Speaker Biographies

Christopher P. Adams is a seasoned life sciences entrepreneur and CEO with over 25 years of experience founding and leading biotechnology, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies. Based in the Massachusetts innovation hub, he has been instrumental in the end-to-end development and commercialization of proprietary technologies that address significant unmet medical needs. Throughout his career, Mr. Adams has founded a diverse portfolio of ventures, including an MIT spin-out genomics company focused on patented genetic analysis and a pharmaceutical firm developing novel therapeutics for obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. A prolific innovator, he is the inventor of more than 20 issued US and international patents spanning the ocular, oncologic, and metabolic spaces. To date, the technologies developed under his leadership have directly improved the lives of more than 5 million patients worldwide. Mr. Adams continues to drive clinical and regulatory strategy for next-generation oncologic therapies and orphan drug candidates

Devesh Aggarwal is a research scientist at AstraZeneca (Gaithersburg, MD) focused on end-to-end design, bioconjugation, and analytical characterization of antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) along with developing novel conjugation technologies and integrating high-throughput conjugation. He brings years of experience spanning ADC bioconjugation and molecular pharmacology, from method development to deep analytical profiling using modern techniques. Previously at Purdue University and the Indian Institute of Technology, he contributed to translational enzymology and chemical biology with publications in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Molecules, and Microorganisms.

Alex Alanine is a highly experienced leader with 30 years' success in pharma and biotech in overseeing delivery of multiple CNS development candidates from hit ID to clinical stage studies. Previous roles include COO, R&D head of Nanna therapeutics, Whilst at Roche Alex held a number of senior roles including: SVP external innovation, founded and headed Chemistry technologies & Innovation, global head of CNS med. chem. (AD, psych, pain), founded and headed hit-to-lead across therapy areas applying MPO.

Lauren V. Albrecht, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on proteostasis and cellular quality control, with an emphasis on lysosomal degradation pathways and arginine methylation. Her lab has uncovered fundamental mechanisms linking methylation to lysosomal proteolysis and developed innovative therapeutic strategies, including methylarginine-targeting chimeras (MrTACs) for targeted protein degradation.

Simon is Chief Operating Officer and President of R&D at Unnatural Products (UNP), a macrocyclic peptide drug discovery company. Simon joined UNP in 2024, bringing over 25 years’ experience of drug discovery and early development experience in oncology and metabolic disease in big pharma, and public and private biotech companies. Simon joined UNP from Plexium where he was EVP Drug Discovery and led the company’s science and technology groups to identify novel molecular glue protein degrader drugs. Prior positions included SVP, Head of Research for Intercept Pharmaceuticals, leading the company’s programs in NASH/MASH from inception through Phase 1. Earlier in his career, Simon was a medicinal chemist at Pfizer, where he led the Diabetes and Oncology Medicinal Chemistry Departments. Simon holds a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Manchester and an MBA from UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management. He is a 2021 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Hero of Chemistry award for his leadership role in the discovery of Lorbrena™ a macrocyclic inhibitor of mutant ALK kinase for the treatment of NSCLC.

Dr. Svetlana Belyanskaya is an expert in small molecule drug discovery and a globally recognized leader in DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) technology. With over two decades of hands-on experience, she played a key role in the discovery of the first DEL-derived compound to advance into clinical trials—a landmark achievement that helped validate the platform’s potential. Dr. Belyanskaya has been at the forefront of DEL innovation since its inception, driving platform development and hit discovery strategies at pioneering organizations such as Praecis Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Anagenex Inc. Her work integrates deep expertise in DEL screening, assay design, and early-stage drug development, bringing together scientific precision and strategic insight. A passionate advocate for the DEL community, she is a frequent speaker at international conferences, the author of numerous publications, and an instructor of specialized courses on DEL applications in modern drug discovery. She also serves as a strategic advisor to emerging biotech companies leveraging DEL technologies. Dr. Belyanskaya previously held senior scientific leadership roles at GSK and served as Vice President of Biology at Anagenex. She is currently the co-founder and executive leader at DEL Source Inc., where she continues to advance the field and shape the future of drug discovery. (LinkedIn).

Olivier Bezy serves as Head of Biology at Cellarity. He joined Cellarity n 2020 following a long tenure at Pfizer as a senior principal scientist and laboratory head, where he was responsible for development of early research projects to create confidence in rational and high-quality potential clinical assets. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard University. He received PhD and MS degrees in pharmacology, cellular and molecular biology from Universite Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France.

Sangeeta Bhatia earned her BS at Brown University, followed by an MS in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and an MD at Harvard Medical School. Prior to her appointment at MIT, Bhatia held a tenured position at UCSD. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. As a prolific inventor and passionate advocate for diversity in science and engineering, Bhatia has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize, known as the “Oscar for inventors,” and the Heinz Medal for groundbreaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University's Board of Fellows. Bhatia is a board member of Brown University, Vertex Pharmaceuticals,* Port Therapeutics,* Ropirio Therapeutics.* She has an advisory role with Global Oncology Inc., Sunbird BIO,* Satellite Bio,* Matrisome Bio,* Xilio Therapeutics, Danaher, Ochre Bio,* Amplifyer Bio,* Earli Inc.,* Brigham Research Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Impilo Therapeutics.

Neil Bhowmick, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer for Kairos Pharma and serves as the Mark Goodson Chair in Oncology Research and Professor, Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. His studies in tumor-host interactions and mechanisms of drug resistance have been cited over 18,000 times and led to the development of interventions under preclinical and clinical testing for multiple cancer types.

Surge is a co-founder and the CEO at Nabla Bio, an antibody design company. Surge received his PhD from George Church’s lab. There, he and his colleagues pioneered the development of protein language modeling, a technology that has been central to state-of-the-art protein structure prediction and machine learning-guided protein design. Outside of Nabla, Surge enjoys hanging out with his wife and Nabla co-founder, Frances, and their two dogs, Archie and Riley.

Ann leads the Research team at Dewpoint focusing on advancing condensate science into breakthrough medicines for patients. Ann has longstanding expertise in gene control and condensate biology. Throughout her career she has focused on novel biomedical science that can be translated into medicine to alter the course of disease and improve human health. Ann has a master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Umeå University and a PhD in Biology from Stockholm University, Sweden. She did her postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During her time at MIT, she led pioneering research focused on the role of condensates in gene control and cancer therapeutic drug activity.

25+ years of experience within Pfizer Research and Development focusing on target-ligand interactions using a variety of biophysical techniques. The earlier part of my career was spent was largely focused on protein NMR techniques to solve protein structures and evaluate ligand binding. In an effort to provide greater impacts, my efforts turned towards a variety of biosensing techniques (SPR, BLI, SPRm) to access binding interactions for targets across the Pfizer portfolio. With recent technology development, I have been able to apply these biophysical techniques to membrane proteins in the whole cell environment as well as in membrane preparations.

Alexandre Bouyssou, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology at Genentech, where he studies G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) with an emphasis on molecular pharmacology, structure-function relationships, and the spatiotemporal regulation of signaling. His research integrates biochemical, cellular, structural, and computational approaches to better understand GPCR function in physiologically relevant settings. He received his PhD in molecular pharmacology, biochemistry, and neuroscience from the University of Montpellier, where he studied mechanisms of G protein activation, G protein state equilibria, and developed tools to investigate native GPCR signaling. At Genentech, his recent work has contributed to a better understanding of chemokine receptor signaling, particularly CXCR3, with a focus on how ligand-dependent receptor conformations influence signaling specificity and functional outcomes. His current research interests include GPCR molecular pharmacology, molecular dynamics, biased signaling, and the spatial and temporal regulation of receptor function.

Dr. Bradley is a multi-disciplinary scientist in computer-aided compound design using structural data. He completed a first-class MChem in Chemistry from the University of Oxford in 2010. He carried out an interdisciplinary DPhil also at the University of Oxford on the SABS-IDC programme. During this he developed computational tools (OOMMPPAA and WONKA) for structure-based drug design—working with the SGC Oxford and GlaxoSmithKline. Subsequent to his DPhil, he carried out a postdoc at the RCSB PDB (UC San Diego) where he worked on novel compression algorithms for macromolecules, including the MMTF file format. He then worked as a Project Leader with the Oxford Chemistry department, Diamond Light Source, and the SGC Oxford on the XChem project (high-throughput X-ray screening of fragments). Here he generated tools and future funding for fragment-based compound optimisation leveraging the XChem platform. From 2018 to 2024, he worked at Exscientia, where he developed their physics-based drug discovery platform. Now he leads an academic group at the University of Liverpool where his interests lie in using computation and automation to accelerate drug design.

