SynBioBeta Speaker
Mary Maxon
Caltech
Visiting Associate
Dr. Mary Maxon is a Visiting Associate at Caltech’s Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy. Previously she was Executive Director of the Biosciences Institute at Schmidt Sciences where she led a new effort to seed innovation in synthetic biology and the bioeconomy. Dr. Maxon has worked in the private sector, both in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the public sector, highlighted by her tenure as the Assistant Director for Biological Research at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where she was the principal author of the Obama Administration’s National Bioeconomy Blueprint. She is a member of the International Advisory Council on Global Bioeconomy, a member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium Board of Directors, and a member of the Carnegie Science Board of Trustees. Dr. Maxon serves as a biotechnology subject matter expert for Eric Schmidt, a Commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
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Mary
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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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