2026 Speakers

Jennifer Doudna, PhD is a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 — a genome engineering technology that allows researchers to edit DNA — with collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier earned the two the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and forever changed the course of human and agricultural genomics research. She is also the Founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute, the Li Ka Shing chancellor’s chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences, and a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Gladstone Institutes, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a leader in the global public debate on the responsible use of CRISPR and has co-founded and serves on the advisory panel of several companies that use the technology in unique ways. Doudna is the subject of Walter Isaacson's New York Times bestseller "The Code Breaker" and the co-author of "A Crack in Creation," a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing. Learn more at innovativegenomics.org/jennifer-doudna

Dr. David Kirtley is the founder and CEO at Helion, a privately funded fusion company focused on magneto-inertial fusion generators. He is passionate about inventing and developing disruptive technologies that will improve access to energy, reduce carbon emissions, and provide a better future for following generations. Dr. Kirtley is an NSF and NASA Advanced Concepts Fellow with expertise in high-Beta plasmas for energy and space propulsion applications.

Mike Schroepfer is a Founder and Partner at Gigascale Capital. He brings a 25-year track record in technology and science as an executive, entrepreneur, and investor to backing early-stage climate technology companies that are modernizing the world’s biggest sectors and making clean options a no-brainer choice.

As Meta's CTO, he scaled products to billions of users, shipped millions of units of consumer hardware, constructed tens of millions of square feet of data centers, built teams of up to 35,000, and made breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. He’s currently a Senior Fellow focused on AI and developing technical talent.

Schrep’s philanthropic work includes Additional Ventures, the Carbon-to-Sea Initiative, and Outlier Projects, which funds grants aimed at accelerating climate science and policy responses to the climate crisis. He’s a Stanford computer science graduate, led engineering at Mozilla, founded a company acquired by Sun Microsystems, and is a decent skier and mediocre surfer.

Gregory Verdine is a pioneering scientist, educator, investor, and entrepreneur widely regarded as a founder of the field of chemical biology and one of the world’s leading innovators in new drug discovery. He is Founder, President, and CEO of LifeMine Therapeutics, Executive Chairman of VidaVinci, Erving Professor of Chemistry and Harvard College Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, Managing General Partner of LoLa Capital, and a Venture Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Over a distinguished career spanning more than three decades, Dr. Verdine has co-founded more than a dozen biotechnology companies—including Parabalis Medicines (formerly FogPharma), WaVe Life Sciences, Warp Drive Bio, Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Eleven Biotherapeutics, Variagenics, Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Aileron Therapeutics, and Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, acquired by Celgene—which collectively have brought multiple FDA-approved medicines to patients and advanced numerous new drug modalities into clinical development. He is credited with coining the phrase “drugging the undruggable” to describe his life’s mission: transforming previously intractable disease targets into treatable ones through bold scientific innovation.

Dr. Verdine earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University, his B.S. in chemistry from St. Joseph’s University, and trained as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees recognizing his groundbreaking contributions to science and medicine.

Milo plays a leading role in DCVC’s climate investments, identifying and nurturing breakthrough deep tech ventures that address the world’s pressing climate challenges. She focuses on solutions that go beyond emissions reduction to revolutionize value chains, decarbonize high-emitting industries, and advance both mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Milo’s blend of investment insight and hands-on industry experience equips her to effectively identify promising climate technologies and guide them from concept to commercialization. Her investment background includes partner positions at MIT’s The Engine, Ajax Strategies, and Khosla Ventures, while her operational experience is highlighted by her tenure at Tesla, where she contributed to bringing innovative electric vehicles to market, and at Zola, a solar-battery startup providing distributed energy to over a million families in Africa. She holds a bachelor’s degree in geology and civil & environmental engineering from the University of Vermont, and a master’s degree in civil engineering and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Leveraging her extensive industrial experience, Milo founded The NextGen Industry Group to support companies commercializing advanced manufacturing technologies. The group brings together leaders, operators, industry experts, and capital providers to develop thought leadership and best practices in manufacturing strategy, capital stack construction, industrial policy, and strategic partnerships.

