SynBioBeta Speaker
Emily Leproust
Twist Bioscience
CEO
As an early pioneer in the high-throughput synthesis and sequencing of DNA, Dr. Leproust is disrupting markets to enable the exponential growth of DNA-based applications including chemicals/materials, diagnostics, therapeutics, food and digital data storage. In 2020, BIO presented her with the Rosalind Franklin Award for Leadership. Foreign Policy named her one of their 100 Leading Global Thinkers and Fast Company named her one of the Most Creative People in Business. Prior to Twist Bioscience, she held escalating positions at Agilent Technologies where she architected the successful SureSelect product line that lowered the cost of sequencing and elucidated mechanisms responsible for dozens of Mendelian diseases. She also developed the Oligo Library Synthesis technology, where she initiated and led product and business development activities for the team. Dr. Leproust designed and developed multiple commercial synthesis platforms to streamline microarray manufacturing and fabrication. She serves on the Board of Directors of CM Life Sciences and is a co-founder of Petri, an accelerator for start-ups at the forefront of engineering and biology. Dr. Leproust has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers – many on applications of synthetic DNA, and is the author of numerous patents. She earned her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Houston and her M.Sc. in Industrial Chemistry from the Lyon School of Industrial Chemistry.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Emily
This Year
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Tools & Tech
Breaking the Barriers of DNA Synthesis: Shattering the Ceiling?
For decades, DNA synthesis has been the limiting reagent in synthetic biology — reliable for short sequences, but increasingly error-prone and costly as designs scale. That ceiling is now cracking. New enzymatic synthesis platforms, error-correction chemistries, and assembly pipelines are extending what’s possible, opening the door to rapid construction of full pathways, microbial genomes, and even mammalian chromosomes. This session will explore how innovators are breaking past barriers, what technical and economic breakthroughs are needed next, and how longer, cheaper, and faster synthesis could fundamentally change how we design biology at scale.
Purchase Pass
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Tools & Tech
Breaking the Barriers of DNA Synthesis: Shattering the Ceiling?
For decades, DNA synthesis has been the limiting reagent in synthetic biology — reliable for short sequences, but increasingly error-prone and costly as designs scale. That ceiling is now cracking. New enzymatic synthesis platforms, error-correction chemistries, and assembly pipelines are extending what’s possible, opening the door to rapid construction of full pathways, microbial genomes, and even mammalian chromosomes. This session will explore how innovators are breaking past barriers, what technical and economic breakthroughs are needed next, and how longer, cheaper, and faster synthesis could fundamentally change how we design biology at scale.
Purchase Pass
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Tools & Tech
A 10-Year Overnight Success: Building Twist Bioscience One Base at a Time
While Twist Bioscience may look like an overnight success, its rise reflects a decade of persistence, innovation, and platform building. In this main stage keynote, CEO and co-founder Emily Leproust shares the journey from startup vision to global leader in DNA synthesis and programmable biology, highlighting lessons learned scaling deep technology, navigating industry cycles, and building trusted infrastructure for biotech and pharma. Looking ahead, Twist is positioning itself at the forefront of the convergence between AI and biology, using DNA as an information layer to accelerate drug discovery and advance human health. This keynote explores how long-term thinking and bold ambition are shaping the next era of AI-driven therapeutics.
Purchase Pass
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Tools & Tech
A 10-Year Overnight Success: Building Twist Bioscience One Base at a Time
While Twist Bioscience may look like an overnight success, its rise reflects a decade of persistence, innovation, and platform building. In this main stage keynote, CEO and co-founder Emily Leproust shares the journey from startup vision to global leader in DNA synthesis and programmable biology, highlighting lessons learned scaling deep technology, navigating industry cycles, and building trusted infrastructure for biotech and pharma. Looking ahead, Twist is positioning itself at the forefront of the convergence between AI and biology, using DNA as an information layer to accelerate drug discovery and advance human health. This keynote explores how long-term thinking and bold ambition are shaping the next era of AI-driven therapeutics.
Purchase Pass
Session lineup still growing
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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?
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Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
