research, product development, and AI‑powered biotech ventures. I combine deep domain expertise in structural biology and protein‑ligand docking with hands‑on machine‑learning and software‑engineering leadership.
– Built and scaled folding.ai (2021–2025) and doi.bio (2025–Present), end‑to‑end intelligence‑augmentation systems that integrate generative models with GPU‑accelerated molecular viewers to triage and design novel therapeutics.
– As Lead Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce, designed and delivered production‑scale service‑mesh infrastructure (Envoy/Istio), voice‑AI assistants, and master‑data orchestration (Data Cloud) now serving millions of profiles.
– Authored CRANK (GPL‑licensed crystallography pipeline used by 100+ labs) and Gamma docking suite (University of Alberta), and published in Nature, Structure, and Biochemistry.
– Partnered with protein designers and biologists throughout PhD (Orchive bioacoustic ML) and later roles to translate experimental feedback into model refinements, achieving high‑accuracy detection/classification and driving wet‑lab testing campaigns ([sness.net][1]).
I’ve rapidly prototyped generative and deep‑learning models—from orca‑call classification to AI‑driven protein design—and defined custom evaluation metrics tied directly to experimental success.
The Orchive project involved curating 20 000+ hrs of audio to train ML pipelines and devising benchmark classification metrics; I’ve also managed large bioinformatics datasets and high‑throughput pipelines in genomics.
I’ve led joint codebases with strict CI/CD, Docker/PM2 deployments, and cloud (AWS/GCP) architectures, ensuring robust, maintainable software across multi‑disciplinary teams.
With hands‑on roles in structural biology labs (UBC, Leiden) and biotech startups, you’ve planned wet‑lab assays, performed in‑silico inference, and iteratively improved models based on real‑world feedback.
I regularly publish at leading conferences (ICML, ISMIR), organize reading groups, and mentor across academia and industry, staying at the forefront of ML and cell‑biology advances.
Mar 2025 – Present (5 mo) · Victoria, BC (Hybrid)
Founder of doi.bio.
May 2021 – Mar 2025 (3 yr 11 mo) · Victoria, BC
May 2020 – Apr 2021 (1 yr)
Nov 2019 – May 2020 (7 mo) · San Francisco, CA
Member of the Einstein Voice Assistant team (formerly MetaMind), building an AI‑based voice assistant smart‑speaker integrated with Salesforce core.
Nov 2018 – Nov 2019 (1 yr 1 mo) · San Francisco, CA
Delivered Envoy proxy implementation and collaborated with Istio to deploy service‑mesh infrastructure for Salesforce Hyperforce / Customer 360.
Feb 2016 – Nov 2018 (2 yr 10 mo) · San Francisco, CA
Founding member and UI Team Lead of the Customer 360 tiger team; presented demos to Salesforce founders and EVPs; partnered with architects to deliver the Customer 360 Data Manager product.
Oct 2013 – Oct 2014 (1 yr 1 mo) · Victoria, BC
Developed EasyRTC (open‑source WebRTC server/client SDKs) for web, iOS, and Android (GitHub).
University of Victoria (Jan 2010 – Dec 2013 | 4 yrs) Victoria, BC
Orchive – Data mining a massive bioacoustic archive of 20 000+ hrs of orca recordings from OrcaLab (1980 – present), with a web-based interface for researchers.
Cantillion – Designed and implemented the Cantillion interface (uploaded Oct 16, 2013).
Ocean Networks Canada (VENUS/NEPTUNE) – Sensor data integration and analysis.
University of Victoria (2007 – Dec 2009 | 3 yrs) Victoria, BC
Orchive – Early prototyping of the bioacoustic archive interface.
Cantillion – Initial interface design and implementation.
Audioscapes – Exploratory work on large-scale music analysis.
Google (News Performance Team)
May 2012 – Aug 2012 (4 mos)
Reduced end‑to‑end latency in Google News by ~33% for users on slow connections.
Developed a JavaScript API for real‑time performance monitoring.
Identified critical bottlenecks, implemented fixes, and deployed to production.
Google Research (Human Auditory Models)
May 2011 – Aug 2011 (4 mos)
May 2010 – Aug 2010 (4 mos)
Built electronic models of the human auditory system to analyze large-scale music data.
Wrote data‑processing pipelines and ran experiments over thousands of YouTube music videos using Google’s compute infrastructure.
