GRAIL Innovation & Technology Culture

What types of products or services does your engineering team work on/create? What problem are you solving for customers?

My team works mostly on internal applications, making it easier for various roles to access and modify production data. I also make developer tools. These days, I mostly work on things I identify as having value, whether it’s a front-end engineer, someone in marketing or research. I am passionate about creating.

Tell us about a recent project where your team used AI as a tool. What was it meant to accomplish? How did you use AI to assist?

In the past month, I’ve built new production-grade prototypes for the following: a template management app; an integrated Optical Character Recognition tool; some AI-assistant coding tools; a robust mock-data generation tool; and an automated workflow generation tool. I’ve added command line interfaces for everything I’ve touched. I’ve also been expanding features on existing operations apps. All these things were built with AI, and some of them have AI in their function. I added most of a complex feature to an existing app on Friday alone. I am personally more than 10 times as fast as I was a year ago.

What would that project have looked like if you didn’t have AI as a tool to use? How has AI changed the way you work, in general?

I maybe would have built two of those things, and neither would be nearly as good as it has become already. A number of these projects I would not have even attempted before AI.

GRAIL gives scientists the opportunity to work at the forefront of cancer detection, using innovative technologies to better understand how the disease develops and progresses. Employees contribute to research that advances scientific knowledge while helping build the next generation of tools for earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments.

“As a scientist, I’m excited to have tools to detect cancer earlier, as that sheds light on the origins and the progression of the disease. People have been thinking about this for over a century, and hopefully it will lead to better and safer therapeutics. Before there were tests like this, cancer was typically diagnosed at much later stages when symptoms presented. That limits what you can observe about the cancer, because you’re at the moment of diagnosis or after, and your observations of that person or that patient may not generalize. And therefore, the way that you treat it and how well your treatment will work in other individuals may also not generalize.

I’m very excited to see the whole progression of cancer rather than a narrow, late slice of it, because then we can learn more about the disease, which will lead to more timely and effective treatments.”

GRAIL embraces AI as a tool to accelerate innovation and empower employees to solve complex problems more efficiently. Engineers are encouraged to experiment with emerging technologies, rapidly prototype new solutions and integrate AI into products and workflows that improve both internal operations and future capabilities.

“In the past month, I’ve built new production-grade prototypes for the following: a template management app; an integrated Optical Character Recognition tool; some AI-assistant coding tools; a robust mock-data generation tool; and an automated workflow generation tool. I’ve added command line interfaces for everything I’ve touched. I’ve also been expanding features on existing operations apps. All these things were built with AI, and some of them have AI in their function. I added most of a complex feature to an existing app on Friday alone. I am personally more than 10 times as fast as I was a year ago.”