SynBioBeta Speaker
Verena Kallhoff
GHP
Sr. Dir, Global Life Sciences
Dr. Verena Kallhoff is the Senior Director of Global Life Sciences at the Greater Houston Partnership, where she leads strategic initiatives to grow and strengthen the region’s life sciences and biotechnology ecosystems. She works closely with local, state, national, and international stakeholders to support innovation, attract investment, and assist companies seeking to relocate or expand in the Greater Houston area.Prior to joining the Partnership, Dr. Kallhoff served as Vice President of Omics and Precision Medicine at Equideum Health, a health tech startup. She also held multiple leadership roles at The University of Texas at Austin, including directing The WorkSpaces at Texas Health CoLab, the innovation hub at Dell Medical School. There, she worked with innovators and startups commercializing their technology and developed and led programs to foster regional innovation. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic she became a co-founder of TEXGHS—the Texas Global Health Security Consortium. Dr. Kallhoff earned her Ph.D. in Molecular and Human Genetics from Baylor College of Medicine and an MBA from the University of Houston–Clear Lake.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Verena
This Year
•
-
Biomanufacturing
The Road to Commercial Scale: Capital and Market Demands Beyond the Pilot Plant
Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Cindy Groff-Vindman
CINBIO
Founder
Per Falholt
21st.BIO
CSO, Co-founder
Launched ~200 enzyme products, industrial biotech scale-up expert
Vanderlei Bellettini
ADM
VP Precision Ferm. Ops
Bioprocess scale-up veteran turning fermentation into real-world products
Richard Kenny
Hawkwood Bio
Founder & Mng. Partner
Techno-economic analysis for the bioeconomy
Verena Kallhoff
GHP
Sr. Dir, Global Life Sciences
Riccardo LoCascio
Novonesis
Partnering - Precision Proteins
•
-
Biomanufacturing
The Road to Commercial Scale: Capital and Market Demands Beyond the Pilot Plant
Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Cindy Groff-Vindman
CINBIO
Founder
Per Falholt
21st.BIO
CSO, Co-founder
Launched ~200 enzyme products, industrial biotech scale-up expert
Vanderlei Bellettini
ADM
VP Precision Ferm. Ops
Bioprocess scale-up veteran turning fermentation into real-world products
Richard Kenny
Hawkwood Bio
Founder & Mng. Partner
Techno-economic analysis for the bioeconomy
Verena Kallhoff
GHP
Sr. Dir, Global Life Sciences
Riccardo LoCascio
Novonesis
Partnering - Precision Proteins
Session lineup still growing
Get a Ticket
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
•
-
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