Leiden University
Sep 2003 – Jan 2006 (2 yrs 5 mos)
Designed and implemented Crank, an open‑source platform for automated crystallographic structure solution (Tcl, C, Shell, Fortran).
“Crank” is GPL‑licensed and used by 100+ labs as part of CCP4.
BC Genome Sciences Centre
Feb 2000 – Sep 2001 (1 yr 8 mos)
Developed software for constructing and analyzing physical maps of large genomes.
Coordinated complete restriction‑map efforts for mouse, rat, and cow genomes.
Enhanced the industry‑standard FPC platform with new features.
Trained programmers and genomics technicians; designed custom fingerprint‑analysis tools.
Stormix Technologies Inc.
Sep 1999 – Jan 2000 (5 mos)
Kernel‑level and hardware‑detection programming for Storm Linux 2000.
Implemented boot‑time splash screen with PC‑speaker audio.
Developed nanoGUI, a graphics library for embedded devices.
University of British Columbia
May 1997 – Sep 1999 (2 yrs 5 mos)
Managed 10 SGI/Linux lab workstations, user accounts, and network services (Apache, sendmail, Samba, NFS).
Developed and maintained an extensive HTML crystallography reference library.
Provided UNIX training for beginners.
Languages/Tools: C, C++, Fortran 77, Bash, C shell, Perl, IRIX.
University of Alberta
Jan 1995 – Apr 1997 (2 yrs 4 mos)
Created Gamma, a molecular‑docking program using genetic‑algorithm optimization.
Built GUIs for Research, RSDataBase, and Gamma command‑line tools.
Implemented a 3D molecular viewer with SGI Open Inventor.
Languages: C, C++, Fortran 77, Bash, C shell.
University of Alberta
Sep 1992 – May 1995 (2 yrs 9 mos)
Designed a general‑purpose genetic‑algorithm optimizer.
Developed clustering software for analyzing docking results.
Language: C, C++.
Alberta Environment Research Centre
Jul 1987 – Aug 1987 (2 mos)
Developed timekeeping and scheduling software with database integration.
Language: Turbo Pascal.
University of Victoria
2010 – 2013 · GPA: 9.0
University of Victoria
2007 – 2010 · GPA: 9.0
Activities: Computer Science Course Union (community teaching), Society for Indian Classical Music
President — Society for Indian Classical Arts, University of Victoria
Jan 2010 – Dec 2013 (4 yr) · Arts & Culture
Lead Developer & Scientist — The Orchive
May 2007 – Jan 2025 (17 yr 9 mo) · Animal Welfare
Developed and maintained the Orchive website (23 000+ hours of orca vocalizations; bioacoustic archive annotation tools).
Full list: Google Scholar.
US Patent 10,936,582
C Bergler, M Schmitt, AK Maier, H Symonds, P Spong, SR Ness, …
Interspeech, 2396-2400
D Woodward, A Chadda, D Hacker, N Steven, M Lagrotte, J Moody, C Bill, …
US Patent App. 16/264,391
S Ness
S Ness, G Tzanetakis
2014 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP …
Y Zhuang, C Matthews, S Tredger, S Ness, J Short-Gershman, L Ji, …
Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science …
S Ness, H Symonds, P Spong, G Tzanetakis
arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.0589
S Ness
University of Victoria (Canada)
S Ness, P Reimer, J Love, WA Schloss, G Tzanetakis
Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces 5 (3), 123-129
D Biro, P Van Kranenburg, S Ness, G Tzanetakis, A Volk
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Analytical Approaches …
DP Biró, P Van Kranenburg, SR Ness, G Tzanetakis, A Volk
Proceedings of the Analytical Approaches to World Music Conference, AAWM 2012
DP Biró, P van Kranenburg, SR Ness, G Tzanetakis, A Volk
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Music Perception and …
SR Ness, T Walters, RF Lyon
Music Data Mining. Boca Raton, FL, 33487-2742
SR Ness, A Lerch, G Tzanetakis
2011 IEEE 13th International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, 1-6
SR Ness, S Trail, PF Driessen, WA Schloss, G Tzanetakis
ISMIR, 567-572
F Sattar, PF Driessen, G Tzanetakis, SR Ness, WH Page
Proceedings of 2011 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications, Computers …
SR Ness, G Odowichuk, PF Driessen, G Tzanetakis
ICMC 2011
P Van Kranenburg, DP Biró, SR Ness, G Tzanetakis
