SynBioBeta Speaker
Michael Koeris
DARPA
Director, BTO
Michael Koeris, Ph.D., joined DARPA as the director of the Biological Technologies Office in April 2024. His research and teaching focus on all aspects of chemistry, manufacturing, and control for microbiome medicines, as well as advanced cell and gene therapy approaches. Before coming to DARPA, Koeris served as professor of bioprocessing and as a member of the Amgen Bioprocessing Center in the Department of Biological Engineering and Management at the Keck Graduate Institute. He also advised the NIH’s RADx initiative as a Portfolio Executive, assisting with the rapid development, clinical validation, manufacturing and distribution of Sars-CoV-2 diagnostic tests throughout the pandemic. Prior to joining KGI in 2020, Koeris actively started, grew, and exited biotechnology startups, both as founder and senior leader, as well as a member of the Board of Directors. He holds more than a dozen patents through the U.S. and internationally. His entrepreneurial career began by spinning out Sample6, which was recognized by Forbes as one of the 25 hottest AgTech startups in 2017 and was acquired later that year. Koeris serves as a Board Director of global, non-profit repository AddGene, and in the past served on boards of commercial biotech entities.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Michael
This Year
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Tools & Tech
Decoding the Dark Proteome: From Discovery Gap to Drug Pipeline
The proteome holds the answers to some of biology's most persistent questions — yet the vast majority of proteins remain functionally uncharacterized. This working session brings together leaders from pharma, biotech, and the emerging protein sequencing field to explore what it would actually take to close the gap. What are the real bottlenecks in moving from dark proteome discovery to actionable drug targets? What sequencing and annotation infrastructure needs to exist? And where are the first credible opportunities for pharma to engage? A candid, technical conversation for those already building toward this frontier.
Purchase Pass
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Tools & Tech
Decoding the Dark Proteome: From Discovery Gap to Drug Pipeline
The proteome holds the answers to some of biology's most persistent questions — yet the vast majority of proteins remain functionally uncharacterized. This working session brings together leaders from pharma, biotech, and the emerging protein sequencing field to explore what it would actually take to close the gap. What are the real bottlenecks in moving from dark proteome discovery to actionable drug targets? What sequencing and annotation infrastructure needs to exist? And where are the first credible opportunities for pharma to engage? A candid, technical conversation for those already building toward this frontier.
Purchase Pass
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Business of Biology
The New Biosecurity Frontier: AI, Automation, and the Rise of Biodefense in Programmable Biology
As AI, automation, and scalable biotechnologies accelerate the design and deployment of biology, the line between innovation and risk is increasingly blurred. This session explores how advances in programmable biology are reshaping biosecurity and biodefense, from dual-use risks and supply-chain vulnerabilities to new models for detection, governance, and defense. Leaders from industry, government, and research will discuss how to responsibly accelerate biology while protecting public health and national security.
Purchase Pass
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Business of Biology
The New Biosecurity Frontier: AI, Automation, and the Rise of Biodefense in Programmable Biology
As AI, automation, and scalable biotechnologies accelerate the design and deployment of biology, the line between innovation and risk is increasingly blurred. This session explores how advances in programmable biology are reshaping biosecurity and biodefense, from dual-use risks and supply-chain vulnerabilities to new models for detection, governance, and defense. Leaders from industry, government, and research will discuss how to responsibly accelerate biology while protecting public health and national security.
Purchase Pass
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AIxBIO
Data Factories: Building the Infrastructure for AI-Ready Biology
Biology is entering an AI-driven era, but most experimental infrastructure still produces data designed for individual experiments, not for learning at scale. As a result, much of today’s data is useful in the moment but poorly suited for training robust, long-lived models. This session will explore what biological data matters most today, what data needs to be generated now to support future models, and how leading teams are closing that gap. Panelists will discuss how automation, metadata discipline, and standardized testing pipelines can turn artisanal lab workflows into continuous experiment-to-learning systems. The focus will be on infrastructure and experimental design, highlighting practical bottlenecks, emerging best practices, and what becomes possible when biology produces abundant, high-quality, model-ready data by default.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Ori Zakin
BioRaptor
CEO
Building bioprocess R&D operating systems from noisy data.
Michael Koeris
DARPA
Director, BTO
Protecting National Security with Biology
Chase Olle
Robot on Rails
Founder & CEO
MIT-trained lab-robotics founder automating bench experiments at scale.
Michelle Chen
Form Bio
President, CEO and Board Member
Barry Bunin
Collaborative Drug Discovery
Founder and CEO
Invented CDD Vault, data-sharing platform for drug discovery.
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AIxBIO
Data Factories: Building the Infrastructure for AI-Ready Biology
Biology is entering an AI-driven era, but most experimental infrastructure still produces data designed for individual experiments, not for learning at scale. As a result, much of today’s data is useful in the moment but poorly suited for training robust, long-lived models. This session will explore what biological data matters most today, what data needs to be generated now to support future models, and how leading teams are closing that gap. Panelists will discuss how automation, metadata discipline, and standardized testing pipelines can turn artisanal lab workflows into continuous experiment-to-learning systems. The focus will be on infrastructure and experimental design, highlighting practical bottlenecks, emerging best practices, and what becomes possible when biology produces abundant, high-quality, model-ready data by default.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Ori Zakin
BioRaptor
CEO
Building bioprocess R&D operating systems from noisy data.
Michael Koeris
DARPA
Director, BTO
Protecting National Security with Biology
Chase Olle
Robot on Rails
Founder & CEO
MIT-trained lab-robotics founder automating bench experiments at scale.
Michelle Chen
Form Bio
President, CEO and Board Member
Barry Bunin
Collaborative Drug Discovery
Founder and CEO
Invented CDD Vault, data-sharing platform for drug discovery.
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?
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Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
