Luke Timmerman is a biotech journalist, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. As an award-winning journalist, Luke has been covering biotech since 2001. He is the founder and editor of Timmerman Report, a leading biotech industry newsletter. He hosts “The Long Run”, a biotech-focused podcast that has featured more than 200 biotech leaders. Luke was named one of the 100 most influential people in biotech in 2015 by Scientific American. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin and was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.
Luke also founded his philanthropic project “Timmerman Traverse”. Through Traverse’s campaigns, the biotech community has been catalyzed to give back more than $13 million to alleviate suffering from cancer, poverty and sickle cell disease.
In this episode,
* Luke shares his childhood growing up on a small family farm in southern Wisconsin and how his early life shaped his career and perspective.
* He explains how he became interested in journalism early on and eventually became the biotech reporter at the Seattle Times in 2001, later covering biotech at Bloomberg and Xconomy.
* He discusses his motivation in launching the Timmerman Report in 2015, which is a subscription-based newsletter, providing in‑depth coverage of biotech startups, innovation, and the broader biotech industry.
* As a successful biotech podcaster, Luke hosts The Long Run podcast (~200 episodes) featuring long-form interviews with biotech leaders.
* He introduces the mission and the progress of the Timmerman Traverse, a philanthropic project inspired by his hobby - hiking and climbing mountains with family and friends. Every year, Luke leads a group of biotech leaders on mountain climbs around the world.
* Luke is also the author of "Hood: Trailblazer of the Genomics Age," a biography of Leroy Hood. The book was called a “must-read” by Forbes, and named one of the 100 Best Indie Books of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews.
Co-Hosts: Fang Xie and Yossef Baidi
Producers: Fang Xie and Yossef Baidi