Florence was born and raised in France. She obtained a MS from the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Montpellier, and then moved to the US. She obtained her Ph.D. with Prof. Arno Spatola at the University of Louisville, where her love of and career in peptides started. She then moved to San Diego to pursue her postdoctoral training with Dr. Phil Dawson at Scripps Research where she continued working with peptides while learning new methodologies such as chemical ligation. Florence then took her interest in turning peptides into drugs to the biotech and pharmaceutical industry at companies like Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer/CovX and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Florence is now an employee of Novo Nordisk where her role has evolved into project management of internal projects and external collaborations, as well as identifying new technologies to meet Novo Nordisk’s strategy. Florence remains very active in the peptide community as an elected council member for the American Peptide Society, a board member for TIDES and the elected chair of the 2026 Chemistry and Biology of Peptides Gordon Research Conference.

Tauseef Butt received his PhD degree in Molecular Biology from The University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was a Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, before joining SmithKline (now GSK) Pharmaceuticals. He serves as President and CEO of Progenra. He was an Adjunct Professor in Biochemistry and Biophysics, at University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, PA. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia. He has been instrumental in raising ~$145 million capital. He is active in numerous national and regional professional organizations, including several dedicated to biotechnology.

Danyal Butt is a Principal Research Scientist in Biologics Discovery Sciences at AbbVie. He joined AbbVie in 2019 and has been leading and supporting biologics drug discovery projects in Immunology, Oncology, Neuroscience and Cell Therapy. Currently, he leads the In vivo Antibody Discovery and Sequencing Technologies Group. In addition, he co-leads the AbbVie-Harvard Alliance program area for developing antibody therapeutics against emergent pathogens. Dany's scientific training is in immunology focused on B cell biology and antibody responses. He received his PhD at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, Australia.

I earned my PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Hyderabad, India, where my doctoral research focused on the synthesis of natural product-inspired hybrid macrocycles. Following my doctoral studies, I pursued postdoctoral training in Dr. Young's research group at Baylor College of Medicine, where I specialized in creating SP3 rich heterocycles to develop 3D-enriched small molecule libraries for Fragment-Based Drug Discovery and DNA-encoded chemical library technology. Currently I am an Assistant Professor at the Center for Drug Discovery in the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine. I lead the DNA-encoded chemical library platform at CDD and oversee hit validation and optimization.

Pranam Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Computer and Information Science and the Africk-Lesley Distinguished Scholar of Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania. Having earned his SB, SM, and PhD from MIT, Professor Chatterjee has received the MIRA Award, Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award, and multiple NIH and foundation grants for his work. He has also co-founded Gameto, Inc., UbiquiTx, Inc., AtomBioworks, Inc., and Recognition Bio, Inc., which translates his research into fertility solutions, RNA medicines, and cancer therapeutics, respectively.

Susana Correia is a Director of Neuromuscular Research at Dyne Therapeutics in Waltham, MA, where she leads CNS drug discovery focused on the development of treatments for neuromuscular and potential applications of Dyne’s FORCE platform to CNS indications. Prior to joining Dyne, Susana advanced therapies for both neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases at multiple biotech companies. Her PhD training in molecular neuroscience started at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, her native country and her research career continued at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI and MIT in Cambridge, MA, where she conducted research on the molecular, cellular and neural circuit mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity, cognition and anxiety-related brain biology.

Debanu brings 20 years of expertise in protein crystallography, structure-and fragment-based drug discovery, structural biology and entrepreneurship. His expertise includes structure-function analysis of a broad range of proteins and drug targets like kinases, proteases, antibody-antigen complexes, nuclear receptors, ubiquitin ligases, methylases, polymerases, microbiome enzymes, membrane proteins, and transcription factors. In addition to working with many early drug discovery and therapeutics companies, he as authored or co-authored about 45 publications in methods development and applications, including four publications with Nobel Laureates David Baker, Michael Levitt, Shinya Yamanaka and Kurt Wüthrich.

Erin is Vice President of Research Business Insights & Technology at Bristol Myers Squibb, where she leads global teams spanning data, AI, and technology to enable data-driven decision-making across early drug discovery. She works at the intersection of science, technology, and business to advance the use of AI/ML, data platforms, and predictive modeling to accelerate the design of new therapies and improve R&D outcomes. Previously, Erin served as Chief Technology Officer at X-Chem, where she led the development of an integrated discovery platform combining DEL, medicinal chemistry, computational science, and machine learning. Prior to that, she was Senior Vice President of Enterprise Informatics at Schrödinger, where she led the growth of the LiveDesign platform across the global pharmaceutical industry and founded the company’s discovery informatics function. Erin began her career at the interface of medicinal and computational chemistry and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Montana.

As the CEO of Acellera Therapeutics, I lead a team of researchers and engineers dedicated to accelerating the transition to rational, computerized drug engineering via simulations and artificial intelligence. With over 20 years of experience in computational science, I have a strong background in mathematics, machine learning, quantum chemistry, and computer simulations. I am also an ICREA Research Professor at the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, where I head a computational science laboratory. Additionally, I am an Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. I love computing in all its forms, from computer simulations to computational intelligence.

As Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at Kymera Therapeutics, Chris was responsible for medicinal and computational chemistry, lead discovery (biochemistry, biophysics, structural biology), preclinical development (DMPK and Toxicology), and proteomics. His team contributed to all drug discovery phases at Kymera from project inception through to clinical candidate discovery and beyond. Prior to joining Kymera, Chris was head of chemistry at Blueprint Medicines, a precision medicine company specialized in kinase drug discovery and development. Chris has deep experience in leading discovery research groups and project teams in both global pharmaceutical and biotech companies. He has directly contributed to the invention of 9 clinical candidate drugs for oncology and inflammation disease – most recently BLU-945, an EGFR T790M/C797S triple mutant inhibitor for the treatment of lung cancer, AZD4573, a selective CDK9 inhibitor for the treatment of haematological malignancies and AZD9496, an oral, selective estrogen receptor degrader for the treatment of ER+ breast cancer. He co-discovered Barasertib (AZD1152), a selective Inhibitor of Aurora B kinase for the treatment of AML. He is an author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications and patents in the fields of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery and a PhD qualified chemist who has previously held academic positions at Queens’ College Cambridge and University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Dr. Brandon DeKosky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT and a Core Member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard, and MIT. Research efforts at the DeKosky lab have developed a suite of high-throughput single-cell platforms for comprehensive analyses of adaptive immunity. These efforts are advancing new approaches in biologic drug discovery, and for the comprehensive analyses of genetic and functional diversity in adaptive immune cells. The group seeks to reveal the quantitative principles that govern effective adaptive immunity and provide molecular design strategies for vaccines and biologics to combat global infectious agents including HIV-1, malaria, and SARS-CoV-2. The DeKosky lab is also investigating quantitative principles of immune regulation and establishing new approaches for targeted and personalized cancer therapies. Dr. DeKosky has been awarded several honors for his research program. His PhD research was supported by a Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Fellowship, and a Donald. D. Harrington Graduate Fellowship. In 2016, DeKosky was awarded a K99 Pathway to Independence Award and an NIH Early Independence Award and began a joint faculty appointment at the University of Kansas Departments of Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He has also received the Department of Defense Career Development Award, the Biomedical Engineering Society Rising Star Award, and the AIChE Young Faculty Futures award. In 2021, Dr. DeKosky began as an Assistant Professor in a joint appointment at MIT Chemical Engineering and The Ragon Institute.

Josefa dela Cruz-Chuh is a Scientist 4 in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology Department at Genentech, a member of Roche. She has 20 years of biotech industry experience developing innovative high-throughput in vitro functional assay platforms to elucidate the mechanisms of action of different antibody therapeutics. She established the immune cell engager platform with imaging-based screening assays measuring the kinetics of T-cell-mediated tumor cell killing, cytokine production, and immune cell marker phenotyping for bispecific antibodies and TCR-T cell therapies. She has also developed high-throughput functional assays for screening the in vitro potency of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and understanding intracellular processing and drug release using LC/MS/MS. Prior to joining Genentech, Josefa worked at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute studying infectious diseases. Josefa attended UC Berkeley, where she studied Molecular and Cell Biology with an emphasis in Biochemistry.

Corleone Delaveris is a co-founder of Inversion Therapeutics, an oncology-therapeutics focused biotech leveraging the recently described target space of inverted proteins. He received his post-doctoral training under Jim Wells at UCSF, with whom he co-founded Inversion Therapeutics. Prior to that, he received his doctoral training with Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford University, and trained in synthetic chemistry with Marc Snapper at Boston College.

Julie Di Bernardo is a Director at Foghorn Therapeutics, specializing in early discovery programs, high throughput screening, and cell based technologies. She earned her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Trieste in Italy, where she investigated the role of the architectural chromatin factors HMGA in cancer. She completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Bologna in Italy and the University of Michigan, gaining foundational experience in drug discovery that ultimately led her to join Merck & Co. There, she worked within the Chemical Biology group, supporting discovery efforts across a range of disease areas, including oncology and neurology. Dr. Di Bernardo transitioned to biotech by joining the Drug Discovery team at Foghorn Therapeutics, where she focuses on chromatin remodeling and transcription factors using multiple modalities, including heterobifunctional degraders and small molecule inhibitors. Her expertise spans all aspects of cell biology and associated technologies, with a particular emphasis on high content imaging and phenotypic screening.

