When Robert Marino discovers the message that has just appeared on his phone, his face lights up with a wide smile. The founder of Qubit Pharmaceuticals has just learned that his company has won the prestigious HPC Innovation Awards. A medal that rewards the best projects in the world that mobilize high-performance computing. Qubit shares the podium this year with the centennial Rolls-Royce. Created in 2020, the startup led by Robert Mariano did not wait the years to prove the value of its project: Qubit relies on quantum computing and high-performance computing to develop new drugs. In 2022, this unique expertise in the world allowed the development of a molecule aimed at Covid 19 in record time.
Robert Marino is also involved in the ongoing creation of the first quantum start-up studio, the Quantum Launch Pad, alongside Xavier Aubry, an entrepreneur who launched the construction, in Touraine, of Da Vinci Labs, a totem place that will house the most innovative projects of a European scientific “Renaissance”, on the grounds of Château Louise de la Vallière. While a first generation of quantum companies is already in orbit, Quantum Launch Pad wants to “bring in the second wave of quantum entrepreneurs”, explains Robert Marino. Also on the adventure is Christophe Jurczak, Charles Beigbeder’s partner at Quantonation, the only European seed fund dedicated to quantum.
Robert Marino’s interest in “high impact, high risk” projects is part of a career that is as brilliant as it is coherent. After training as a chemist and then a thesis on “quantum memories”, the scientist devoted himself to promoting research for seven years, first at the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Research Foundation and then at the first French SATT, IDF-Innov (now Erganeo).
He co-founded Deeptech Founders with Xavier Duportet
Moving from the laboratory bench to the life of an entrepreneur, transforming an academic discovery into a viable company, is not easy. In his years of detecting discoveries in laboratories, Robert Marino found that researchers were not prepared to start a business. To help them, he launched the Deeptech Founders program in 2018, in association with Xavier Duportet, president of the Hello Tomorrow association and founder of Eligo Bioscience. Aimed at researcher-entrepreneurs, this entrepreneurship training has already accelerated 200 projects, including French quantum champions Alice & Bob, C12, SiQuance and Pasqal, cellular meat specialist Gourmey…
It was in this context that, in 2019, he met the five scientific founders of Qubit Pharmaceuticals: the American researcher Jay Ponder, an eminent chemist, and his colleague Pengyu Ren, allied with a Sorbonne team commanded by Jean-Philip Piquemal. The Americans had made the mad bet of simulating the interactions of molecules with unprecedented precision – while the industry until then had been satisfied with very simplified models –, but ran into the limited calculation capabilities of computers. The French team specialized in speeding up calculations. Together, French and Americans had the ambition to manufacture very precise and ultra-fast models. But the scientists wanted to stay in their lab: they offered Robert Marino to take over the start-up. In addition to his experience supporting entrepreneurs, he had the advantage, he explains with disconcerting humility, of having “some knowledge” of quantum physics.
Molecules of interest to large laboratories
Two years later, under his leadership, the start-up raised 16 million euros and focused on three therapeutic areas: cancer, viruses and inflammation. “We are attacking diseases for which there is no treatment”, specifies Robert Marino. The startup already has several molecules in its pipeline that are of interest to large pharmaceutical laboratories. It brings together a unique combination of professions: computational chemists, specialists in high performance computing, artificial intelligence, quantum physicists… So many assets that the American group Nvidia decided to sign a partnership with Qubit Pharmaceuticals, announced on November 30th. The chip designer created with the French startup a platform that combines Qubit software with one of the most powerful supercomputers in France. Definitely, Robert Marino maintains his position in the aristocracy of “particle entrepreneurs”. Those who rely on hard science to put together useful projects.