Proceedings of the International Society on Music Information Retrieval …
SR Ness, S Methabi, G Odowichuk, G Tzanetakis, WA Schloss
ICMC 2011
SR Ness, DP Biró, G Tzanetakis
Multimedia Tools and Applications 48 (1), 207-224
SR Ness, P Reimer, N Krell, G Odowichuck, WA Schloss, G Tzanetakis
S Miller, P Reimer, SR Ness, G Tzanetakis
ISMIR, 237-242
SR Ness, A Theocharis, G Tzanetakis, LG Martins
Proceedings of the 17th ACM international conference on Multimedia, 705-708
G Tzanetakis, MS Benning, SR Ness, D Minifie, N Livingston
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on PErvasive Technologies …
SR Ness, G Tzanetakis, DP Biró
2009 Seventh International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing, 81-86
S Ness
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on PErvsive Technologies …
K McNally, G Tzanetakis, SR Ness
S Ness
S Ness, G Tzanetakis
### Somba: multiuser music creation using self-organizing maps and motion tracking
SR Ness, G Tzanetakis
ICMC
SR Ness, G Tzanetakis
ICMC
ains
SR Ness, M Wright, LG Martins, G Tzanetakis
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Multimedia semantics, 9-16
DP Biró, S Ness, WA Schloss, G Tzanetakis, M Wright
JP Abrahams, JR Plaisier, S Ness, NS Pannu
Macromolecular Crystallography: conventional and high-throughput methods, 143
P Skubák, S Ness, NS Pannu
Biological Crystallography 61 (12), 1626-1635
SR Ness, RAG de Graaff, JP Abrahams, NS Pannu
ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA A-FOUNDATION AND ADVANCES 61, C55-C55, 2005
SR Ness, RAG de Graaff, JP Abrahams, NS Pannu
Structure 12 (10), 1753-1761, 2005
S Ness, RAG de Graaff, JP Abrahams, NS Pannu
Foundations of Crystallography 60 (a1), s16-s16, 2004
SG Gregory, M Sekhon, J Schein, S Zhao, K Osoegawa, CE Scott, …
Nature 418 (6899), 743-750
SR Ness, W Terpstra, M Krzywinski, MA Marra, SJM Jones
Bioinformatics 18 (3), 484-485
SR Ness, TP Lo, AG Mauk
Israel Journal of Chemistry 40 (1), 21-25
S Ness, R Martin, AM Kindler, M Paetzel, M Gold, SE Jensen, JB Jones, …
Biochemistry 39 (18), 5312-5321
TN Hart, RE Gillilan, R Lilien, SR Ness, RJ Read
High Performance Computing Systems and Applications, 309-322
TN Hart, SR Ness, RJ Read
Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics 29 (S1), 205-209
S Ness, T Hart, R Read
Acta Crystallographica Section A 52, C90-C90, 1996
RJ Read, TN Hart, MD Cummings, SR Ness
Supramolecular Chemistry 6 (1-2), 135-140
Integrated Entity View Across Distributed Systems, US 10 936 582 B2 (2021) – master‑data federation.([Google Patents][4])
User Interface for Commerce Architecture, US 11 442 952 B2 (2023) – low‑code composable storefront UI.([Google Patents][5])
National Science Fair Best Senior Project + Multiple Gold Medallist (Canada) – Secondary School
NSERC CGS‑D Doctoral Scholarship, University of Victoria
Salesforce CTO Award (New Customer Experience)
Mentor, How to Grow Almost Anything (MIT Media Lab / Ginkgo Bioworks joint course) – guiding student wet‑lab projects (2025).
Speaker, ICML Workshop, ISMIR, CCP4 Study Weekend, Dockvision
English (native) - French (basic) • Dutch (basic) - Mandarin (basic)
My name is Steven Ness and I have been doing ligand protein docking since before it was cool. In 1988 while in grade 9 for the science fair I developed Designer Genes, a program for Apple ][e and in later years Mac Plus that provided a number of bioinformatics tools for a given DNA sequence, including a device that I made to read electrophoresis sequencing gels that hooked up to the Apple ][e game port.
After success at the Canada Wide Science Fair, I was introduced to Dr. Michael N.G. James and Dr. Randy Read at the University of Alberta who sparked my love of structural biochemistry, I remember sitting in class and instead of focusing on class I was trying to get my eyes to defocus so I could see the wall-eyed stereo diagrams in x-ray crystallography papers, seeing a 3D molecule spring out of the 2D page was a revelation to me in grade 10.