I am an Associate Professor in the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment (CSM) Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, and my research is focused on understanding the role of protein kinases in the development of cancer and drug resistance. To accomplish this, our lab uses proteogenomics approaches including kinome profiling strategies and phosphoproteomics to discover new kinase therapeutic targets and to explore resistance mechanisms to molecular targeted therapies.

Matthew Eddy received his PhD in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Professor Robert Griffin. During his PhD, Dr. Eddy developed new approaches for using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in the solid state to determine structures of membrane proteins in cellular-like environments. Following his PhD, Dr. Eddy joined the laboratories of Professors Raymond Stevens and Kurt Wüthrich at The Scripps Research Institute as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow, applying an integrative structural biology approach to study human G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and focusing on applications of nuclear magnetic resonance to improve our understanding of GPCR allosteric functions. Dr. Eddy is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida and affiliated faculty of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. His group continues to study human GPCRs to understand the role of the cellular environment in regulating GPCR dynamics, structure, and function.

Meddy El Alaoui is co-founder of AbTx, and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Covalab, specializing in bio-conjugation and targeted cancer therapies. With a robust background in bioconjugation chemistry, molecular biology, and translational oncology, Dr. Meddy El Alaoui drives innovative approaches to enhance the specificity, stability, and therapeutic efficacy of ADC platforms. His work integrates advanced conjugation strategies with deep mechanistic insights into tumor biology, aiming to overcome resistance and improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Daniel A. Erlanson is the Chief Innovation Officer for Frontier Medicines, which is using covalent fragments, machine learning, and chemoproteomics to target proteins often thought undruggable. Prior to Frontier he co-founded Carmot Therapeutics, where he contributed to two clinical-stage molecules. Before Carmot, Dr. Erlanson spent a decade developing fragment-based discovery technologies and leading medicinal chemistry projects at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Erlanson was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with James A. Wells at Genentech, earned his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University in the laboratory of Gregory L. Verdine, and his BA in chemistry from Carleton College. He has co-edited two books on fragment-based drug discovery and is an inventor on more than a dozen issued patents and an author of more than forty scientific publications. He also runs a blog devoted to fragment-based drug discovery, Practical Fragments (http://practicalfragments.blogspot.com/).

Michael Evans, PhD, is a Professor in Residence in the UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. He is a chemical biologist with an interest in biomarker discovery with proteomics, nuclear medicine, theranostics, and molecular imaging. Dr. Evans earned a BA in Chemistry from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and he obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute (CA) under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Cravatt. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Imaging from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York under the supervision of Professors Charles Sawyers and Jason Lewis. Dr. Evans has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and is a co-inventor on 17 patents pending or issued. Dr. Evans also is the principle investigator or co-PI on several human trials focused on new strategies for imaging and treating tumors with radiopharmaceuticals. He is a scientific co-founder and previously served on the scientific advisory board of ORIC Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He is a co-founder of Therapaint, Inc, Honeybear Biosciences, and Inversion Therapeutics. Has been recognized with numerous honors, including a 2013 Young Investigator Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Cancer Institute, a 2017 Research Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, the 2023 Roger Tsien Award for excellence in chemical biology from the World Molecular Imaging Society, the 2024 Sam Gambhir Trailblazer award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, and he was a 2020 inductee to the Council of Distinguished Investigators in the Academy of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research.

Dr. Ghotas Evindar is a recognized leader in drug discovery and a pioneer in DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) technology, with over two decades of experience advancing small-molecule therapeutics across the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. He currently serves as Co-Founder and President of DEL Source Inc., where he leads efforts to develop and apply DEL-based discovery platforms that enable the identification of novel therapeutics for challenging targets. Previously, Dr. Evindar led DEL discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as Senior Site Manager in Boston, guiding numerous programs from early hits to development candidates. Earlier in his career, he was a core member of the original Praecis Pharmaceuticals team that helped establish the DEL platform as a transformative drug discovery technology, and he began his industry career as a medicinal chemist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Evindar has also held senior leadership roles as Head of Drug Discovery at 1859 Inc. and Exo Therapeutics. Dr. Evindar is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to DEL platform development, library design, and small-molecule discovery. A frequent speaker and educator, he actively supports the scientific community through industry courses, panels, and workshops focused on DEL innovation, AI-enabled screening, and the advancement of modern drug discovery.

Dr. Cara Ferreira, PhD, MBA is currently the CEO of Lumina Pharmaceuticals a clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company distinguished by its innovative technology targeting novel biomarkers to treat cancer. Most recently she was an executive at Fusion Pharmaceuticals a clinical stage company focused on targeted alpha therapy which was acquired by AstraZeneca in June 2024. Previously, Cara was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she led strategy consulting for global pharmaceutical clients. Dr. Ferreira has been active in the radiopharmaceutical space for 25+ years and has held leadership roles in SNMMI.

Marc Ferrer is currently the Director of the 3D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory at NCATS. He graduated with a BSc degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, Spain, in 1989, and received his Ph.D. degree in Biological Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, in 1994. Dr. Ferrer has 20 years of experience in in vitro pharmacology for drug discovery. In the last three years, he has led the implementation of the NCATS 3D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory, a multidisciplinary group with the goal of developing 3D organotypic cellular models that faithfully mimic human pathophysiology and using them to implement clinically predictive drug efficacy and safety screens.

Stephen W. Fesik, PhD, is the Orrin H. Ingram II Chair in Cancer Research and a Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB), and the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). The focus of his research is on cancer drug discovery using fragment-based approaches and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in May 2009, Dr. Fesik was the Divisional Vice President of Cancer Research at Abbott (2000-2009) where he built a pipeline of compounds that are showing promising anti-cancer activities in early-stage clinical trials. In addition, while he was at Abbott, he developed several new NMR methods, determined the three-dimensional structures of several proteins and protein/ligand complexes, pioneered a fragment-based method for drug discovery called SAR by NMR, and applied this method to identify and optimize ligands for binding to many protein drug targets. Dr. Fesik has published more than 295 papers, trained 68 postdoctoral fellows, and has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of many scientific journals, scientific advisory boards, and the Keystone and Bruker Board of Directors. He has also obtained several awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from EAS (2003), the SBS Technology Innovation Award (2010), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research (2012), and 2021 Chester Stock Award from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Christina (Runzhong) Fu is a Senior Principal Scientist in Immunogenicity Science at Pfizer, where she leads immunogenicity risk assessment strategy and method innovation to support the development of complex biologics and antibody–drug conjugates. She previously headed cell-based and discovery assay development in ADC bioanalysis at Pfizer (via the Seagen acquisition), focusing on fit-for-purpose PK, ADA and NAb methods for oncology programs. Dr. Fu earned her PhD in Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Southern California and an MRes in Drug Discovery and Development from Imperial College London. Her earlier academic work in autoimmune disease and peptide therapeutics, together with diverse industrial experiences in bioanalysis and immunogenicity assessments, underpins a broad toolkit spanning cell biology, bioanalytical method development, and translational pharmacology.

Andrew Galler is a Senior Biotechnology Analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence covering large and smid cap biotechnology, including AI-enabled drug development companies. He previously has ten years' experience on the sellside covering the therapeutics sector, including stints at Morgan Stanley, Wolfe Research, and Citigroup.

Andrea Geist completed her degree in biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, where she carried out her Master's thesis in collaboration with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, US. She received her PhD in stem cell and cancer cell biology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg in 2021. Her doctoral research focused on investigating the impact of metabolic circuits on the epigenetic landscape of embryonic and leukemic stem cells, uncovering important insights into the underlying mechanisms governing these cells and their potential implications in disease. In 2022, Andrea joined Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Since July 2023, she has been part of the PROxAb Shuttle team, where she contributes to the targeted delivery of proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs). Throughout her work, Andrea has been committed to merging her deep expertise in cancer cell biology with antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) strategies, making meaningful contributions to the advancement of targeted protein degradation as a novel therapeutic modality.

Ashwini Ghogare is a GenAI Leader for Life Sciences and Healthcare Startups at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she advises techbios to harness the power of generative AI, cloud, and automation to accelerate scientific breakthroughs and bring therapies to patients faster. Previously at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany she led an intrapreneural corporate venture on AI and automation for drug discovery building the first-in-class AI-native fully autonomous R&D lab for Life Science and Healthcare sectors. Her significant experience developing and launching scientific GenAI solutions, incubating new techbio ventures, and commercializing enterprise solutions culminated in the successful launch of the AI-powered drug design solution, AIDDISONâ„¢ and global success of Synthiaâ„¢, a leading retrosynthesis design solution. Recognized globally as a thought leader, Ashwini has delivered keynotes at major industry forums, including DAVOS, and has been honored among the Top 100 AI Leaders and as AI Leader of the Year (2025). She holds a Ph.D. in Oncology Research and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

William Gibson, MD, PhD, earned degrees in biological engineering and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then joined the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program, where he conducted his thesis research with Rameen Beroukhim. Dr. Gibson completed his residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and his Medical Oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He conducted post-doctoral research in the laboratories of Stuart Schreiber and Matthew Meyerson. His research laboratory invents novel chemical biology technologies to address some of cancer's most intractable problems, such as directly drugging TP53 mutant cancers.

