AIxBIO at SynBioBeta 2026
Using AI to Make Biology Programmable
May 4-7
2026
San Jose Convention Center
California, USA
May 4-7
2026
San Jose Convention Center
California, USA

Biology and AI are converging to unlock entirely new frontiers. By bridging these worlds, researchers and innovators are building a shared toolkit spanning human health, food, materials, and planetary sustainability.
AIxBIO at SynBioBeta 2026 explores how foundation models and machine learning are being applied across DNA, RNA, metabolites, proteins, cells, and ecosystems. From multimodal models that link sequence to function, to simulations that capture biological dynamics over time, these approaches are laying the groundwork for a more predictive and programmable biology. This is where the foundations for the next generation of programmable biology are being built.
Why AIxBIO Matters
Biology is complex. Static snapshots can’t capture living systems that change across time and scale.
Data is limited. AI is constrained by incomplete and noisy biological datasets.
Translation is hard. Predictions often break down moving from lab to real-world systems.
Intelligence is needed. From adaptive therapeutics to sustainable materials, biology requires models that can learn, adapt, and scale.
Who you'll meet
AIxBIO brings together the full ecosystem driving the future of AI and biology:
Innovators building the tools, models, and datasets that make biology programmable.
Industry leaders applying AI breakthroughs across medicines, food, materials, and sustainability.
Biologists, engineers, and investors converging to scale programmable biology for both human and planetary health.
What to expect
AIxBIO is more than talks - bring your laptop for hands-on demos and workshops with the latest models.
Insights into how AI is transforming biology, from drug discovery to sustainable manufacturing.
Discuss best practices and tricks with AI power users.
Interact with AIxBIO pioneers from NVIDIA, Boltz, Cradle, Evo2, Noetik, Xaira, Alfafold, and more.
The future of biology is programmable — powered by AI, shaped by collaboration.
Confirmed Speakers
1
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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 therapies must ultimately work across tissues, organs, and whole patients. This scale mismatch means that even highly accurate cellular predictions can fail to translate in the clinic. This session explores strategies to bridge that gap. How do we connect single-cell dynamics to organ-level physiology and patient outcomes? How do we preserve biological context while scaling models? And how do we ensure that virtual biology does not stop at simulation, but informs real therapeutic decisions? Speakers will discuss multiscale modeling that links molecular and cellular systems to higher-order biology; spatial and high-dimensional phenotypic data that retain context; and integrated computational–experimental loops that translate cellular signals into clinically meaningful biomarkers. Together, we ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the full complexity of patients?
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Xaira
Chairman & CEO
Neuroscience pioneer and former Stanford president building AI biotech.

Kim Branson
GlaxoSmithKline
SVP, Global Head
Drug-discovery AI architect turning data into medicines.

David Hallett
Recursion
Chief Scientific Officer
Veteran “drug hunter” leading Recursion’s industrialized, AI-driven discovery.

Ron Alfa
NOETIK Inc.
Co-Founder & CEO
Physician-scientist and Recursion veteran building AI cancer therapeutics.
1
•
-
Human Health
From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology
Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level, while therapies must ultimately work across tissues, organs, and whole patients. This scale mismatch means that even highly accurate cellular predictions can fail to translate in the clinic. This session explores strategies to bridge that gap. How do we connect single-cell dynamics to organ-level physiology and patient outcomes? How do we preserve biological context while scaling models? And how do we ensure that virtual biology does not stop at simulation, but informs real therapeutic decisions? Speakers will discuss multiscale modeling that links molecular and cellular systems to higher-order biology; spatial and high-dimensional phenotypic data that retain context; and integrated computational–experimental loops that translate cellular signals into clinically meaningful biomarkers. Together, we ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the full complexity of patients?
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Xaira
Chairman & CEO
Neuroscience pioneer and former Stanford president building AI biotech.

Kim Branson
GlaxoSmithKline
SVP, Global Head
Drug-discovery AI architect turning data into medicines.

David Hallett
Recursion
Chief Scientific Officer
Veteran “drug hunter” leading Recursion’s industrialized, AI-driven discovery.