After graduation, I went to the University of Alberta and during the summers I worked in the lab of Dr. Randy Read working on software to do protein-ligand docking and our team wrote the DockVision suite of programs that performed protein-ligand docking. I wrote a Genetic Algorithm docking method that was part of this software after conversations with Dr. John Moult and Colin Broughton.
We participated in the second ever CASP competition with our DockVision suite and some of our dockings were quite close to the crystal structure. The structures that we did the best on were the ones that we received the most feedback from crystallographers on, which convinced me that collaboration is essential in structural biology.
After graduation, I kept working for Dr. Randy Read and joined an exciting collaboration of many labs at the University of Alberta studying Hepatitis A that eventually led to a Nobel Prize in this field.
As part of this collaboration I had a number of roles including software developer, but one of the most impactful ones was that I was very well experienced with using the main software to display molecules including BioSym/Insight and Grasp from Anthony Nicholls, and I would drive as Dr. James, Dr. Malcolm and other scientists would give insights on what they saw.
This experience is what led me to create my new startup ci.doi.bio which is a collaboratative viewer for macromolecular structures.
I then followed one of the member of Dr. James lab, Dr. Natalie Strynadka who was starting up her own lab at the University of British Columbia. In her lab I worked on many projects involving x-ray crystallographic software, from building the open source software to developing new software. I also helped on a number of structures and determined structures and published these.
After this I worked at a Linux startup in Vancouver named Stormix during the dot-com boom and worked on low-level kernel code, developing one of the first graphical startup screens for a Linux distribution.
Subsequently I moved to the BC Genome Sequence center where I got to work with Dr. Michael Smith and his team on the Human and Mouse genome projects. I worked on the physical mapping software, speeding parts of it up by massive amounts, taking a O(N^2) algorithm that ran on program initialization and making it O(N), making software that took 3 hours to start on the full Human Genome dataset to take only seconds.
After this, I went to work with another student of Dr. Read, Dr. Navraj Pannu at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Here I developed CRANK, a software package that allowed a user to create a custom pipeline to automatially solve crystal structures. This software was incorporated into the CCP4 software suite which is installed in (almost) every macromolecular x-ray crystallography lab in the world.
I then moved back to Canada and started my Ph.D/M.Sc. i Computer Science at the University of Victoria working on applying Machine Learning techniques to music. My primary project was The Orchive, one of the largest collections of Orca vocalizations with over 30,000 hours of recorded sound. I developed Machine Learning systems to both detect and classify different Orca calls and achived 97% detection and 80% classification accuracy. For this I used many different techniques, including Deep Learning.
During this Ph.D. I was lucky to get three summers of internships at Google, the first two in Google Research where I worked on developing Machine Learning algorithms for cover song detection from audio features. The third was in Google News where I worked on measuring and optimizing latency in Google News.
After graduation, I worked at Priologic, a software startup in Victoria, BC. where I worked on EasyRTC, a framework to allow developers to develop WebRTC video conferencing applications.
I was then lucky to find a position at Salesforce on a new team directly under the then-CTO of Salesforce, Walter Macklem on a bold new plan to break up the monolith of Saleforce into a microservices architecture.
This led me to work on the most exciting project I have been on, a Tiger Team composed of some of the best people from all of the companies Salesforce had acquired, making the first demo of the product that now powers all of the integrations between all of the sub-companies at Salesforce. This then led me to work on the Istio team and to work closely with the Kubernetes team, part of this transformation of Salesforce.
I then moved to the Salesforce Einstein team where I got to work on the Einstein Smart Speaker, an early app that was similar to ChatGPT, but a few years early.
This entire team then moved into the Quip team, a startup acquired by Salesforce that made an HTML editor similar to Notion. In this team I developed software to help integrate this new startup with the Salesforce monolith.
Alphafold2 had just been released, and one month after this we started folding.ai, a startup that worked on developing software in this field. We had a number of products, the most exciting of which was one that used one of the attention heads in the "BERTology Meets Biology: Interpreting Attention in Protein Language Models" model to predict protein-ligand binding sites.
After this startup folded, I started doi.bio, a website that allows AIs to read papers and information in structural biochemisty to help drive protein-ligand docking.