SynBioBeta Speaker
Jory Bell
Playground Global
General Partner
Jory Bell is a GP at Palo Alto based early stage deep tech VC Playground Global. With $1.2B AUM, Playground investments focus on: engineered biology, next-gen compute / AI, robotics, energy transition and advanced materials. Jory joined Playground in 2015 and spearheads the firm’s engineered biology practice. Jory's earlier career focused on mobile computing system development at IBM Research and Apple before founding early pocketable computing innovator OQO. Jory attended MIT where he earned 3 undergraduate degrees before spending several years working as a climate change researcher.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Jory
This Year
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Business of Biology
Investor Roundtable Luncheon
Once a year we put the investors in a room by themselves. No startups. No pitches. No slides. Just the people actually moving capital across biotech and synthetic biology, talking honestly about what they're seeing: what's working, what might be overhyped, and where the real opportunities are right now. It's the conversation you can't have when founders are listening. It's invitation-only and space is limited
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Kid Parchariyanon
SeaX Ventures
Managing Partner
Physician-turned VC backing exponential deeptech and synbio.
Jory Bell
Playground Global
General Partner
Top-tier Silicon Valley investor
David Welch
Synthesis Capital
CSO & Co-founder
Alt-protein scientist-investor, ex-Good Food Institute tech strategist.
Shelby Newsad
Compound
Partner
Scientist-turned-investor funding bold biotech bets.
Jessica Owens
Initiate Ventures
Managing Partner
Venture-studio builder, backing tech-bio moonshots.
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Business of Biology
Investor Roundtable Luncheon
Once a year we put the investors in a room by themselves. No startups. No pitches. No slides. Just the people actually moving capital across biotech and synthetic biology, talking honestly about what they're seeing: what's working, what might be overhyped, and where the real opportunities are right now. It's the conversation you can't have when founders are listening. It's invitation-only and space is limited
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Kid Parchariyanon
SeaX Ventures
Managing Partner
Physician-turned VC backing exponential deeptech and synbio.
Jory Bell
Playground Global
General Partner
Top-tier Silicon Valley investor
David Welch
Synthesis Capital
CSO & Co-founder
Alt-protein scientist-investor, ex-Good Food Institute tech strategist.
Shelby Newsad
Compound
Partner
Scientist-turned-investor funding bold biotech bets.
Jessica Owens
Initiate Ventures
Managing Partner
Venture-studio builder, backing tech-bio moonshots.
Session lineup still growing
Get a Ticket
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?
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