Ron Alfa
NOETIK Inc.
Co-Founder & CEO
Physician-scientist and Recursion veteran building AI cancer therapeutics.
2
•
-
AIxBIO
Programmable Molecules: AI and the Rise of Context-Aware Therapeutics
For the first time, AI is enabling us to imagine medicines that “think” - turning on only inside diseased cells or under specific physiological conditions. Neural networks trained on RNA, protein, and cellular data are unlocking a new generation of programmable therapies with unprecedented precision, from cancer drugs that remain inert until encountering tumor signals to RNA medicines capable of adapting to dynamic biological environments. But designing intelligent molecules is only part of the challenge. As AI expands the space of possible therapeutics, the field must also confront a critical question: how do we reliably build, test, and manufacture increasingly complex biological designs? This session explores the emerging continuum from AI-designed molecules to manufacturable programmable therapeutics, examining how advances in sequence design, synthesis, delivery, and validation are translating computational insight into real-world medicines. The future of medicine isn’t static molecules - it’s intelligent, adaptive therapeutics engineered across the full stack, from algorithm to clinic.
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Georgia Lu
Magnet Ventures
Founder and Managing Partner
AI-biotech investor blending M&A instincts with founder coaching.

Ashoka Madduri
Sanofi
Head, Scientific Strategy
AI-for-mRNA strategist shaping Sanofi’s genetic-medicine bets.

Jacob Becraft
Strand
CEO & Co-founder
MIT “mRNA programming language” inventor building programmable RNA medicines. Former Ron Weiss lab, interned with Bob langer
2
•
-
AIxBIO
Programmable Molecules: AI and the Rise of Context-Aware Therapeutics
For the first time, AI is enabling us to imagine medicines that “think” - turning on only inside diseased cells or under specific physiological conditions. Neural networks trained on RNA, protein, and cellular data are unlocking a new generation of programmable therapies with unprecedented precision, from cancer drugs that remain inert until encountering tumor signals to RNA medicines capable of adapting to dynamic biological environments. But designing intelligent molecules is only part of the challenge. As AI expands the space of possible therapeutics, the field must also confront a critical question: how do we reliably build, test, and manufacture increasingly complex biological designs? This session explores the emerging continuum from AI-designed molecules to manufacturable programmable therapeutics, examining how advances in sequence design, synthesis, delivery, and validation are translating computational insight into real-world medicines. The future of medicine isn’t static molecules - it’s intelligent, adaptive therapeutics engineered across the full stack, from algorithm to clinic.
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Georgia Lu
Magnet Ventures
Founder and Managing Partner
AI-biotech investor blending M&A instincts with founder coaching.

Ashoka Madduri
Sanofi
Head, Scientific Strategy
AI-for-mRNA strategist shaping Sanofi’s genetic-medicine bets.

Jacob Becraft
Strand
CEO & Co-founder
MIT “mRNA programming language” inventor building programmable RNA medicines. Former Ron Weiss lab, interned with Bob langer
3
•
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AIxBIO
Beyond Static Predictions — AI for Protein Dynamics and Multi-Cell Models
The next frontier of biology isn’t in predicting a single static protein structure, but in capturing how proteins move, fold, and interact across time and environments. This session explores how AI can illuminate protein conformations and dynamics, and extend those insights into virtual multi-cellular or tissue models. Experts will discuss the challenge of integrating heterogeneous datasets and instruments, and how breakthroughs in dynamic modeling could reshape drug design, disease understanding, and biomanufacturing. Can we build models that reflect the living, breathing complexity of biology—not just snapshots, but motion?
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Elliot Hershberg
Amplify Partners
Partner, Author
Driving the Century of Biology

Gabriele Corso
Boltz
CEO
Built DiffDock and the Boltz open-source models reshaping drug discovery.

Peter Clark
Novo Nordisk
VP, Computational Drug Design
Computational drug-design leader, shipped candidates from CAR-T to peptides.

John Chodera
Achira Labs
Co-founder & CEO
Open-science simulation pioneer behind Folding@home’s COVID Moonshot.

Tanja Kortemme
UCSF
Vice Dean of Research
De novo protein-design pioneer; NIH Pioneer Award winner.
3
•
-
AIxBIO
Beyond Static Predictions — AI for Protein Dynamics and Multi-Cell Models
The next frontier of biology isn’t in predicting a single static protein structure, but in capturing how proteins move, fold, and interact across time and environments. This session explores how AI can illuminate protein conformations and dynamics, and extend those insights into virtual multi-cellular or tissue models. Experts will discuss the challenge of integrating heterogeneous datasets and instruments, and how breakthroughs in dynamic modeling could reshape drug design, disease understanding, and biomanufacturing. Can we build models that reflect the living, breathing complexity of biology—not just snapshots, but motion?
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Elliot Hershberg
Amplify Partners
Partner, Author
Driving the Century of Biology

Gabriele Corso
Boltz
CEO
Built DiffDock and the Boltz open-source models reshaping drug discovery.

