SynBioBeta Speaker
Megan Thomas
Ladder 17
Founder & CEO
Megan Thomas is a marketing and positioning strategist who founded her own boutique marketing consultancy, Ladder 17, working with tech-enabled brands. She is the former VP of Marketing and Communications at AgTech startup Pairwise, where she launched the first CRISPR food product into the U.S. She also launched the Pure Farmland meat alternative line for legacy meat producer Smithfield Foods. She specializes in how new food technologies are messaged to consumers, and how to help founders and leaders to find the right differentiated positioning and marketing strategy to build adoption right out of the gate. She also hosts the FoodTech Stories podcast, which features innovators and storytellers in the FoodTech space. She holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a BA from Northwestern University.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Megan
This Year
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Planetary Health
The New Main Course: Cultured Meat + Precision Fermentation
Plant-based food sales may be slowing, but that doesn’t mean innovation on the plate is stalling. Instead, momentum is shifting toward breakthrough technologies and smarter ingredient combinations. Cultured meat and precision fermentation are driving the next wave of sustainable ingredients, from proteins to cultured fats that bring authentic flavor and texture. This session highlights advances in cell culture, fermentation platforms, and scale-up strategies, along with the partnerships moving products from R&D to dining tables. Hear how food innovators are combining biology and culinary creativity to build a resilient, delicious, and sustainable future for global diets.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Megan Thomas
Ladder 17
Founder & CEO
Launched the first CRISPR food in the US, award-winning storytelling podcast host.
Max Jamilly
Hoxton Farms
CEO & Co-founder
Cultivated-fat pioneer making alt-meat taste real.
Laura Kliman
Impossible Foods
Senior R&D Director
Making plant-based meat possible
Isabelle Decitre
ID Capital
Founder
Future Food Asia founder. Synbio food-systems investor.
Jason Ryder
Oobli
Founder & CTO
Turns exotic sweet proteins into craveable sweetness without sugar.
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Planetary Health
The New Main Course: Cultured Meat + Precision Fermentation
Plant-based food sales may be slowing, but that doesn’t mean innovation on the plate is stalling. Instead, momentum is shifting toward breakthrough technologies and smarter ingredient combinations. Cultured meat and precision fermentation are driving the next wave of sustainable ingredients, from proteins to cultured fats that bring authentic flavor and texture. This session highlights advances in cell culture, fermentation platforms, and scale-up strategies, along with the partnerships moving products from R&D to dining tables. Hear how food innovators are combining biology and culinary creativity to build a resilient, delicious, and sustainable future for global diets.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Megan Thomas
Ladder 17
Founder & CEO
Launched the first CRISPR food in the US, award-winning storytelling podcast host.
Max Jamilly
Hoxton Farms
CEO & Co-founder
Cultivated-fat pioneer making alt-meat taste real.
Laura Kliman
Impossible Foods
Senior R&D Director
Making plant-based meat possible
Isabelle Decitre
ID Capital
Founder
Future Food Asia founder. Synbio food-systems investor.
Jason Ryder
Oobli
Founder & CTO
Turns exotic sweet proteins into craveable sweetness without sugar.
Session lineup still growing
Purchase Pass
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?
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