Michael Snyder is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor and the Director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine. Dr. Snyder received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University.

A pioneer of Precision Medicine, Dr. Michael Snyder has invented many technologies that enable 21st century healthcare, including systems biology, RNA sequencing, and protein chip technologies. He has led groundbreaking research in genomics, biotechnology, and personalized health, with a focus on how genetic variation and lifestyle affects individual health and disease, heralding a new and more effective approach to healthcare. Dr. Snyder initiated the big data approach to healthcare through his work using omics to detect early-stage disease, including wearables to detect infectious diseases like COVID-19, continuous glucose monitoring to subtype pre diabetes and at-home microsampling to measure hundreds of molecules from a single drop of blood. He also studies how people age, demonstrating that we all age differently. He is known for his pioneering deep data study where he was both a subject and researcher, which laid the groundwork for precision health and medicine. He is the first researcher to gather petabytes of data on individuals, which is 1 million - 1 trillion times more data than the average clinician collects. He has published over 1000 papers and is one of the most cited scientists.

Dr. Snyder's contributions to science have been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a successful entrepreneur, having co-founded 19 companies (including 2 unicorns) with a combined enterprise value exceeding $6 billion.

Dr. Morgan Stanton is the CEO and founder of Opal Therapeutics, where she is building human uterine organoids to accelerate drug discovery, diagnostics, and target validation in women’s health. She has her Ph.D in Chemistry from WPI and completed her Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute. Previously, she served as Director of Discovery Biology at Herophilus, where she helped pioneer scalable brain organoid screening for drug discovery. Morgan is focused on advancing human-relevant models that unlock meaningful therapies in women's health.

Dr. Michelle Rozo serves as a Senior Vice President, Mission at IQT, where she leads mission investing across operational technology — such as contested communications, autonomous systems, and forward-deployed capabilities — as well as emerging technologies with potential to reshape national security. In this role, she translates national security priorities into investment strategy, technology delivery, and measurable mission outcomes.

Michelle has served in senior national security roles, including as Vice Chair of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology and as Director for Technology & National Security Policy at the National Security Council. She brings deep experience coordinating executive priorities, shaping organizational strategy, and leading complex cross-functional initiatives across government and technology communities.

John Diener is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vertical Oceans, an AI-native aquaculture company building the most efficient system in the world for premium seafood production. Headquartered in Singapore and backed by Khosla Ventures and SOSV, Vertical Oceans pairs controlled biology with intelligent systems to grow clean, great-tasting prawns at scale, with zero discharge, chemicals, or antibiotics. John has spent his career turning complex biological systems into efficient, software-run businesses. He was COO of AgriProtein, Managing Director of Gold Coin's aquaculture group, and led corporate strategy across Asia at the Zuellig Group and Monitor Group. He holds an Economics degree from the University of Chicago and an MSc in Sustainable Aquaculture from the University of St Andrews. He is an AgFunder mentor and sits on the investment committee of the Trendlines Group.

Dan Barouch received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and pathogenesis of viral infections and developing novel vaccine and treatment strategies. His group has led the development of vaccine candidates for HIV-1, Zika, SARS-CoV-2, tuberculosis, and influenza.  His work contributed to the development of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and the evaluation of multiple COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2009), Association of American Physicians (2013), and National Academy of Medicine (2020), and he received the King Faisal Prize in Medicine (2023).

Meghan L. O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

Dr. O’Sullivan’s scholarship continues to be at the nexus of traditional disciplines, examining topics at the intersection of geopolitics, science, markets, and policy. Her work on large changes in the energy system has shaped how policymakers and academics alike view these issues. Her publications in this area include her award-winning 2017 book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power.

