SynBioBeta Speaker
David Welch
Synthesis Capital
CSO & Co-founder
David is Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder at Synthesis Capital, an investment manager created to transform our food system through food technology. At Synthesis, David combines his background in plant biology, cell therapy, and alternative proteins to identify exceptional start-ups working at the intersection of food technology, biology, and chemistry and support Synthesis portfolio companies with their technical and scale-up challenges. Prior to Synthesis, David was Director of Science and Technology at GFI where he helped start-ups, investors, corporations, and universities accelerate the development, scale-up, and commercialization of alternative protein technology. David previously served in commercial and technical roles within the life science industry at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Qiagen, Meso Scale Discovery, and 3M, which included the development and commercialization of cell lines, scaffolds, cell culture media, and immunoassays for cell therapy and pharmaceutical applications. David earned a B.Sc. in biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in plant developmental cell biology from Utrecht University.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
David
This Year
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Business of Biology
Investor Roundtable Luncheon
Once a year we put the investors in a room by themselves. No startups. No pitches. No slides. Just the people actually moving capital across biotech and synthetic biology, talking honestly about what they're seeing: what's working, what might be overhyped, and where the real opportunities are right now. It's the conversation you can't have when founders are listening. It's invitation-only and space is limited
Featuring
Kid Parchariyanon
SeaX Ventures
Managing Partner
Physician-turned VC backing exponential deeptech and synbio.
David Welch
Synthesis Capital
CSO & Co-founder
Alt-protein scientist-investor, ex-Good Food Institute tech strategist.
Shelby Newsad
Compound
Partner
Scientist-turned-investor funding bold biotech bets.
Jessica Owens
Initiate Ventures
Managing Partner
Venture-studio builder, backing tech-bio moonshots.
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Business of Biology
Investor Roundtable Luncheon
Once a year we put the investors in a room by themselves. No startups. No pitches. No slides. Just the people actually moving capital across biotech and synthetic biology, talking honestly about what they're seeing: what's working, what might be overhyped, and where the real opportunities are right now. It's the conversation you can't have when founders are listening. It's invitation-only and space is limited
Featuring
Kid Parchariyanon
SeaX Ventures
Managing Partner
Physician-turned VC backing exponential deeptech and synbio.
David Welch
Synthesis Capital
CSO & Co-founder
Alt-protein scientist-investor, ex-Good Food Institute tech strategist.
Shelby Newsad
Compound
Partner
Scientist-turned-investor funding bold biotech bets.
Jessica Owens
Initiate Ventures
Managing Partner
Venture-studio builder, backing tech-bio moonshots.
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Planetary Health
FoodTech Investing: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead
The FoodTech sector has moved beyond its first wave of hype into a period of recalibration. Investors and founders alike are reassessing assumptions around cost, scale, and market adoption. In this closed-door luncheon, leading investors and industry operators will share hard-earned lessons from the past cycle and explore how those insights are shaping future investment strategies. From platform bets to capital-efficient models, the discussion will focus on what it takes to build durable FoodTech companies in today’s environment. Expect a candid focused on strategic clarity and actionable insight.
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Planetary Health
FoodTech Investing: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead
The FoodTech sector has moved beyond its first wave of hype into a period of recalibration. Investors and founders alike are reassessing assumptions around cost, scale, and market adoption. In this closed-door luncheon, leading investors and industry operators will share hard-earned lessons from the past cycle and explore how those insights are shaping future investment strategies. From platform bets to capital-efficient models, the discussion will focus on what it takes to build durable FoodTech companies in today’s environment. Expect a candid focused on strategic clarity and actionable insight.
Session lineup still growing
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
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Human Health
From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology
Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level while interventions work at the tissue, organ, or whole-patient scale. This mismatch can make accurate cell-level predictions irrelevant in the clinic. This session dives into strategies to bridge that gap: multiscale modeling that nests single-cell dynamics within organ-level simulations, spatial transcriptomics that preserve context, and surrogate models that translate cell-level outputs into clinical biomarkers. Speakers will ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the real complexity of patients?
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
