SynBioBeta Speaker
Derek Smith
Gilead Sciences
Principal Scientist
Derek Smith is a Principal Scientist at Gilead Sciences focused on cell line development for manufacturing biologics products. He specializes in genome engineering, cell culture process automation, and the application of novel technologies to cell line engineering that reduce the time from DNA sequence transfer to master cell bank generation.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Derek
This Year
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Human Health
Stagnant No More: DNA Synthesis Innovation Brings Much-Needed Reliability to Biopharma
The synthetic DNA field has entered an era of rapid innovation that is giving biopharma scientists new options when deciding whether to build or buy long and complex DNA. Previously hard-to-source DNA constructs are now readily available with an unprecedented guarantee for on-time shipping, eliminating procurement delays and empowering researchers to push the boundaries of synthetic biology. In this session, leading scientists will discuss how these advances are expanding design possibilities, accelerating design–build–test–learn cycles, and paving the way for the next wave of precision biotherapeutics.
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Human Health
Stagnant No More: DNA Synthesis Innovation Brings Much-Needed Reliability to Biopharma
The synthetic DNA field has entered an era of rapid innovation that is giving biopharma scientists new options when deciding whether to build or buy long and complex DNA. Previously hard-to-source DNA constructs are now readily available with an unprecedented guarantee for on-time shipping, eliminating procurement delays and empowering researchers to push the boundaries of synthetic biology. In this session, leading scientists will discuss how these advances are expanding design possibilities, accelerating design–build–test–learn cycles, and paving the way for the next wave of precision biotherapeutics.
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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