Jonathan Gilbert leads the growth of the Lilly TuneLab Ecosystem on the east coast of US and Europe. Jonathan received his PhD from MIT in Chemical Engineering and has spent his last decade plus in biotech at multiple companies ranging from the Seed stage to early clinical public companies. Immediately prior to Lilly, Jonathan lead Corporate Development and Strategy at Entact Bio.

Anthony Gizzi is a Principal Scientist and group lead for Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering. At Clasp Therapeutics, he works on next-generation precision immuno-oncology medicines built on the company’s proprietary pHLA-redirecting engagers, or pHLAre™, which enable T cells to selectively recognize and eliminate tumors driven by common oncogenic mutations. Clasp’s platform identifies mutated peptides presented by HLA molecules to create highly selective, off-the-shelf immunotherapies designed for some of the hardest-to-treat cancers. Anthony brings together structural biology, high-throughput automation, and AI/ML-guided design to accelerate the discovery and engineering of novel biologics. He earned his PhD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he discovered and characterized the antiviral radical SAM enzyme viperin, and later completed an NRSA F32 fellowship at Johns Hopkins University investigating the cell biology of HIV-1 infection and the role of SAMHD1 in cancer. Outside the lab, Anthony enjoys spending time with his family and exploring nature.

Sujatha Gopalakrishnan is leading the centralized Molecular Screening and Characterization group at Abbvie. Her team supports various therapeutic areas in assay development, screening, and advancing compounds including elucidation of the SAR and mechanistic studies for early-stage drug discovery efforts. She joined Abbott/Abbvie in 1995, and since then has held positions of increasing responsibility leading highly-productive scientific teams. With early Discovery, she has been advancing a range of assay platforms/technologies for target-based and phenotypic screens that impacted Abbvie pipeline. Sujatha is an author of over 45 peer-reviewed manuscripts as well as a co-inventor on two patents.

Sai Gourisankar, PhD is an NCI K99/R00 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Prof. Nathanael Gray. His PhD was in chemical engineering, advised by Prof. Gerald Crabtree, where he investigated mechanisms of epigenetic regulation in cancer and development. Dr. Gourisankar’s postdoctoral work focuses on developing new small molecule technologies to target and reprogram oncogenic drivers for therapeutic applications, particularly using chemical induced proximity approaches and enabled by biochemistry and genomics.

Dr. Andreas Goutopoulos founded Actithera with the vision of bringing medicinal chemistry-driven innovation to radioligand therapy. He has over 25 years of experience in drug discovery, including leadership roles at EMD Serono, where he directed the chemistry organization, and at M Ventures, where he served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence supporting company creation and scientific diligence. Andreas has led the discovery of more than a dozen development candidates across therapeutic areas. His scientific leadership and commitment to precision molecular design continue to shape Actithera’s approach to building transformative oncology therapeutics.

Dr. Groaning received his PhD in Organic Chemistry at Colorado State University before moving on to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland for his postdoctoral research in natural product total synthesis. From there he started his career at Roche initially in medicinal chemistry before moving to Roche Colorado where he transitioned to process research. In 2008, he moved to Endocyte and began his tenure there in process development before transitioning into regulatory affairs and finally clinical development. He lead the prostate cancer program exploring EC1169, a PSMA targeted small molecule drug conjugate, before Endocyte in-licensed PSMA-617 which became the approved drug Pluvicto. After the acquisition of Endocyte by Novartis, Dr. Groaning spent three years at Amgen working on the STEAP1 targeted T-Cell engager program before moving back into the radioligand space. He joined Fusion in January, 2024 as the Global Program Leader for the Ac-225-PSMA program until Fusion was acquired by AstraZeneca. In September 2025, he began his tenure at Soricimed Biopharma as their CSO focusing on the development of TRPV6 targeted radioligand therapies.

Currently an ICREA Professor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Dr. Guallar completed his PhD in theoretical Chemistry between the University Autonomous of Barcelona (Spain) and UC Berkeley (USA) in January 2000. After three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University (New York, USA), he was appointed assistant professor at Washington University School of Medicine (St Louis, USA), before moving his group to BSC in 2006. His laboratory (EAPM) has grown considerably since, keeping a productive international character, and developing important contributions in computational biophysics, such as the protein-ligand modeling software PELE, and biochemistry, including computational algorithms for enzyme engineering and the introduction of the first PluriZyme (enzyme with multiple actives sites).As a BSC researcher, Prof. Guallar has been awarded several important research projects, including the award of a prestigious advanced ERC grant (the youngest researcher to receive it in Spain). His research has produced over 140 papers in international journals and directed 16 PhD thesis. In addition to algorithms development (and their application), the group has recently placed importance in adding interdisciplinary fields to our research, such as visualization techniques, data mining and software optimization through machine learning algorithms. Prof. Guallar is also founder of the first spin off from BSC, Nostrum Biodiscovery, a young biotech enterprise created in 2016 which aims to collaborate with pharmaceutical and biotech companies dedicated to the development of drugs and molecules of biotechnological interest. The company currently works with clients in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Dr. Gygi received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 1995 specializing in small molecule mass spectrometry. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Ruedi Aebersold at the University of Washington where he studied large molecule mass spectrometry in a new field termed proteomics. He started his own lab in 2000 at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Cell Biology. Currently, his lab is working to develop technologies around sample multiplexing. A 16plex TMT reagent set is now available. This allows for 16 treatments to be combined into a single experiment including replicates, dose response, time series, and rescue conditions. In this single-experiment format, proteomics becomes a powerful biological assay.

Gloria Ha completed her PhD in Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology at Harvard University and is currently a Principal Scientist in the QSP & Translational Modeling and Simulation group at Novartis, working in oncology and global health.

Arjan Hada is a full-stack drug discovery scientist at iBio where he combines computational protein design, experimental biology, and structural methods to advance new therapeutics. He has worked across multiple stages of biopharmaceutical industry. He earned his PhD at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he studied multisubunit protein complexes using biochemistry, genomics, and proteomics.

Kasia Handing is an Associate Director of Biochemistry at Tango Therapeutics, with expertise in protein science and structural biology applied to early-stage drug discovery. Her research journey began during her undergraduate studies in Poland, where she focused on structural bioinformatics and protein structure modeling. She then pursued graduate research in X-ray crystallography of protein structures at the Wladek Minor Laboratory at the University of Virginia. Following her graduate training, Kasia joined the Broad Institute, where she supported protein science and structural biology efforts across early-stage drug discovery programs. Since joining Tango Therapeutics in 2021, she has focused on enabling early drug discovery through the development of robust biochemical and biophysical assays, as well as through structural biology enablement.

Johannes Hermann is an early pioneer in machine learning/AI approaches to accelerate drug discovery, with over a decade of leadership experience driving healthcare innovation and hunting drugs using AI. As the global head for Data Science at Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Technology, Johannes integrated AI into digital & robotic surgery, sensor-based patient rehab assistance, and personalized patient treatment and risk assessments. As Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ global head of machine learning and advanced analytics, Johannes drove AI initiatives across the pharmaceutical value chain, from R&D to production and commercialization. Johannes started his career at Roche as a data scientist and drug designer. Johannes holds a PhD in quantum & molecular mechanics from the University of Düsseldorf, with postgraduate work at University of Bristol and UC San Francisco. As the CTO of Frontier Medicines, Johannes is deploying AI/ML to discover and develop breakthrough drugs against ‘undruggable’ targets.

Dominic Hou, PhD, is Director of Discovery and Platforms at KisoJi Biotechnology Inc., where he leads antibody discovery, engineering, preclinical development, and AI-driven design. He has over eight years of experience advancing antibody programs and building proprietary platforms including KisoMouseâ„¢, KisoSeekâ„¢, and KisoBodyâ„¢. His work focuses on integrating paratope mapping and AI to enable high-precision functional antibody discovery, contributing to programs such as the anti-TROP2 candidate KJ-103. Dr. Hou holds a PhD in Human Genetics from McGill University and is an inventor on multiple antibody therapeutics patents.

Prof. Hsu earned his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and completed his postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute. The Hsu Laboratory focuses on the discovery of bioactive molecules. A central theme of the group is the development of covalent probes and inhibitors for investigating protein and lipid activity. Research in the group is multidisciplinary and uses a combination of organic synthesis, bioanalytical chemistry, and bioorganic chemistry. Current efforts include identifying new reactive chemistry, quantifying ligandability of proteins on a proteomic scale, and deciphering structure and function of membrane signals in living systems. Ultimately, the goal is to develop new molecules to enable chemical biology and therapeutic discovery. Prof. Hsu’s research program has been recognized by several awards including the highly competitive NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, Department of Defense CDMRP Career Development Award, Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Emerging Leader Award from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, and CPRIT Recruitment of Rising Stars Award.

