SynBioBeta Speaker
Vayu Hill-Maini
Stanford University
Asst. Prof. Bioengineering
Vayu fell in love with cooking at a young age in his multicultural home in Stockholm, Sweden. He first moved to the U.S to work in restaurants, but the flavors, textures, and sensations of the kitchen eventually led him to scientific research. He received his B.A in Chemistry and Biology at Carleton College in 2015. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 2020, where he worked in the lab of Emily Balskus to characterize strains and enzymes from human gut microbiota responsible for the metabolism of drugs and dietary compounds. As a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, Vayu discovered and engineered filamentous fungi for sustainable foods in the lab of Jay Keasling. In addition, Vayu has trained at diverse gastronomic institutions, including Basque Culinary Center, Fundación Alicia, The Cultured Pickled Shop, and Michelin-star restaurants Alchemist, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. His lab at Stanford is building synthetic biology tools for fungi to unlock new discoveries within mycology, address sustainability challenges, and enable gastronomic creativity.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
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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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