Speakers
Launch roster
The University of Texas at Austin
Kevin Esvelt, PhD
Keynote Speaker • Associate Professor, Director of the Sculpting Evolution Group
MIT Media Lab
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Kevin Esvelt is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where he directs the Sculpting Evolution group. He invented phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE) at Harvard University and, in 2013, was the first to describe how CRISPR-based gene drive systems could be used to alter the traits of wild populations. His group develops tools to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems, guided by affected communities, and advocates for universal safeguards and early transparency in biotechnology to reduce catastrophic and existential biological risk.
Joel Shor
Allen Institute / Move37 Labs
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Joel Shor works at the intersection of machine learning and biological design. He is associated with the Allen Institute’s AI biological design work and is the founder of Move37 Labs. His previous leadership experience includes machine learning roles at Deep Genomics, Google, and Verily, spanning AI-enabled biological design, healthcare, therapeutics, and scientific AI.
James Diggans, PhD
Vice President, Policy & Biosecurity
Twist Bioscience
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
James Diggans works at the intersection of biotechnology, nucleic-acid synthesis, policy, and biosecurity. His work focuses on responsible DNA synthesis, screening, biotechnology policy, and reducing biological risk while enabling scientific innovation.
Gigi Gronvall, PhD
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security / Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Gigi Gronvall is a biosecurity and biosafety expert whose work addresses emerging technologies, biodefense, governance, and policies that enable beneficial advances in the life sciences while reducing biological risks.
Ilias Georgakopoulos-Soares, PhD
Assistant Professor • Conference Organizer
The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Ilias Georgakopoulos-Soares is an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin whose research integrates artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, computational biology, and genomics. His work spans genome biology, AI-enabled biological research, evaluation of biological AI systems, privacy-preserving genomics, and AI biosecurity.
Varun Rai
Professor
LBJ School of Public Affairs and Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Varun Rai is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Energy Systems Transformation Research Group. His research examines how information, decision-making, and policy interact to shape the diffusion of technology through complex systems — a lens that applies to the governance of emerging technologies well beyond energy.
Andrew Ellington
Professor
Department of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Andrew Ellington is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. His laboratory applies evolutionary methods to the engineering of biopolymers and cells, spanning nucleic-acid and protein design, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. He coined the term "aptamer" for nucleic acid molecules selected to bind specific targets.
Zheng Xia, PhD
Associate Professor
Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
ProfileBiography
Dr. Zheng Xia earned his B.S. in Automation and Control Engineering and his Ph.D. in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from Zhejiang University. He completed postdoctoral training in computational biology at Houston Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, developing machine learning methods for genomic and transcriptomic data analysis. His research leads a disease-oriented computational biology laboratory that develops phenotype-guided AI methods to integrate genomics, single-cell and spatial omics, medical imaging, proteomics, and clinical data for biological discovery and precision medicine.
Yanjun Gao, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Colorado School of Medicine
Talk title to be announced.
ProfileBiography
Dr. Yanjun Gao's research centers on developing and evaluating foundational natural language processing (NLP) methods, particularly large language models (LLMs), to convert complex data such as electronic health records (EHRs) into actionable insights for improving decision-making in healthcare and beyond. She explores broader questions of how both humans and machines understand and utilize language, aiming to develop systems that enhance decision-making while contributing to a future where artificial intelligence is safe, trustworthy, and reliably aligned with human needs. Dr. Gao earned her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and serves as Co-Director of the Center for Health Artificial Intelligence.
Ilya J. Finkelstein, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Ilya Finkelstein is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University, followed by postdoctoral training at Columbia University Medical Center. His laboratory investigates the molecular mechanisms of CRISPR biology and genome maintenance. In recent years, his group has directed their efforts to studying the SARS-CoV-2 virus with the twin goals of improving next-generation vaccines and creating new therapeutic avenues.
Nadav Brandes, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Center for Human Genetics & Genomics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Nadav Brandes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. His laboratory uses artificial intelligence to decode the human genome and improve disease diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment. He has developed and applied protein and DNA language models to identify genetic variants affecting disease phenotypes, with research spanning proteome-wide association studies, cancer genetics, single-cell genomics, and statistical genetics.
Amina Qutub, PhD
Associate Professor, Burzik Endowed Professor of Engineering Design
Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Amina Qutub is an Associate Professor and Burzik Endowed Professor of Engineering Design in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio. She earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Rice University, a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and UCSF, and completed a Ruth Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Her research develops methods at the interface of computer science, biology, and engineering to study the design of human cells, addressing diseases affecting brain and vascular cells with an emphasis on AI-driven clinical decision-making tools for trauma care and brain health optimization across the lifespan.
Miha Vindis, PhD
Professor of Practice, Director of the Certified Public Manager Program
Department of Political Science, Texas State University
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Miha Vindis is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Texas State University, where he directs the Certified Public Manager Program. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and a Master of Arts in Global Policy Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests encompass gamification, leadership, strategic planning, and behavioral economics, with recent work exploring AI applications across sectors and helping professionals integrate artificial intelligence into professional practice.
