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Product Management · AI/ML · Healthcare & Biopharma

Cristina LeonardoDr. rer. nat.

I lead complex, regulated products built on AI, from machine-learning diagnostics to integrated hardware and software for biopharma. A physicist by training with 8+ years across research and product, I turn deep science into products clinicians and labs rely on. On the side, I ship my own ideas with vibecoding.

Technical product manager PhD in Physics, LMU & Max Planck Builder of AI side projects
Resume (PDF) ↗ Get in touch
01 — Career Lab bench to roadmap

A scientist's method, applied to products.

My path runs from building machine-learning models on spectroscopic data at the Max Planck Institute, through a postdoc at Berkeley, to leading AI/ML-enabled and regulated products in diagnostics and biopharma. Research taught me to form hypotheses, design experiments and stay honest about evidence. That is what complex AI products need most: clear requirements, rigorous verification and validation, and the judgment to know when a model is ready for real users.

8+years across AI/ML and complex HW/SW products
>120%year-on-year growth in software feature output at CLADE
4,000+person cohort behind my ML disease-detection research
ISO 13485certification enabled at iLoF
  1. May 2026 – today

    Lead Product Manager

    expressTEC · Faro, Portugal · Part-time consultant

    Leading a software-enabled, PCR-based molecular diagnostics platform for precision oncology. I own the product strategy, intended use and requirements for a cloud platform that gives clinicians biomarker interpretation and therapy-support insights, built within an IVDR-compliant design-control framework.

    Precision oncologyCloud platformIVDRProduct strategy
  2. Mar 2025 – today

    Product Manager

    CLADE · Esslingen am Neckar, Germany

    Own the roadmap and full lifecycle of integrated hardware/software GMP products for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, as product manager, product owner and project manager in one. Leading the design of a next-generation analytical platform, launched a new product while retiring the previous generation, and grew software feature output by more than 120% year on year.

    HW/SW productsGMPProduct ownershipLaunch & end-of-life
  3. Oct 2023 – Feb 2025

    Product Manager

    iLoF · Porto, Portugal

    Led AI/ML-enabled diagnostic (IVD) products that combine photonics, machine learning and clinical data for early detection of Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Led data science and biology teams building the detection algorithms, and enabled the company's ISO 13485 certification and its regulatory strategy for software as an IVD.

    AI/ML diagnosticsPhotonicsISO 13485Software as IVD
  4. Nov 2021 – Oct 2023

    Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & UC Berkeley · California

    Developed optical spectroscopy instruments and computational analysis to uncover biomolecular dynamics in photosynthetic systems. Built Python and MATLAB pipelines with ML-supported analysis, and led projects through to first-author publications.

    SpectroscopyPython & MATLABResearch leadership
  5. 2017 – 2021

    PhD in Physics, Dr. rer. nat.

    Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics & LMU · Munich, Germany

    Developed spectroscopy and machine-learning methods to detect disease from human blood, in the personalized-medicine research environment of Nobel laureate Prof. Ferenc Krausz. Built supervised and unsupervised models on data from a cohort of more than 4,000 people.

    Machine learningBiomedical dataPersonalized medicine
  6. 2013 – 2015

    MSc in Chemistry

    Università degli Studi di Padova · Padua, Italy

    Advanced spectroscopy and computational analysis of biomolecular dynamics.

Selected publications
  • Plasma infrared fingerprinting with machine learning enables single-measurement multi-phenotype health screening.Cell Reports Medicine, 2024 · Second author
  • Bidirectional energy flow in the photosystem II supercomplex.J. Phys. Chem. B, 2024 · First author
  • Infrared signatures of phycobilins within the phycocyanin 645 complex.J. Phys. Chem. B, 2023 · First author
  • Molecular origin of blood-based infrared spectroscopic fingerprints.Angewandte Chemie, 2021 · Second author, featured on the cover
Hypothesis first

Every feature starts as a testable bet with a metric that can prove it wrong.

Evidence over hype

Evaluations, error analysis and user research decide what an AI feature is ready for.

Build to learn

Vibecoding lets me prototype ideas in hours and put something real in front of people.

02 — Side projects

The lab: projects vibecoded with AI.

Personal experiments built end to end with AI coding tools. Each one records what it is, what it was built with and how long it took, so you can see the process as well as the result.

03 — Contact Let's talk AI products

Open to conversations about AI products.

Product roles, advisory work, speaking, or comparing notes on building with AI. Reach out through any of these.

Email cristina.leonardo1991@gmail.com
Resume Cristina_Leonardo_Resume.pdf
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/cristinaleonardo
Working in Germany & Portugal
Languages Italian (native) · English (C1) · German (B1) · Portuguese (A2) · Spanish (A1)
Focus AI/ML-enabled products · Molecular diagnostics & precision oncology · Regulated HW/SW (IVDR, GMP, ISO 13485)