SynBioBeta Speaker
Karen Warner
BEAM Circular
Founder & CEO
Karen Warner is the Founder and CEO of BEAM Circular, a hub for circular bioeconomy innovation in California’s agricultural heartland that is working to create good jobs and scale environmental solutions at the intersections of biotechnology, agriculture, and manufacturing. Karen began her career in global health, building health system strengthening programs in the US and East Africa. She went on to serve in a variety of nonprofit, governmental, and private sector roles focused on scaling social impact and public-private partnerships, including at Emerson Collective in Palo Alto, in the Office of the Governor of Colorado, and at medical device company Medtronic in Minneapolis. In 2018 she moved back to the San Joaquin Valley of California, where she was born and raised, and served as District Chief of Staff for a United States Congressional Representative prior to launching BEAM Circular. Karen has a BA in Human Biology and MBA from Stanford University, and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
All Categories
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Karen
This Year
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Biomanufacturing
Continuous vs Gas Fermentation: What Actually Replaces Batch?
Batch fermentation built modern biotech, but it is increasingly the constraint. As the industry pushes for higher productivity, lower costs, and more sustainable inputs, two alternatives are emerging as front-runners: continuous fermentation and gas fermentation. This session puts them head-to-head. Where does continuous fermentation win on control and throughput? Where does gas fermentation outperform on feedstock flexibility and carbon efficiency? And which approach is most likely to scale reliably outside the lab? Leaders from both camps debate what it really takes to move beyond batch—and which platform is best positioned to win.
Purchase Pass
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Biomanufacturing
Continuous vs Gas Fermentation: What Actually Replaces Batch?
Batch fermentation built modern biotech, but it is increasingly the constraint. As the industry pushes for higher productivity, lower costs, and more sustainable inputs, two alternatives are emerging as front-runners: continuous fermentation and gas fermentation. This session puts them head-to-head. Where does continuous fermentation win on control and throughput? Where does gas fermentation outperform on feedstock flexibility and carbon efficiency? And which approach is most likely to scale reliably outside the lab? Leaders from both camps debate what it really takes to move beyond batch—and which platform is best positioned to win.
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