Peter Clark
Novo Nordisk
VP, Computational Drug Design
Computational drug-design leader, shipped candidates from CAR-T to peptides.

John Chodera
Achira Labs
Co-founder & CEO
Open-science simulation pioneer behind Folding@home’s COVID Moonshot.

Tanja Kortemme
UCSF
Vice Dean of Research
De novo protein-design pioneer; NIH Pioneer Award winner.
4
•
-
AIxBIO
The Data Reality Check: Human-First Biology for AI Models
Why do so many in silico models fail when moved to the lab or clinic? Too often, they’re trained on incomplete, non-human, or non-representative datasets. This session tackles the “data gap” head-on: from interoperability bottlenecks and the black box problem to the limits of current virtual cell simulations (~50 million perturbations vs. the billions biology demands). Panelists will explore how to create “human-first” datasets that reflect real biology, unlock mechanistic interoperability, and close the discovery–development divide. The goal: build AI tools that can directly identify viable drug candidates instead of stalling in silico.
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Krish Ramadurai
AIX Ventures
Partner
TechBio investor backing AI-designed drugs and breakthroughs.

Julie O'Shaughnessy
Vivodyne
COO
Operational scale-up leader building a predictive human-tissue platform.

Nima Alidoust
Tahoe Therapeutics
CEO & Co-founder
Built Tahoe-100M: 100M single-cell dataset powering virtual cell models.

Avantika Lal
Genentech
Principal ML Scientist II
Building DNA foundation models that design regulatory sequences.
4
•
-
AIxBIO
The Data Reality Check: Human-First Biology for AI Models
Why do so many in silico models fail when moved to the lab or clinic? Too often, they’re trained on incomplete, non-human, or non-representative datasets. This session tackles the “data gap” head-on: from interoperability bottlenecks and the black box problem to the limits of current virtual cell simulations (~50 million perturbations vs. the billions biology demands). Panelists will explore how to create “human-first” datasets that reflect real biology, unlock mechanistic interoperability, and close the discovery–development divide. The goal: build AI tools that can directly identify viable drug candidates instead of stalling in silico.
Purchase Pass
Featuring

Krish Ramadurai
AIX Ventures
Partner
TechBio investor backing AI-designed drugs and breakthroughs.

Julie O'Shaughnessy
Vivodyne
COO
Operational scale-up leader building a predictive human-tissue platform.

Nima Alidoust
Tahoe Therapeutics
CEO & Co-founder
Built Tahoe-100M: 100M single-cell dataset powering virtual cell models.

Avantika Lal
Genentech
Principal ML Scientist II
Building DNA foundation models that design regulatory sequences.
5
•
-
Tools & Tech
AI Co-Scientists: From Pipettes to Protocols
Biology is entering an era where AI agents don’t just analyze data — they co-design, plan, and execute experiments. Multi-agent systems like CRISPR-GPT demonstrate how AI can act as a true lab co-pilot: decomposing complex genome editing projects into stepwise workflows, selecting tools, troubleshooting, and even drafting protocols that allow junior researchers to perform sophisticated edits on their first attempt . Beyond CRISPR, new systems like BioMARS integrate reasoning agents with robotics, while biotech companies are testing “AI lab assistants” that monitor and adjust experiments in real time. This session explores how multi-agent copilots are making biology more reproducible, democratizing complex workflows, and pushing the boundaries of lab autonomy. The central question: when AI can plan, troubleshoot, and validate experiments end-to-end, how should scientists and institutions govern this new power?
Purchase Pass
5
•
-
Tools & Tech
AI Co-Scientists: From Pipettes to Protocols
Biology is entering an era where AI agents don’t just analyze data — they co-design, plan, and execute experiments. Multi-agent systems like CRISPR-GPT demonstrate how AI can act as a true lab co-pilot: decomposing complex genome editing projects into stepwise workflows, selecting tools, troubleshooting, and even drafting protocols that allow junior researchers to perform sophisticated edits on their first attempt . Beyond CRISPR, new systems like BioMARS integrate reasoning agents with robotics, while biotech companies are testing “AI lab assistants” that monitor and adjust experiments in real time. This session explores how multi-agent copilots are making biology more reproducible, democratizing complex workflows, and pushing the boundaries of lab autonomy. The central question: when AI can plan, troubleshoot, and validate experiments end-to-end, how should scientists and institutions govern this new power?
Purchase Pass
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