A biotech leader with 20 years of industry experience guiding early discovery and development teams across immuno-oncology, pain, and skeletal and cardiac indications. He has advanced programs using diverse therapeutic modalities and helped build two successful startups—CovX (acquired by Pfizer 2018) and Avidity Biosciences (acquired by Novartis 2026). At Avidity, Hanhua drives cross-functional efforts and has led teams from target validation to clinical candidate nomination.

Catherine has spent over 29 years acquiring significant depth of experience in antibody drug discovery and platform applications at cutting-edge biotech and pharma companies, such as Cambridge Antibody Technology and Heptares Therapeutics. She has been engaged as an independent consultant for over 10 years, supporting scientific and strategic initiatives to pharma, biotech and investors, with a particular focus on therapeutic antibody discovery targeting complex membrane proteins, such as GPCRs, ion channels, transporters; immuno-oncology; platform positioning; and target/product evaluation. Catherine graduated with BSc Hons in Genetics and Cell Biology from University of Manchester, UK, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Applied Molecular Biology from UMIST, UK.

Haihong Jin is Chief Scientific Officer of Vitsgen Therapeutics and Viwit Pharmaceuticals. She is running both Radioligand Therapy and Cell Therapy. She has more than 25 years of experience advancing therapies across oncology, metabolic disease, CNS and inflammation. She has discovered the first-in-class tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH) inhibitor, XERMELO for non-constipating irritable bowel syndrome which was approved in 2017. Meanwhile, she has invented the Acyl-CoA Synthetase 5 Inhibitor (LX985) which is entering an Exclusive License Agreement with Novo Nordisk. Recently her paper "Acyl-CoA Synthetase 5 Knockout and Inhibitors Protect Against Diet-Induced Obesity in Mice by Activating the Ileal Brake” has been selected as the Journal of the Endocrine Society Featured Article. Her recent work centers on emerging therapeutic platforms, including AI based miniprotein design for precision targeting. She is particularly interested in radionuclide strategies to create more selective and effective treatments. Under her leadership, Vitsgen has completed two potential Best-in Class IND enabling studies and the third project is entering preclinical study. Vitsgen is launching First-in-Class projects through an AI-based approach.

Petrina Kamya, PhD, is the Head of AI Platforms and President of Insilico Medicine, Canada an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company. Before joining Insilico, Dr. Kamya spent eight years in various roles at Chemical Computing Group that involved scientific and business-related aspects of preclinical drug discovery. In addition to establishing the corporate strategy for the sales and business development of molecular modeling software for academia, she also played an active role as an application scientist working on real-world discovery projects and finally in a senior role in strategy and business development for pharma and biotech companies. Following her time at CCG, Petrina moved to Certara as a Market Access Manager, where she learned first-hand the challenges of getting drugs to market. Petrina has been with Insilico Medicine since August 2020. She holds a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in computational chemistry) from Concordia University.

H. Ümit Kaniskan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and Associate Director of Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He earned his PhD in organic chemistry at Case Western Reserve University under the supervision of Dr. Philip Garner. During his doctoral study, he completed the formal total synthesis of Bioxalomycin ß2 and Cyanocycline A. He then pursued his postdoctoral studies in Dr. Movassaghi's group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working on the synthesis of Myrmicarin alkaloids. In January 2013, Dr. Kaniskan joined Dr. Jin's laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences. His research focuses on the targeted protein degradation (TPD), development of inhibitors of protein methyltransferases as well as biased ligands of G protein-coupled receptors, in efforts to discover innovative therapeutics for the treatment of human diseases including cancer and brain disorders. Dr. Kaniskan has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers is also an inventor of 9 published international patent applications.

Beginning his career as a synthetic chemist, Terry Kenakin received a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Alberta in Canada. After a postdoctoral fellowship at University College London, UK, he joined Burroughs-Wellcome as an associate scientist for 7 years. From there, he continued working in drug discovery for 25 years first at Glaxo, Inc., then Glaxo Wellcome, and finally as a Director at GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development Laboratories at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Dr. Kenakin is now a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill. Currently he is engaged in studies aimed at the optimal design of drug activity assays systems, the discovery and testing of allosteric molecules for therapeutic application, and the quantitative modeling of drug effects. In addition, he is Director of the Pharmacology graduate courses at the UNC School of Medicine. He is a member of numerous editorial boards, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction. He has authored numerous articles and has written 10 books on pharmacology.

Ian Kerman is a Senior Developer Relations Manager at NVIDIA, where he works across software platforms, developers, and research teams to apply AI and accelerated computing to target identification, laboratory informatics, and data-driven drug discovery. Having begun his career working directly in the laboratory, Ian brings a scientist-first perspective to enabling data and software ecosystems that support modern discovery workflows, from AI-driven modeling and virtual screening to integration with experimental systems such as high-content assays and emerging in vitro models. With over 15 years of experience spanning machine learning, scientific informatics, and data science, he focuses on connecting advanced computing approaches with biological and chemical data to inform real-world discovery decisions. Before NVIDIA, he served as a Data Science and AI Client Solutions Architect at Certara. He held roles at LabVoice and BIOVIA, where he worked on scientific software, customer enablement, and digital lab transformation. Ian is a frequent speaker and educator in the life sciences community and holds graduate degrees in Computer Science and Biology, with undergraduate training in Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology.

Randolf Kerschbaumer, CEO of OncoOne, is a pharmaceutical and biotech executive with more than 25 years of experience in research and development of novel therapeutics. He acquired detailed knowledge of the entire drug development process, from early drug screening to clinical development, in the areas of oncology, inflammation and hematologic disorders. As co-founder and CEO, he built OncoOne into a revenue-generating biotech company with a global network of collaborations and partnerships. He obtained a degree in biotechnology and a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

Irsyad holds a DPhil in protein biochemistry and engineering from the University of Oxford, where he developed protein assembly technologies. He is now co-founder and CTO of Valink Therapeutics in London, where he leads the development and deployment of a high-throughput discovery platform focused on enabling novel bispecific ADCs and advancing next-generation bispecific modalities.

Olivier is founder and CEO of Affilogic, specialized in the development of alternative non-antibody ligands. Olivier was trained as an engineer at Ecole Centrale Paris, then as a researcher in gene transfer at Université de Rennes I. Before creating the company, he held various R&D positions in the pharmaceutical industry (Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, then Aventis Pharma Gencell in gene therapy), as laboratory head in a genetic testing biotech start-up (Atlangene Applications).

Prof. Thomas Kodadek received his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Miami (FL) in 1981 and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985. He then pursued postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Bruce Alberts at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School from 1985-1987. In the fall of 1987, he joined the faculty of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, rising to the rank of full professor. In 1998, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas where he served as Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Biology, as well as the Director of the Division of Translational Research. In June 2009, Prof. Kodadek moved to the Scripps Research Institute campus in Jupiter, FL (now UF Scripps Biomedical Research) where he is Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Kodadek works in the field of chemical biology, which involves the development of chemical tools to monitor and manipulate important processes in biology and medicine. He co-founded Deluge Biotechnologies in 2017 and Triana Biosciences in 2022.

Adem Koksal is a Senior Scientific Director at Biogen, where he leads biologics discovery and tissue-targeted delivery platforms. His work focuses on engineering antibody-based platforms to enable delivery to challenging tissues, including the brain and muscle. He integrates antibody discovery, protein engineering, and translational pharmacology to advance biologics and oligonucleotide-based therapeutics, and has defined platform strategies for targeted delivery across multiple disease areas.

I am a Principal Scientist and team leader at the Institute for Protein Innovation in Boston, where I lead antibody discovery and library design efforts. I bring over a decade of experience in yeast genetics and molecular biology, with a focus on developing advanced Fab and VHH display platforms, including biparatopic technologies. My work has enabled the creation of synthetic libraries that consistently yield high-affinity, developable antibodies against complex cell surface proteins, including GPCRs. I completed my PhD at the Indian Institute of Science and pursued postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, studying RNA polymerase II regulation. I am passionate about integrating experimental and computational approaches to accelerate biologics discovery.

