Episode 08: Luke Timmerman
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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 $15 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
Executive Producer: Fang Xie
Co-Producer: Yossef Baidi
