Chris Gibson was supposed to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. Instead, he built a company. At the U’s recent Startup Launchpad event, Recursion’s co-founder sat down for a fireside chat about how that pivot happened: what he saw under a microscope in a University of Utah lab, why he walked away from the med school, and what it actually took to turn a grad school insight into one of Utah’s most recognized life sciences companies.
Watch the full fireside chat above.
A Startup Story That Began Under a Microscope
Before Recursion became a biotech giant, it began with a graduate student, a microscope, and a problem that seemed too tedious to solve by hand.
Gibson was an MD/PhD student in Dr. Dean Li’s lab at the University of Utah when a research project landed on his plate: analyze thousands of images of human cells, hunting for differences between healthy and diseased states. The team was focused on actin stress fibers, the protein scaffolds that give cells their structure.
The task could have meant hours of manual counting. Instead, Gibson started looking for a better way.
“I’m too lazy to sit here and count these things,” he joked. So he started writing software to do it instead.
What started as a workaround quickly became a revelation. The computer wasn’t just faster than the human eye; it was catching patterns that researchers would have missed entirely. That realization became the founding idea of Recursion.
Turning Research Into a Company
Recursion launched in 2013 as a university spinout with a thesis that most people in pharma found either exciting or alarming: that drug discovery could be fundamentally reimagined using machine learning, automation, and data at scale. More than a decade later, Recursion is part of a growing TechBio field working to use automation, machine learning, and large-scale biological data to rethink how new medicines are discovered.
But the decision to build a company was not obvious.
Gibson had spent years training to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. Leaving that meant giving up a long, clearly mapped career in medicine and choosing something with no guarantee of success. At the fireside chat, he explained how he made peace with that: he ran the numbers on impact. A surgeon might help thousands of patients over a career. If Recursion worked, even with long odds, the reach could be orders of magnitude larger.
“I think a lot of people, when they think about risk, they think about the risk of doing a thing, but they don’t think about the risk of the other choice,” Gibson said. “What’s the risk of how I would feel if I never took that bet?”
For Gibson, the greater risk was not trying. The possibility of building something that could affect millions of lives made the uncertain path worth pursuing.
So he left the medical school track. Recursion was founded the following year.
The University as a Launchpad
Recursion didn’t succeed in a vacuum. Its story is also the story of an environment built to take research seriously as a source of commercial ideas.
Dr. Li’s lab was genuinely interdisciplinary: molecular biologists working alongside geneticists, physician-scientists, and engineers. That environment helped Gibson develop a habit he’d rely on for years: seeing biological problems as computational ones. The lab also taught him how to write grants, build a scientific case, and sell an idea that didn’t fit neatly into any existing category. Those weren’t glamorous skills, but they turned out to be exactly what Recursion needed early on.
The company’s first major check came from an NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant, not a VC. Gibson leaned on his dissertation research as proof of concept, which gave the young company just enough credibility to get in front of investors who were still figuring out how to evaluate something at the intersection of biology and software.
That kind of translation, from lab discovery to market opportunity, is central to the University of Utah’s innovation ecosystem. Through resources such as the Technology Licensing Office, researchers can explore invention disclosures, licensing pathways, startup formation, funding opportunities, and industry partnerships.
Building an Ecosystem for What Comes Next
Recursion did more than grow out of Utah’s innovation ecosystem. It helped strengthen it.
In 2020, Recursion and the University of Utah partnered to launch Altitude Lab, a life sciences and health care incubator designed to support early-stage startups with lab and office space, mentoring, funding, and entrepreneurial education.
That matters because great research ideas stall out all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with the science. Startups need lab space before they can afford it, mentors who’ve been through regulatory and fundraising hurdles, and introductions to investors who won’t hang up when you say “biology plus software.” The University of Utah’s ecosystem is designed to close those gaps.
Recursion is one example of what is possible when those pieces align.
Explore University of Utah Innovation & Partnerships
Breakthrough companies often begin with a researcher who notices something others overlook. At the University of Utah, those moments happen every day—in labs, clinics, classrooms, and collaborative spaces across campus.
Recursion licensed University of Utah intellectual property that resulted from federally funded research, offering one example of how university discoveries can move from the lab into real-world impact.
Have a discovery, technology, or research-based idea with commercial potential? Are you an entrepreneur or a company interested in partnering with the University of Utah? Connect with the Technology Licensing Office to explore licensing opportunities, startup support, research partnerships, and pathways for bringing university innovation to market.
To explore the U's Innovation ecosystem, learn more here.