Neil is a biopharma executive, co-founder, and board member with deep experience in organizational leadership and company building. He started his career at the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research (Cambridge, MA), where he established and co-led the effort to target RNA biology with small molecules. Neil then served as the Director of RNA Biology at Arrakis Therapeutics, where he led the platform-building efforts that were the cornerstone of the company's Series B financing and pharma partnerships with Roche and Amgen. Neil was VP, Head of Platform Development at Alltrna, where he co-invented a novel oligonucleotide modality based on engineered tRNAs as a universal medicine for premature termination codon mutations across thousands of human diseases. His company-building efforts resulted in a Series A financing from Flagship Pioneering and set the stage for a Series B raise to advance the organization's first drug candidates to the clinic. Neil served as CSO at Ananke Therapeutics and subsequently co-founded Verto Therapeutics to discover and develop selective mRNA translation modulators for genetically validated targets that are traditionally difficult to drug using conventional approaches. He is currently the Therapeutics Division Lead at General Inception, a venture studio that partners with technical founders to build world-class companies and deliver innovative medicines to patients in need. Neil earned a BS in Biology from James Madison University and a PhD in Molecular & Cellular Physiology from Penn State University. He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Li is the founder and CEO of VelaVigo. Prior to founding VelaVigo, he served as Senior Vice President in WuXi Biologics. Before joining WuXi Biologics, he worked for Novartis Biologics Center as Senior Manager of Portfolio & Alliance Management. Before that, he worked for Novartis Oncology as Lab Head and Program Team Head. Prior to Novartis, he worked for Wyeth (now Pfizer) as Senior Scientist and Project Leader. Dr. Li received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in molecular immunology and oncology from Peking University Health Science Center (the former Beijing Medical University), and MBA degree from Yale University School of Management. He completed his postdoctoral training at Tufts University. With over 25 years of professional experience in antibody engineering and more than 20 years of industry experience in the drug discovery and development field. He is a member of AACR (American Association for Cancer Research), ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) and FOCIS (Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies). Dr. Li has filed over 70 patent applications and authored more than 20 publications.

Pengpeng Li is a Principal with Lilly Asia Ventures (LAV) since 2022 focusing on biotech investments. Prior to joining LAV, Pengpeng was at 5AM Ventures focusing on company creation and early-stage biotech investments. Pengpeng holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Stanford University and BS in Biology from Peking University.

Dr. Xiaojie Lu received his PhD at Brandeis University working on the organocatalytic asymmetric peroxidation reaction of electronic deficient olefins in 2010, then, he joined GlaxoSmithKline for early-stage drug discovery at molecular research department in Boston. As a research investigator, he has been working on the design and synthesis of DNA encoded chemical libraries to identify small molecule ligands for biologically interesting targets. In 2016, Dr. Lu was awarded GSK associate fellow. Since July 2017, he has joined the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, CAS as the principal investigator. His current research interest focused on the design and synthesis of DNA encoded focused library for the lead generation of challenge drug targets.

Tim brings over 20 years of experience in medicinal chemistry and small molecule drug discovery across multiple therapeutic areas including fibrosis, metabolic disease, anti-infectives, and oncology. He joined Pliant in 2018 and during his tenure of roles of increasing responsibility he effectively led cross-functional project teams from target validation to Phase 1 including work on Pliant’s NASH and aVß8/1 oncology programs. In his current role, Dr. Machajewski leads the medicinal, analytical, chemical informatics, structural biology, and computational chemistry teams in support of Pliant’s strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Pliant, Tim held leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Chiron, Novartis, and Achaogen where he led and managed teams advancing the companies’ early-stage portfolios into the clinic. Tim received his BS in chemistry (highest honors) from the University of Texas at Austin, his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University, and completed postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute.

Utpal Majumder, is a principal scientist working in Eisai for 15 years. During his tenure in Eisai, he was involved in various discovery projects including peptide drug conjugate (PDC) and antibody drug conjugate (ADC) based drug discovery projects which are currently under clinical evaluations. Dr. Majumder has co-authored several patents and journal articles that have highlighted the successes and some of the challenges associated with PDC- and ADC-based drug developments.

David is a team oriented medicinal chemist and program leader with experience in multiple Therapeutic Area at large corporations and start-up. He has co-led programs from hit finding plan, through chemotype triage and delivery of progressible chemotypes, to the delivery of clinical candidates. He has been a member of teams delivering 6 clinical candidates including udifitimod studied in phase 2. David is a co-inventor on 23 patent applications and a co-author of 24 scientific publications. He is currently Senior Director of Chemistry at TRIANA Biomedicines, where he leads a team of chemists program co-leads unlocking the full potential of molecular glues to develop precision medicines and transform patient lives.

Oversees preclinical discovery, providing strategic leadership across programs from target identification through early development. An antibody engineer by training, with deep expertise in radiopharmaceutical screening and optimization.

Dr. Mazitschek is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of the Chemical Biology Platform at the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Mazitschek is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Associate Member of The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.Dr. Mazitschek graduated from the University of Leipzig in 2002 with a PhD in Organic Chemistry. He continued his research at the Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology (ICCB) at Harvard Medical School first as postdoc and later as Institute Fellow, from which he joined the Chemical Biology Program at the newly founded Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. In 2008 he joined the faculty of the Center for Systems Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital to continue his independent research.

MS of Biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire. 20+ years with a foot in the lab and a foot on the carpet doing computation work in support of HTS, Biomarkers and encoded libraries. Currently at GSK in Cambridge, MA where he leads the Biophysics and Analytics groups in support of GSK’s Encoded Library Technology.

Justin obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Miami University in Oxford, OH then went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate studies. His Ph.D. research, under the direction of Professor Scott Denmark, involved tandem cycloaddition reactions of nitroalkenes and N-vinyl nitrones. Justin joined Pfizer medicinal chemistry in 2006 and has worked in many areas over the last 15 years with focus on antibacterial chemistry, fragment-based drug design, HTS triage, design of covalent inhibitors, and more recently, design of protein degraders. Throughout his career, Justin has had a strong interest in data analysis and the use of visualization tools, which has led to his current role involving triage of all of Pfizer’s DEL screens to provide tractable chemical matter to project teams across various therapeutic areas.

Dr. Zachary Morris, MD/PhD is the Chair and Paul Harari Professor of Human Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. His research lab is focused on the translational investigation of the radiobiology and immunologic effects of radiopharmaceutical therapies and the effective integration of these with immunotherapies.

Carol A. Mulrooney, Ph.D. is an Investigator in GSK’s Encoded Libraries Technology Platform with a focus on providing and supporting data analysis within the post-selection chemistry team. Prior to joining GSK, Dr. Mulrooney worked at the Center for the Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute. She began her career at the Broad by utilizing her expertise in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry toward the design of new screening collections of structurally complex small molecules and the discovery of potent antimalarial compounds. She subsequently transitioned to a cheminformatics role, providing data analysis and informatics support to drug discovery teams across the institute.Dr. Mulrooney received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in the lab of Prof. Marisa Kozlowski, developing asymmetric syntheses of natural product scaffolds.

Joe Nabhan is CSO of K2B Therapeutics, where he is leveraging targeted delivery expertise across different therapeutic areas to advance the next frontier in conjugate-based cancer therapy. Having led programs across LNPs, AAV gene therapy, and extracellular vesicles at Pfizer, Astellas, and Vesigen Therapeutics, Joe brings cross-modality breadth to the challenge of tumor-selective payload delivery. He is an inventor on multiple patents spanning drug delivery and gene regulation. He holds a PhD from McGill University.

Alan is the Founder and CEO of Receptor.AI, where he leads the development of an AI-native multi-platform ecosystem for peptide and small-molecule induced proximity therapeutics. Under his leadership, Receptor.AI integrates computational planning, de novo molecular design, and experimental strategy into a unified intelligent system to accelerate end-to-end drug discovery. His work focuses on AI-guided peptide optimization, including target-specific affinity modeling, permeability prediction, and rational design of peptide–drug conjugates and small-molecule conjugates. Alan has initiated and overseen over 40 discovery programs across immunology, oncology, neurology, and induced proximity, partnering with leading pharmaceutical companies in the US, Europe, and Japan. With a background in computational drug design and data science, he is driving the evolution from standalone predictive tools toward orchestrated AI agentic systems that support strategic decision-making and science in drug discovery. Receptor.AI’s platform has been validated through multiple industrial collaborations and is now used to generate spin-out therapeutic assets rooted in proprietary technological advances.

David is an expert in protein engineering and computational design, with extensive experience applying AI-driven modeling tools in an industry setting. He serves as Vice President of the Rosetta Commons Foundation and Industry Chair on the Rosetta Commons board, helping bridge academic advancements with industry applications. As Managing Member of Rosetta Design Group, he collaborates with companies of all sizes to tackle complex challenges in biologics design. David's deep expertise in leveraging cutting-edge tools like Rosetta, AlphaFold, and diffusion-based models for protein design make him an invaluable guide for participants looking to apply AI-driven biologics design in real-world settings.

Mahmoud Nasr, PhD, RPh., is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator at Mass General Brigham. He is an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Christoffer Norn, PhD, is Co-Founder and CEO of Skape Bio, a Copenhagen biotech pioneering AI-designed miniprotein therapeutics; Skape Bio’s optical pooled screening combined with state-of-the-art protein design has already delivered first-in-class GPCR agonists and antagonists. Previously, Dr Norn trained in David Baker’s Nobel Prize-winning protein-design lab at the University of Washington, where he co-created the world’s first AI-designed enzyme, self-assembling nanoparticles, and ultrasensitive protein biosensors.