Bruce Wittmann, PhD
Senior Applied Scientist, Office of the Chief Scientific Officer
Microsoft
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Bruce Wittmann is a Senior Applied Scientist in the Office of the Chief Scientific Officer at Microsoft, where he works at the intersection of machine learning and biology, developing tools, methods, and databases that advance the accessible, effective, and secure use of AI in protein engineering. He was part of the cross-sector team behind the Paraphrase Project, which demonstrated that AI-assisted protein-design tools could generate synthetic homologs able to evade existing biosecurity screening systems. He earned his PhD in bioengineering at Caltech under Frances Arnold, where he was a founding member and lead of the machine-learning subgroup, focusing on computational and wet-lab tools for ML-assisted protein engineering.
Pinar Demetci, PhD
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center Postdoctoral Fellow
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Pinar Demetci is an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center Postdoctoral Fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She earned a B.Sc. in Engineering with a bioengineering concentration from Olin College of Engineering and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Computational Biology from Brown University, where her dissertation developed probabilistic and optimal-transport-based algorithms — including SCOT and SCOOTR — for integrating single-cell datasets across data modalities. Her research spans computer science, molecular biology, and statistics, with an emphasis on machine learning methods tailored to biomolecular and biomedical data and their application to genomic regulatory mechanisms in disease.
Jasper Götting
Director of AI
SecureBio
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Jasper Götting is Director of AI at SecureBio. He trained as a bench virologist, earning a PhD at Hannover Medical School studying the sequencing, evolution, and transmission of viral infections in the transplant setting, before moving into pandemic-prevention hardware as a research fellow on Convergent Research's biosecurity team, where he roadmapped far-UVC air disinfection technology and clinical metagenomic sequencing. He joined SecureBio in 2024 to co-lead the Virology Capabilities Test and subsequently became Head of AI Research. His current work evaluates the impact of AI systems, including large language models, on biotechnology and biological misuse risk.
Stephen C. Ekker, PhD
Associate Dean of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Dell Medical School; Associate Vice President of Research Translation
The University of Texas at Austin
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Stephen C. Ekker is Associate Dean of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Dell Medical School and Associate Vice President of Research Translation at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Molecular Biosciences and Director of the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. He earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics from Johns Hopkins University. His laboratory uses zebrafish in vivo and human cells in vitro to develop new molecular DNA-editing tools, and established morpholinos as a pioneering sequence-specific knockdown technology for vertebrate functional genomics two decades ago. Over three decades at the University of Illinois, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, and Mayo Clinic — where he previously served as Dean of the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and founded its Office of Entrepreneurship — he has co-authored more than 170 scientific publications and remained continuously NIH-funded for over twenty years. He co-founded Discovery Genomics Inc., acquired by Immusoft in 2016, and is founding president of the Genome Writers Guild, an international genome-engineering society.
Shen Zhou Hong
Data Scientist
Active Site
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Shen Zhou Hong is a Data Scientist at Active Site (formerly Panoplia Laboratories), a nonprofit research organization that measures frontier AI capability in synthetic biology. Active Site's work spans in-person human trials assessing how AI affects wet-lab performance, evaluation of AI agents performing laboratory automation and robotics tasks, and large-scale randomized controlled trials examining whether frontier AI enhances novice researchers' molecular biology work.
Katrina Tremaglio
Associate Scientist II
Active Site
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Katrina Tremaglio is an Associate Scientist II at Active Site (formerly Panoplia Laboratories), a nonprofit research organization that measures frontier AI capability in synthetic biology. Active Site's work spans in-person human trials assessing how AI affects wet-lab performance, evaluation of AI agents performing laboratory automation and robotics tasks, and large-scale randomized controlled trials examining whether frontier AI enhances novice researchers' molecular biology work.
Barbara Cheifet, PhD
Panelist
Nature Biotechnology
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Dr. Barbara Cheifet is Chief Editor of Nature Biotechnology at Springer Nature. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Boston College and a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University, where she studied the roles of adipocytes in skin wound healing and stem cell development in mice. She joined BioMed Central as an assistant editor for Genome Biology in 2014, spending seven years there including four as Chief Editor, before joining Nature Biotechnology in early 2022 and becoming Chief Editor later that year. She also serves on the MAQC Society Board.
Ishan Mehta
Senior Policy Advisor for Emerging Technology
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Ishan Mehta is the Senior Policy Advisor for Emerging Technology at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, where he focuses on advancing policies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. He spent nearly four years working on technology policy in the office of U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, where he helped enact the first civilian-side federal law on artificial intelligence — the AI in Government Act — and served as lead staffer on the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act and the Safe Connections Act. He was previously a national security policy advisor at Third Way, working on cybersecurity, foreign interference, and strategic competition. He holds dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Kevin Flyangolts
Founder & CEO
Aclid
Talk title to be announced.
Biography
Kevin Flyangolts is the founder and CEO of Aclid, a safety and security automation platform for the bioeconomy that he started in 2021. Aclid helps DNA and RNA manufacturers, research laboratories, and U.S. defense partners meet trade controls, international biosecurity and biosafety regulations, and federal funding requirements, with workflows spanning sanctions screening, customer verification, and sequence analysis with risk scoring. Before founding Aclid he held engineering and product leadership roles at IAC, Bloomberg, Blockdaemon, and PlaceIQ. He writes and speaks on operational biosecurity and how automation can reduce risk while streamlining research and compliance.
Additional speakers to be announced
Additional speakers and sessions will be added to the programme as they are confirmed.