Samir Mitragotri is the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering. Samir is an elected member of the National Academies of Engineering and Medicine, and elected fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, the Controlled Release Society, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Association of Pharmaceutical...

Hans Clevers is Director & Professor of Molecular Genetics @ the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands. He is also University Professor at the University Utrecht and Oncode Investigator. Clevers is one of the world’s leading researchers on stem cells and their potential for regenerative therapy. Over the past decade, his lab has produced vital studies on stem cells and the nature of self-renewal pathways controlling stem cells. Clevers was the first researcher to demonstrate the existence...

Stephen Quake is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering & Professor of Applied Physics @ Stanford University & Co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Quake has invented many measurement tools for biology, including new DNA sequencing technologies that have enabled rapid analysis of the human genome and microfluidic automation that allows scientists to efficiently isolate individual cells and decipher their genetic code. Quake is also well known for inventing new diagnostic...

John Flavin is Founder & CEO @ Portal Innovations, a premier venture development engine that builds and invests in early stage life sciences ventures. Portal’s differentiated mix of crafted capital drives companies from scientific ideation to business creation, helping entrepreneurs translate cutting-edge technology into sustainable, global businesses with breakthrough products to help patients. Prior to launching Portal, John founded and built several life sciences companies including...

David Walt is the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering @ Harvard Medical School, Professor of Pathology @ Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute @ Harvard University, Associate Member @ the Broad Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, & is co-Director of the Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation. Walt pioneered the use of microwell arrays for single-molecule detection and genetic...

Don Ingber is the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering @ Harvard University, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil., M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University. Ingber is a pioneer in the field of biologically inspired...

Dave Mooney is a leader in the fields of biomaterials, mechanotransduction, drug delivery, tissue engineering and immunoengineering. He is interested in understanding how cells sense signals in their environment and how this alters cell behavior. His laboratory develops biomaterials that exploit these signals to regulate specific cells and their function. They were the first to demonstrate in 3-D culture that the mechanical properties of a substrate regulated stem cell fate. His lab also...

Tom lnsel, psychiatrist & neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2017 he co-founded Mindstrong Health, a Silicon Valley start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness. In 2019, Insel served as a...

David Berry is Founder & CEO @ Valo. Since 2005, he has served as General Partner @ Flagship Pioneering, having founded over 25 companies including Indigo Agriculture, Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), Eleven Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ: EBIO), T2 Biosystems (NASDAQ: TTOO), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), and Joule Unlimited. David played an instrumental role in the conception and implementation of Flagship Labs, which is the foundation of all of its...

David Baker is the director of the Institute for Protein Design, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry, and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. His research group is focused on the design of macromolecular structures and functions. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry with Randy Schekman at the University of...

Jim Collins is The Termeer Professor of Bioengineering in the Department of Biological Engineering and Institute for Medical Engineering & Science @ MIT. He is also affiliated with the Broad Institute and the Wyss Institute. His research group works in synthetic biology and systems biology, with a particular focus on using network biology approaches to study antibiotic action, bacterial defense mechanisms, and the emergence of resistance. Professor Collins' patented technologies have been...

Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and currently carries out a variety of projects in the areas of genomics and proteomics both in yeast and humans. These include the large-scale analysis of proteins using protein...

Alaa Halawa & Ayman AlAbdallah are two integral members of the Mubadala Ventures team & lead the firm’s efforts in TechBio. Alaa Halawa is the Co-Head of Mubadala Capital Ventures SF, where he focuses on investing in venture and early growth-stage companies at the intersection of life sciences and technology. Among other themes within life sciences investing, Alaa has concentrated on the following: how technology is enhancing the pharmaceutical industry, from drug discovery through...

David Schaffer is a Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, & Neuroscience @ University of California Berkeley, he also serves as the Director of QB3 - Berkeley.  At Berkeley, Schaffer applies engineering principles to enhance Stem Cell & Gene Therapy approaches for Neuro-Regeneration. This work includes mechanistic investigation of stem cell control, as well as molecular evolution & engineering of viral gene delivery vehicles.  He has Co-founded six...

Jennifer Friel Goldstein is the Managing Partner for Life Science & Healthcare Practice @ SVB Capital and is a founding member of Venture Forward, a nonprofit that provides resources and education toward developing a diverse, equitable and inclusive venture capital (VC) ecosystem. She is also an advisory board member of Springboard Enterprises and the Women’s Health Innovation Coalition. Jennifer has more than 20 years of experience in the VC and startup market segments, including...

Vijay Pande is a General Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he focuses on investments in Biopharma & Healthcare. As the founding investor of a16z’s Bio Fund, Vijay leads the firm’s investments at the cross section of biology and computer science, including applications in computation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in healthcare; digital therapeutics; diagnostics; and other novel transformative scientific advances applied to industry that take bio beyond...

Angelika Fretzen is the Wyss Institute’s Chief Operating Officer & Technology Translation Director, applying her technology and entrepreneurial business development experience to steer the Institute’s technology translation engine in diverse areas of research and technology development and to integrate the Institute’s business development and technology commercialization efforts. She earned her Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and gained postdoctoral...

Shaan Gandhi is a Director @ Northpond Ventures and leads the firm’s work in biotechnologies. Shaan is a board director at Aro Biotherapeutics; CAMP4 Therapeutics; Candel Therapeutics; DiCE Molecules; StrideBio, Inc.; Triumvira Immunologics, Inc.; and Vigil Neuroscience. Previously, Shaan was a Principal at the Longwood Fund, where he created and invested in life sciences companies, including Pyxis Oncology, a cancer immunotherapy company focused on novel modulators of the tumor...

Jared is a Managing Director @ Y Combinator, where he works with YC's bio companies. Y Combinator has funded over 400 healthcare and bio companies across all sectors. YC currently funds more healthcare/bio companies per year than any other investor in the world. Thank you for listening! BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage...

Cain McClary is Founder & Managing Partner @ KdT Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on supporting startups re-architecting the world at a molecular level. Cain is a Physician/Scientist and Venture Capitalist, leveraging technical scientific and medical knowledge/experience as well as an extensive network of scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, and funders to guide and invest in young companies at the intersection of computation and science. His experiences on both sides of the...

Shahram is Founder and General Partner of Civilization Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on supporting cutting edge innovations in health tech and biology. Prior to founding Civilization Ventures, Shahram was a life sciences entrepreneur and angel investor for more than a decade. Shahram was the founding CEO and later Executive Chairman of Rgenix, a biotech company with multiple first-in-class therapeutics for cancer now in Phase 1b clinical trials. Prior to Rgenix, he was founding CFO...

Ron Weiss is one of the pioneers of synthetic biology. He has been engaged in synthetic biology research since 1996 when he was a graduate student at MIT and where he helped set up a wet-lab in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. After completion of his PhD, Weiss joined the faculty at Princeton University, and recently returned to MIT to take on a tenured faculty position in the Department of Biological Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and...

George Church leads Synthetic Biology at the Wyss Institute, where he oversees the directed evolution of molecules, polymers, and whole genomes to create new tools with applications in regenerative medicine and bio-production of chemicals. Among his recent work at the Wyss is development of a technology for synthesizing whole genes, and engineering whole genomes, far faster, more accurate, and less costly than current methods. George is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to...

Bob Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. Dr. Langer has written more than 1,500 articles. He also has over 1,400 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history (h-index 289 with over 345,000 citations according to Google...

Bob Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member.  Dr. Langer has written more than 1,500 articles.  He also has over 1,400 issued and pending patents worldwide.  Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400  pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.  He is the most cited engineer in history (h-index 289 with over 345,000 citations according to...