Evan O’Brien received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, followed by his doctoral work with Dr. Joshua Wand at the University of Pennsylvania. While in Dr. Wand’s lab, Evan focused on using structural and dynamic solution NMR methods to probe lipid-protein interactions and fast-timescale dynamics. His work on dynamics and entropy in well-characterized systems drove his interest in exploring these phenomena with more complex human membrane protein systems. To that end, he started his postdoctoral work with Dr. Brian Kobilka at Stanford University in 2018. His early work in the Kobilka lab involved using various fluorescence techniques to interrogate GPCR dynamics, which resulted in a highly multi-disciplinary effort to characterize how unique Family B GPCR structural properties result in distinct signaling behavior. More recent work in the Kobilka lab has continued to focus on combining biophysical techniques with cryoEM to discover and characterize novel mechanisms of GPCR allosteric modulation using small molecules.

Dr. Stephen G. Odaibo is the Founder and CEO of Deep EigenMatics, an AI-driven drug discovery company that secured the #1 global ranking for new U.S. patent families in AI Drug Discovery methods (2025). A physician-scientist, mathematician, practicing retina specialist, and full-stack AI engineer, Dr. Odaibo trained in the Nobel Prize-winning lab of Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz, where he studied G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) — the primary targets for over a third of all FDA-approved drugs. At Deep EigenMatics, he has built DEEP DISCOVERY™, a proprietary platform that fuses receptor biology with advanced AI/ML architectures to design functionally selective small molecules. The company is advancing orally bioavailable GLP-1 leads toward pre-clinical development, with additional pipeline programs in oncology and rare disease. Dr. Odaibo holds a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from UAB, and an M.S. in Computer Science and M.D. from Duke University. He serves on the Industry Advisory Board of Duke's Masters of Engineering in Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Parang holds the position of Full Professor in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology at Chapman University School of Pharmacy situated in Irvine, California. Additionally, he maintains a dual role as a faculty member within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Schmid College of Science and Technology, also part of Chapman University. In a collaborative capacity, Dr. Parang contributes his expertise as an affiliate volunteer faculty member, specifically as a Project Scientist Step III, within the division of Nephrology and Hypertension in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Parang's academic journey includes earning his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Alberta in 1997. Following this, he embarked on a postdoctoral study focusing on solid-phase organic synthesis within the Department of Chemistry. He furthered his postdoctoral studies in bioorganic chemistry, undertaking research at Rockefeller University in New York and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His research at the University of Rhode Island commenced in October 2000, where he subsequently ascended to the rank of full professor in July 2008. During his time there, he undertook the role of Program Coordinator for the Rhode Island IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (RI-INBRE) NIH program from 2012 to 2013. Dr. Parang's contributions to the academic community are evidenced by his authorship of 258 peer-reviewed publications, 24 patents or patent applications, and 201 meeting abstracts. His research pursuits converge at the dynamic crossroads of chemistry and biology, with a particular emphasis on medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, nanomedicine, and drug delivery. His research activities encompass: 1. Devising Peptides as Agents against Bacterial and Fungal Infections 2. Leveraging Peptide Nanomaterials for the Advancement of Drug Delivery 3. Innovating Inhibitors for Protein Tyrosine Kinases 4. Pioneering the Development of Multifunctional Antiviral Agents

Ravi B. Patel, MD, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and Director of Radiopharmaceutical therapy in Radiation Oncology, specializing in the study and treatment of skin and genitourinary malignancies. Dr. Patel also maintains an active, translational research laboratory. Dr. Patel is board-certified in radiation oncology. He completed a combined MD/Ph.D. program at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Patel received both his masters and doctoral degrees in Biomedical Engineering under the mentorship of Dr. Agata Exner and he published 10 manuscripts over the course of his graduate training. Upon completion of medical school, he completed a preliminary medicine internship at Akron General Medical Center followed by a residency in radiation oncology at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. After residency, Dr. Patel joined the Department of Human Oncology at the University of Wisconsin where he was a Benston Translational Research Fellow. During this time, Dr. Patel received several grants and awards for his work including the RSNA Research Fellow Grant, ASCO Young Investigator Award, Immuno-oncology Young Investigator’s Forum Abstract Presentation Award, and an Abstract Travel Award for Society of Immunotherapy in Cancer. Based on his fellowship work, Dr. Patel received an NIH KO8 career development award and joined the faculty at Hillman Cancer Center as a physician-scientist. Since joining Hillman, Dr. Patel has received an NIH R01 award, Head and Neck Cancer SPORE Career Enhancement Award, and he has several industry sponsored clinical trials for which he is a primary investigator. Dr. Patel has published over 46 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 3 book chapters, and presented over 80 abstracts at national meetings.

Noel Pauli is an Associate Director of Antibody Engineering at Adimab LLC. He joined Adimab in 2015. His research focuses on the generation of antibodies against integral membrane proteins and other difficult targets using immunization, single B cell cloning, and immune library development in both murine and camelid systems. He received his PhD training from the University of Chicago under Patrick Wilson studying the human B cell response to Staphylococcus aureus infection at the resolution of monoclonal antibodies.

Bradley L. Pentelute, Professor of Chemistry. He is also an Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, an Extramural Member of the MIT Koch Cancer Institute, and Member, Center for Environmental Health Sciences MIT. He received his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Chemistry from the University of Southern California, and his M.S and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Chicago with Prof. Steve Kent. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. R. John Collier at Harvard Medical School, Microbiology. His research program lies at the intersection of chemistry and biology and develops bioconjugation strategies, cytosolic delivery platforms, and rapid flow synthesis technologies to optimize the production, achieve site-specific modification, enhance stability, and modulate function of a variety of bioactive agents. His laboratory successfully modified proteins via cysteine-containing “pi-clamps” made up of a short sequence of amino acids, and delivered large biomolecules, such as various proteins and drugs, into cells via the anthrax delivery vehicle. Pentelute has also made several key contributions to automated synthesis technologies in flow. These advances includes the invention of the world's fastest polypeptide synthesizer.

William C. K. Pomerantz received his BS in chemistry from Ithaca College in 2002, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship at ETH, Zurich with Professors François Diederich and Jack Dunitz. He obtained a PhD in chemistry under Professors Sam Gellman and Nick Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a postdoctoral fellow under Professor Anna Mapp at the University of Michigan. He joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Minnesota in 2012 and was granted tenure in 2018. He is currently a McKnight Presidential Fellow. His research focuses on the development of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry approaches for modulating protein-protein interactions. Protein-Observed Fluorine NMR (PrOF NMR) is one such tool in his lab that is being developed as a new method for fragment-based ligand discovery (FBLD) and has been applied towards inhibiting a diverse area of epigenetic protein complexes. Professor Pomerantz is currently the global council co-chair for the International Chemical Biology Society and Early Career Board Member for ACS Med. Chem. Lett.

Ryan Potts obtained his BS from the University of North Carolina and his PhD from UT Southwestern. In 2008 he was awarded the Sara and Frank McKnight independent postdoctoral fellowship at UT Southwestern Medical Center. During this time his research focused on biochemically defining a novel family of proteins called MAGEs as regulators of E3 ubiquitin ligases. In 2011 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. In 2016 his lab moved to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where he is an Associate Member in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. His lab worked on elucidating the functions of MAGE-RING Ligases. Recently he has moved to Amgen as Executive Director and Head of the Induced Proximity Platform.

Fan Pu is a Senior Scientist II within Discovery Research at AbbVie. He specializes in high-throughput screening and mass spectrometry. He co-developed the IR-MALDESI platform at AbbVie and supports small molecule drug discovery programs by developing mass spectrometry-based assays. Fan Pu holds a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue University.

Sujiet Puthenveetil is Director of ADC and Targeted Bioconjugate Technologies at AstraZeneca, where he leads teams developing next generation targeted therapeutics, including radioligand therapies. With more than 15 years of experience in the bioconjugate field across AstraZeneca, AbbVie, and Pfizer, he brings broad expertise spanning ADCs, radioconjugates, protein engineering, linker chemistry and translational strategy. He has played key roles in advancing multiple clinical and preclinical programs in oncology and beyond.

Dr. Xueming Qian is the founder and chief executive officer of Transcenta Therapeutics. Dr. Qian served as senior vice president, head of R&D at Shenogen Pharma Group from June 2010 to September 2012. Dr. Qian also successively worked as postdoctoral fellow, senior scientist, principal scientist and team leader at Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) from September 1997 to June 2010. Dr. Qian received his bachelor of science in biophysics from Fudan University and a master of arts in biophysics and physiology from Columbia University. He received PhD in neurosciences and pharmacology from Albany Medical Center. He is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research, American Society of Clinical Oncology, the European Society of Medical Oncology. He is the investor of multiple novel antibody patents.

John Quinn is currently a distinguished scientist specializing in biophysics within Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology at Genentech supporting SMDD pipeline projects. He is particularly interested in the practical exploitation of kinetics for applications that are of value in preclinical SMDD. He received a PhD in Applied Immunology and Biochemistry from Dublin City University (DCU) and after a postdoc position developing biosensors at DCU, he joined Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, working on the development of SPR devices. This technology was later licensed to Nomadics, Inc., and he joined them to head the development and commercialization of the SensiQ Pioneer as CSO. His interests in drug discovery led him to take a principal scientist position at Takeda California leading a biophysical group where his group supported both LM and SM projects.