O’Sullivan has served in multiple senior policymaking roles and has advised national security officials in both Republican and Democratic administrations. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her public service, including the U.S. Defense Department’s highest honor for civilians (the Distinguished Public Service Medal) and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award (which she has received three times).

O’Sullivan was a member of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and was Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during the last two years of her tenure. In 2013, O’Sullivan was the Vice Chair of the All Party Talks in Northern Ireland.  O’Sullivan also has extensive experience advising the private sector on geopolitical risk and in board leadership and advisory roles in non-profit organizations. She is a member of the Global Advisory Board of the strategic consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners, and is the Chair of the North American Group of the Trilateral Commission. O’Sullivan earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a masters of science in economics and doctorate in politics from Oxford University. She was a Henry Crown Fellow from 2015 to 2017 and a Henry Luce Fellow in Indonesia from 1991 to 1992.  

James J. Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, as well as a Member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology Faculty. He is also a Core Founding Faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is one of the founders of the field of synthetic biology, and his research group is currently focused on using synthetic biology to create next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics. Professor Collins is the Director of the Antibiotics-AI Project at MIT and co-founder of Phare Bio, a non-profit focused on AI-driven antibiotic discovery. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur "Genius" Award and the Dickson Prize in Medicine, and he is an elected member of all three national academies - the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine.

John A. Rogers obtained BA and BS degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989. From MIT, he received SM degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and a PhD degree in physical chemistry in 1995. From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows. He joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in 1997 and served as Director of the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department from 2000 to 2002. He then spent thirteen years on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, finally as the Swanlund Chair Professor and Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In the Fall of 2016, he joined the faculty at Northwestern University where he is Director of the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. He has published ~1000 papers and he is co-inventor on ~100 patents, >70 of which are licensed and in active use by large companies and startups that he has co-founded. More than 170 former members of his group are now in faculty positions at the best universities around the world. His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), the James Prize of the NAS (2022), the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award (2024) and the Bakerian Medal of the Royal Society (2025). He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, of Sciences, of Medicine and of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society.

Alex Morgan (X: @genomicsdoc) is currently a Partner at Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm which invests broadly in technology from seed stage funding to later stage capital.  Alex has a special focus in biotechnology, healthcare, data science, and AI/ML and serves on the boards of a number of Khosla Ventures portfolio companies. Alex has an MD and PhD in biomedical informatics from Stanford. As a scientist, he has published over 50 scientific publications, primarily at the intersection of computer science, biology, and healthcare, and has licensed IP to three separate companies.  Prior to working in venture capital, Alex was involved with a number of startups, and worked as a senior artificial engineer for the MITRE Corporation.

Professor Thomas Oxley MBBS BMedSc FRACP PhD is a vascular and interventional neurologist and world expert in brain computer interfaces. Dr Oxley is the founding CEO of Synchron, a neurotechnology company based in New York City, having raised over USD$345 million in capital. Synchron is a clinical stage company developing an endovascular implantable brain computer interface, Stentrode. The Synchron BCI is a minimally invasive brain implant for people with debilitating medical illnesses designed to restore autonomy by reconnecting them online in ways that can dramatically improve their lives.

He is a Clinical Instructor and Director of Research and Development at Mount Sinai. Attending in the Department of Neurosurgery, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City. Dr Oxley has performed over 1600 endovascular neurosurgical procedures, including cerebral aneurysm coiling and clot retrievals in acute stroke. Dr Oxley has published over 120 internationally peer reviewed articles in journals including JAMA Neurology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has over 100 patents filed. He is also Professor of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Australia.

In 2023, Dr Oxley and Synchron completed enrollment in an FDA-approved clinical trial on the Stentrode motor neuroprosthesis that is paving the way towards first FDA marketing approval for an implanted brain computer interface, bringing the total number of patients implanted with the system to 10 worldwide.

Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship.

Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual which revolutionized how startups were built. His Harvard Business Review cover story redefined how large companies can innovate at speed. Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com.

Nicolas Sauvage is the Founder and President of TDK Ventures, the global corporate venture capital arm of TDK Corporation. As of August 2026, he leads a $500 million platform across four funds that has invested in 55 Portfolio Companies advancing energy, AI and computing, robotics, mobility, materials, and climate technologies.

Nicolas founded TDK Ventures with a mission to serve entrepreneurs first while connecting breakthrough technologies with the capabilities, expertise, and global reach of TDK. Under his leadership, the firm has built a model that combines disciplined venture investing with strategic value creation for entrepreneurs and TDK teams.

He has been named to the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for six consecutive years and serves on the Boards of several deep-technology companies, including ANYbotics, AutoFlight, Divirod, Glimpse, Metalenz, and Virewirx.

Daphne Koller is CEO and Founder of insitro, a causal AI therapeutics company focused on discovering and advancing novel, transformative medicines. Daphne was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. She was also the co-CEO and President of Coursera, an online education platform that touched over 150M learners, and the Chief Computing Officer of Calico Labs. She is the author of over 300 refereed publications with an h-index of over 150. Daphne was recognized as one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2012 and 100 most influential people in AI in 2024. She received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004, the ACM Prize in Computing in 2008, the ACM AAAI Allen Newell Award in 2019, and the AnitaB.org Technical Leadership Abie Award Winner in 2022. Daphne was inducted into the National Academy of Science in 2023, into the National Academy of Engineering in 2011 and elected a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 2004, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014, and

Sam is a physicist and bioengineer, and is co-founder, director and CEO of Edison Scientific and FutureHouse. Sam has invented technologies for spatial and temporal transcriptomics, brain mapping, gene therapy, and nanofabrication, and briefly ran an academic lab at the Francis Crick Institute prior to launching FutureHouse.

Mike Nohaile is the Chief Executive Officer at Prellis Biologics. Prior to this, he was a partner at Flagship Pioneering and Chief Scientific Officer at Generate Biomedicines. Earlier in his career, he served as Senior Vice President of Strategy, Commercialization & Innovation at Amgen. Prior to Amgen, he served as the head and general manager of the Molecular Diagnostics Business Unit at Novartis. Mike began his career at McKinsey & Company as partner in the New Jersey office, where he worked extensively in the healthcare area with a particular focus on diagnostics, devices and pharmaceuticals.

He has a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from University of California, Berkeley, and he was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT in the Department of Biology.

Seth is a Partner at Eclipse, where he backs founders building breakthrough companies redefining the industry. He began his career at GE, developing robotics, 3D printing, and IoT solutions—an experience that shaped his conviction in the transformative power technology can have on the physical world industries. Motivated by the belief that the most impactful companies of this new era were yet to be built, Seth joined Eclipse to help launch and scale businesses at the forefront of the Industrial Evolution.

He focuses on early-stage investments in manufacturing, supply chain, transportation, high performance computing, and healthcare, partnering closely with entrepreneurs from the pre-product stage.

Seth is a proud Claremont McKenna alum. He enjoys skiing, playing golf, and spending time with his wife and daughter.

Professor Sinclair’s pioneering work in genetics and aging biology has fundamentally shaped the world’s understanding of mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases. He is best known for his research on the molecular biology of aging, particularly the role of sirtuins, NAD+ metabolism, and epigenetic changes in regulating the aging process. In 2020, the Sinclair Lab reported successful use of cellular reprogramming to safely reverse aging in mammals, which they showed could cure blindness in animal models.

Professor Sinclair served as Founding Director of the Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School from 2005 – 2023 and has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles that have been cited over 110,000 times. He is the inventor on more than 50 patents and has co-founded over a dozen successful companies including MetroBiotech, EdenRoc Sciences, Fully Aligned Company, and Life Biosciences.

Professor Sinclair is the New York Times bestselling author of Lifespan: Why We Age-And Why We Don’t Have To, with over 1 million copies in global circulation across 38 languages, and the host of Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair, a #1 show on Apple that provides health and science education.

Among over 35 career awards, Professor Sinclair has been recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, one of TIME’s 50 Most Influential People in Health Care, received the Pioneer Award from the Director of the NIH, The Noble Genius Prize from The World Forum, and was appointed by Queen Elizabeth’s representative as Officer of the Order of Australia (A.O.) for “distinguished service to medical research into the biology of ageing and lifespan extension, as a geneticist and academic, to biosecurity initiatives, and as an advocate for the study of science.”

Jenica Patterson, Ph.D., is Senior Director of the Women’s Health Network at the Milken Institute, where she leads a global initiative to accelerate innovation, investment, and cross-sector collaboration in women’s health. She works at the intersection of science, commercialization, and capital, mobilizing leaders across industry, government, philanthropy, and finance to advance scalable solutions and strengthen the ecosystem needed to bring women’s health innovations to market and scale. In this role, Dr. Patterson focuses on unlocking key system barriers to growth, including investment gaps, regulatory and reimbursement pathways, and barriers to access and awareness, helping translate scientific advances into real-world impact at scale.

Prior to joining the Milken Institute, Dr. Patterson served as a Portfolio Lead at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) within the Office of Commercialization. She led the agency’s first Sprint for Women’s Health, a $113 million initiative to catalyze innovation and accelerate the commercialization of high-impact technologies. She also directed the Small Business Program and Launchpad Accelerator, advancing transition pathways and product readiness across ARPA-H’s portfolio.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Patterson held roles at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she advanced translational programs spanning therapeutics and diagnostics, including contributions to the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative. Dr. Patterson earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience and completed her postdoctoral training within the NIH Intramural Research Program. She is based in Washington, D.C.

Inspired by Knight Rider and Star Trek, Shahin grew up with a passion to endow superpowers to humanity through feats of engineering. He learned BASIC on an IBM PC XT clone he built at his aunt’s computer store and dialed into Bulletin Board Systems in the 4th grade. A few years later, he was fixing an Alfa Romeo at his uncle’s repair shop. He aspired to design microchips, software, and integrated systems that could one day rival K.I.T.T. or even power warp drives to carry humanity to the far corners of the galaxy.

He is a generalist at Lux, which has $7 billion under management, and has been first investors in category-defining companies across AI, automation, biotech, compute, defense, energy, infrastructure, robotics, and beyond — including Anduril, Applied Intuition, Auris, Chronosphere, Cognition, Eikon, Hugging Face, Impulse Space, Physical Intelligence, Runway, Sakana, and Together. Lux has created and co-founded more than 20 de novo companies through Lux Labs, and multiple Lux investments have become lasting publicly traded companies and major divisions acquired by Amazon, Cisco, Databricks, J&J, Meta, Palo Alto Networks, and more.

For more than two decades, Shahin has partnered with founders building frontier technologies, guided by deep respect for the entrepreneur and the company-building journey. After working at several software startups, he founded his first company in 2004 based on his PhD research designing chips, systems, and software to capture and interpret brain signals. In 2006, he joined Lux at the invitation of its founding team and has since cofounded and led investments in companies spanning AI, semiconductors, autonomy, and aerospace — from early conviction to enduring scale. These include companies that have become publicly traded (NYSE: AEVA; NYSE: PL) and those acquired by Intel (Nervana), Amazon (Zoox), Silicon Labs (Silicon Clocks), and Lattice Semiconductor (SiBeam). An engineer at heart, Shahin works alongside founders as a long-term partner, connecting them with the resources, talent, and relationships towards building generational companies. Shahin has two young daughters and enjoys flying small aircraft.

Dr. Jocelyn Wessels is Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Afynia Laboratories, a Deep Tech company developing innovative diagnostics for women’s health. A Scientist turned Entrepreneur, she founded Afynia to translate cutting-edge research on reproductive health and endometriosis into technologies that can improve diagnosis and patient outcomes at scale. Jocelyn holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from McMaster University and has authored more than 39 peer-reviewed publications, contributed to three patents, and received numerous honours, including the CIHR Vanier Scholarship and YMCA Women of Distinction Award in STEM. Her work sits at the intersection of scientific innovation, biotechnology commercialization, and building venture-backed health technology companies.

Brendan Collins is the Co-Founder and CEO of Avalo. He is a cell biologist, programmer, and lover of nature. Prior to founding Avalo, Brendan co-founded and worked as a software engineer at two early-stage startups. He also played a key role in developing cell-based therapies for treating traumatic spinal cord injuries during his tenure at University College London. Brendan holds a BS from the University of Notre Dame and an MS from University College London.

In addition to his role as a Partner at SOSV SF, Westley is seconded as CEO of SOSV portfolio company General Sense.

Westley is a process-oriented systems thinker who loves tinkering with productivity tools and workflows. He knows every hotkey for every application and thinks ortholinear keyboards are the bomb. Half way through his grad school career, he realized that he was more concerned about the looming threat of climate change. During his PhD, Westley volunteered with the Surfrider Foundation San Diego as co-chair for the Rise Above Plastics committee and an Executive Committee member, where he focused on private and legislative efforts to reduce single-use plastic consumption in San Diego.

Westley is passionate about innovation and has volunteered at a startup accelerator in San Diego, advising startups alongside local business mentors in the area. He did his PhD in neuroscience in the lab of Mark Mayford at The Scripps Research Institute, where they used genetically encoded markers to study neural ensembles thought to be the substrate for learning and memory. His project focused on the impact of aging on the ability to reactivate neurons during memory recall. He did his undergrad at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, majoring in biochemistry with a neuroscience emphasis. In his free time he loves to cook, climb, surf, and hug trees.

Marcel Frenkel, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Ten63 Therapeutics, is a biophysicist with expertise in computational drug design and cancer cell biology. Inspired by the loss of his mother to pancreatic cancer, Marcel set out to change the future of cancer treatment by bringing together top scientists and engineers at Ten63. As a Hesburgh International Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, Marcel led research on Niemann-Pick disease and developed biosensors for cholera detection in underprivileged communities such as Haiti. He later earned his PhD from Duke University, contributing to innovative approaches for targeting undruggable cancer proteins like KRas, and collaborated with the NIH on the design of novel  broadly antibodies targeting HIV. Marcel is also a former member of the Brazilian national fencing team and a NCAA Div1 national champion for Notre Dame.

Kelly Sims Gallagher is the tenth Dean of The Fletcher School, Tufts University.  A Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, she also co-directs the Climate Policy Lab and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher.  The Climate Policy Lab is dedicated to identifying which climate policies work, which don’t, and why in countries around the world, with particular emphasis on major emerging economies including China, India, Ethiopia, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil.

Gallagher served in the second term of Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor in The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Senior China Advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change office at the U.S. State Department.

Gallagher is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is a member of the board of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Broadly, she focuses on U.S.-China relations, green industrialization, climate policy, energy innovation, and low-carbon, resilient models for achieving sustainable prosperity. She is the author of Titans of the Climate (The MIT Press 2018), The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China (MIT Press 2014),China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development (The MIT Press 2006), and dozens of other articles and book chapters.

Laurie Menoud is a founding partner of At One Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC firm managing over $800 million in assets, with notable LPs including Temasek, WWF, and the MacArthur Foundation. At the firm, she invests in deep tech startups driving forward planet-positive industries. She has been on the board of directors of over a dozen companies and brings 15 years of experience in deep tech commercialization, company building, and venture capital. She spent several years in the chemical industry (Solvay, BASF) and built a dozen ventures from US Defense research programs (SRI International). She began her career in fundamental and applied research as a microbiologist. Laurie earned a Master's degree in biotechnology from the École Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Luminy in France, focusing on genetic engineering, biochemistry, and microbiology. Additionally, she holds a Master's in Innovation from the EM Lyon Business School in France.

Deniz Kent, PhD is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Prolific Machines, the photomolecular biology innovator ushering in a new era of biotechnology using light. Prolific harnesses light to produce everyday essentials more efficiently, from food and lifesaving drugs to novel biosolutions. The Bay Area company’s first-of-its-kind platform delivers unprecedented molecular control, precisely guiding cellular behavior when and where it matters most. Unlike existing tools used to control biology, Prolific’s technology unlocks direct and dynamic control over virtually any cellular function in any cell type. The company enables innovators across pharmaceuticals, nutritional and therapeutic protein production, and cellular agriculture to unlock robust efficiency, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability advantages.

During his PhD, Deniz first conceived of the idea to use light to build the future of biomanufacturing. Soon after, he brought in the expertise of co-founders Declan Jones and Max Huisman, and the trio founded the company in 2020. Inspired by the burgeoning field of optogenetics, the team then set out to commercially harness light — an abundant, safe, and versatile input — to control cellular behavior with unparalleled precision and optimize this over time using AI technology.

Deniz cultivated expertise in biological systems through academic research and professional innovation. Deniz earned his PhD in the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King's College London, where he co-discovered a new human liver stem cell population and conducted the world’s first high throughput small molecule screen using IPS-derived hepatocytes. Prior to his PhD, Deniz had worked in a cancer immunotherapy lab at the University of Bristol and worked on a single-dose cure for Asthma at GlaxoSmithKline.

Deniz also received his Master’s degree in biomedical and translational science from King’s College London and his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Bristol.

Sahan Ranamukhaarachchi is the Founder and CEO of Proton Intelligence, a clinical-stage biomarker intelligence company developing the world’s first continuous potassium monitoring platform. A biomedical engineer and two-time medtech founder, Sahan has spent his career building technologies at the intersection of biosensing, drug delivery and chronic disease management. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and was a Vanier Scholar in Canada. Proton has raised over US$13M and is advancing its wearable continuous potassium monitor toward clinical validation and regulatory approval.

A Partner at Khosla Ventures, Rajesh has two decades of experience assisting and investing in deep tech startups. He manages many of the firm’s investments across renewables generation, storage, hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, plastics, foodtech, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.

Previously, Rajesh was the head of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of 85 deep-tech startups globally, as well as two deep-tech funds in Korea and Taiwan. He led investments and helped build companies, many of which had strong exits, including Enphase Energy, Solid Energy, Rockley, Infinite Power Solutions, Adaptive3D, Tango, Inpria and Norsk Ti. Rajesh was recognized amongst the top 100 global CVCs, on the Global Corporate Venture (GCV) Powerlist.

Earlier, he worked at Third Point Ventures and at Lucent’s Bell Labs, where he drove technical assessments and partnerships for several optical, MEMS, and RF device startups, and also led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s systems.

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he worked on Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team, and also worked with KV on companies in solar and water. Previously, Rajesh earned a master of science degree from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.

Jesse D. Jenkins is an assistant professor and macro-scale energy systems engineer at Princeton University with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment. He leads the Princeton ZERO Lab (Zero-carbon Energy systems Research and Optimization Laboratory), which focuses on improving and applying optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate and optimize low-carbon energy technologies, guide investment and research in innovative energy technologies, and generate insights to improve energy and climate policy and planning decisions. Dr. Jenkins earned a PhD and SM from MIT, worked previously as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and spent six years as an energy and climate policy analyst prior to embarking on his academic career. Dr. Jenkins recently served on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine expert committee on Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System, was a principal investigator and lead author of Princeton's landmark Net-Zero America study, and leads the REPEAT Project (repeatproject.org), which provides regular, timely, and independent environmental and economic evaluation of federal energy and climate policies as they’re proposed and enacted. He regularly provides technical analysis and policy advice for non-profit organizations, policy makers, investors, and early-stage technology ventures working to accelerate the deployment of clean energy.

Duncan is a General Partner at SOSV, and the Global Managing Director of HAX, the world’s first and largest VC-backed program for hard tech, based in Newark, NJ. He has invested in over 100 hard tech companies and serves on multiple boards in the climate, industrial and healthcare sectors.

Duncan has an extensive entrepreneurial background and deep experience fundraising and growing businesses across the globe. He has taken numerous technologies to market in various industries. Before joining SOSV, he led design and engineering strategy projects for Fortune 500 companies at the global innovation firm IDEO.

Duncan obtained his Master’s from the Royal College of Art & Imperial College. His design and engineering work has won multiple awards and is included in the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art. He has a deep passion for new technologies and engineering breakthroughs that can benefit our planet.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is the Philip D. Reed senior fellow and director of the Energy Security and Climate Change program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Economist and chairman of major Economist summits held on four continents. His editorial responsibilities ranged from business and finance to technology and innovation. He produced numerous cover stories and hosted the Economist’s special podcast on climate change, To a Lesser Degree. He was named the 2025 Writer of the Year by the American Energy Society. He is also the author of three well-received books and an accomplished public speaker. His three books have created a stir, with accolades ranging from lengthy reviews in The New Yorker to shortlisting for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize. The Financial Times has declared him to be “a writer to whom it is worth paying attention.”

From 2017 to 2021, he served as the New York-based US Business Editor. He opened the magazine’s first Shanghai bureau in 2012 and served as its China Business Editor until mid-2017. Prior to that, he covered biotechnology, healthcare and global innovation. He also opened the Mexico City bureau, the publication’s first in Latin America.

His opinion pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times and Foreign Policy, and his commentaries on CNBC and Bloomberg. He has addressed groups ranging from the US National Governors’ Association and the UN General Assembly to the TED and Aspen Ideas conferences. He also serves as chairman of sustainability & innovation summits organised by The Economist, held annually in New York, London, Bangkok and Cape Town.

Vijay is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as an advisor on innovation to the World Economic Forum/Davos, and has taught at NYU Stern Business School and Northwestern University. Vijay is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Pae is a General Partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, where she is responsible for portfolio management and technical oversight. Prior to joining IndieBio, Pae served as the Scientific Director of Telefónica’s moonshot factory, Alpha (in Barcelona). She was Science Director at the US Office of Naval Research – Global (out of Singapore), and technical consultant at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Her whole career, Pae has been investing in high risk solutions to intractable problems for national defense, humanity, and the planet. Pae earned her PhD at Duke in Electrical Engineering and her BSE from Princeton.

Casey Crownhart is a senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review, where she covers topics from renewable energy and transportation to food and climate policy. She is the author of The Spark , a weekly climate technology newsletter. Her work has also appeared in outlets including Popular Science and Atlas Obscura, and she is a regular contributor to Science Friday.

Po is passionate about reconceptualizing complex challenges into more elegant forms, to broaden understanding and highlight priorities. He’s been at IndieBio SF since 2018. Po is a longtime science journalist honored with nine national awards, and author of seven bestselling books that are available in 28 languages worldwide. His work has been cited in 185 academic journals and 503 books. His background is in Economics. He learned finance at Credit Suisse and consulting at a division of Arthur Andersen. Prior to IndieBio he spent four years as a Futurist with Attention Span Media, consulting corporate innovation efforts for globally-recognized brands. Most recently, Po is the author of Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner, published by Twelve Books, a division of the Hachette Publishing Group.

Alex Wilhelm is a journalist who covers technology and business. He co-hosts the popular This Week in Startups podcast, and is the founder of Cautious Optimism, a new publication focus on tech, money, and power.