Dr. Raabe is an organoid expert at the University of Pennsylvania. His background is wide ranging, spanning microbiology, basic molecular biology, genetics, immunology and most recently, hepatology. He obtained his Ph.D. in molecular genetics under the direction of Nobel Prize winner Werner Arber at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Working in the lab of James Manley at Columbia University, he became the first person to clone and characterize the gene coding for poly (A) polymerase, which he published in Nature. His subsequent work, initially at the Picower Institute for Medical Research and later at the University of Pennsylvania, includes publications on the effect of HIV on monocytes, and CRISPR mediated gene editing of induced pluripotent and adult stem cells. Most recently, his lab was the first to extensively characterize organoids derived directly from cirrhotic NASH patient liver. Dr. Raabe is an award-winning scientist.

Joseline Ratnam is an Associate Director and Project Lead at Bicycle Therapeutics, where she spearheads radiopharmaceutical programs that aim to both visualize and treat solid tumors. She has previously worked at Evotec, Pharmaron and Exscientia (now Recursion), advancing small molecule therapeutics and platform technologies, with expertise spanning target identification through to IND-enabling studies. Joseline holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and worked as a post-doctoral researcher and staff scientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

Marc Robillard, CSO & founder of Tagworks Pharmaceuticals. Marc is founder and CSO of Tagworks, a pioneer of in vivo click chemistry, and the inventor of the now widely used Click-to-Release approach for improved systemic therapies. He spun the technology out of Philips Healthcare and then drove its development into a broadly applicable platform technology for systemic therapies, while building a broad IP estate, productive partnerships, and a strong team and blue-chip investor base. At Philips Marc worked on molecular imaging and drug delivery programs, eventually focusing on in vivo click chemistry applications in these domains. Prior to Philips, he worked at Kreatech Diagnostics on the development of probes for microarray-based detection of DNA, RNA and proteins. In addition, he was a visiting scientist at the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Marc obtained his MSc and PhD in bio(in)organic chemistry at, respectively, the University of Groningen and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, The Netherlands. He has published 41 peer-reviewed papers and is a co-inventor on 22 patents.

Joe Rucker is the Vice President of Research & Development, a co-founder of Integral Molecular and an inventor of Integral Molecular’s founding Lipoparticle technology. Since joining the company, he has led the development of new applications for Lipoparticle technology, including its use in generating novel antibodies against membrane proteins. Dr. Rucker earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jason Rush, Ph.D., is a chemical biologist and Group Leader in the Center for the Development of Therapeutics (CDoT) at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he has spent over a decade advancing therapeutic development. Since joining the institute in 2014, his work has focused on translational pharmacology, particularly in high-impact areas such as oncology, inflammatory bowel disease, and targeted protein degradation. As a leader in CDoT, he leverages expertise in molecular biology and cellular biochemistry to bridge the gap between basic research and clinical applications. His career is grounded in a Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley, where he conducted research under Carolyn Bertozzi, following his foundational studies at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Laurent Sabbagh is Vice-President Research at Kainova Therapeutics. Based in Montreal, he contributes to determine strategic orientations of the company’s research activities, with a focus on GPCR-related research in immuno-oncology and inflammation. Before joining the organization, Laurent led research projects in small-molecule drug discovery for inflammatory disorders and cancer at Paraza Pharma Inc. in Montreal. Earlier he worked at Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Canada), where he contributed to biomarker discovery in inflammatory bowel disease and small-molecule discovery for polycystic kidney disease.Prior to his industry roles, Laurent was an assistant professor at the University of Montreal, where his research examined the role of TNF receptors in immunological memory, inflammation, and hematological malignancies. He previously completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Ontario Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto. Laurent holds a Ph.D. in immunology from McGill University Montreal Canada.

Tom Sakmar is the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor at The Rockefeller University where he heads the Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Signal Transduction and is the founding Director of the Human Subjects Protection Program. The work of his group is focused on a super-family of cell-surface receptors called G protein-coupled receptors, which range from visual pigments, which sense light, to chemokine receptors, which are responsible for chemo-selective cell migration. Dr. Sakmar received an A.B. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. He carried out clinical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before doing postdoctoral research in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Prof. H. Gobind Khorana. He has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Senior Scholar of the Ellison Medical Foundation, and has also been the Marie Krogh Visiting Professor at University of Copenhagen, and Guest Professor at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2021. Dr. Sakmar served as acting president of The Rockefeller University in 2002–2003. Before embarking on a career in academic biomedical research, he worked as an arc welder at the Chrysler Corp. where he welded the number 1 frame crossmember on over one-half of all Dodge Aspen’s produced in 1976 – the car that nearly bankrupted Chrysler. He also worked as a telephone cable splicer at AT&T where he was a member of a small team that installed the world’s first fiberoptic telecommunications system in the Renaissance Center in Detroit. Dr. Sakmar is also the co-author of Passport’s Health Guide for International Travelers, a best-selling trade paperback travel guide first published in 1986.

Stephan Schann is Chief Scientific Officer at Domain Therapeutics. As the leader of Domain’s proprietary programs and collaborations with pharma partners, he oversees the intellectual property strategy for each of the company’s assets. Stephan has been with Domain since its inception in 2008, and his roles have evolved over time, including previous positions as Head of Research, Director of Research & Development and Vice-President of Research & Development. With over 25 years of experience in biomedical research, Stephan has dedicated his career to the development of novel therapeutics addressing unmet medical needs. His significant contributions to drug discovery and development have been instrumental in shaping Domain’s success and its continuous growth. Prior to joining Domain, Stephan established and led the Medicinal Chemistry Department at Faust Pharmaceuticals and was a senior scientist at Evotec. Stephan holds a PhD in Medical Chemistry from University of Strasbourg in France.

John Schneekloth Jr., (Jay) received his undergraduate training at Dartmouth College. After receiving a Ph.D. with Craig Crews at Yale University, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship with Erik Sorensen at Princeton University. He began his independent career at the NIH, where he is a Senior Investigator and Head of the Chemical Genetics Section in the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute. Jay's laboratory studies nucleic acids as targets for small molecules, with an emphasis on understanding RNA as a target.

Monica Schwartz, PhD, is the Vice President of Antibody Discovery at Abalone Bio, a biotech company focused on developing antibodies that activate hard-to-drug targets. Dr. Schwartz is leading efforts to combine the power of biology and ML/AI to discover agonist antibodies for a wide range of challenging GPCR targets using Abalone Bio’s Functional Antibody Selection Technology (FAST) platform. She joined Abalone Bio from Zymergen, where she led teams focused on platform development and microbial engineering. At Achaogen, she developed a microfluidic platform to screen single B cells to discover antibacterial antibodies to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. Monica received her PhD from University of California, San Francisco and completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University.

Uthpala Seneviratne is an Associate Principal Scientist in AstraZeneca. Uthpala received his B.S. in (Chemistry and Biology) in Sri Lanka and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Minnesota. In UMN he studied carcinogenic DNA adducts and their xenobiotic metabolism with Prof. Natalia Tretyakova. He finished his post-doctoral training in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT in Prof. Steven Tannenbaum lab. Where he developed chemoproteomic strategies termed "SNOTRAP" to study protein S-nitrosylation, a redox protein post translational modification to cysteine. In 2015, he joined Pfizer chemical Biology group. Through his six years he has impactful contributions to many projects including, JAK3 inhibitor ritlecitinib - in ph3, oral COVID protease inhibitor and many publications in leading journals. In 2021, he joined AstraZeneca to build high throughput targeted proteomics capabilities in the Mechanistic Structural biology team in US and currently providing key data for project transitions in the oncology PROTAC portfolio.

Armon Sharei, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Portal Biotechnologies - a platform company focused on enabling a new generation of cell therapies and analytics. He was previously the Founder and CEO of SQZ Biotechnologies (NYSE: SQZ), a clinical-stage cell therapy company. During his 10 year tenure, the company raised over $300M in equity financing, established a + $1Bn collaboration with Roche, implemented three oncology clinical trials, and IPOed on the NYSE. Dr. Sharei’s work on cell engineering has been named as one of Scientific American’s Top 10 World Changing Ideas (2014), Fierce Biotech’s Fierce 15 (2015), and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer (2017). He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications and is the inventor on over 20 patent families.

Woody Sherman is Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at PsiThera and a thought leader in molecular simulations and computer-aided drug design, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications covering novel methods and applications. As Chief Computational Scientist at Roivant, Woody oversaw the computational strategy, implementation, and deployment of computational methods. He received his B.S. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied nonlinear optical properties of organic polymers using computational quantum mechanics methods. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT working in Professor Bruce Tidor’s lab where he examined the role of electrostatics in protein-ligand binding and implemented a novel method for optimizing ligand binding specificity across a panel of targets. While in graduate school he worked at Biogen where he developed novel methods to enhance antibody affinity via electrostatic charge optimization, resulting in a publication and patent. As Global Head of Applications Science at Schrödinger, led research, product development, methods development, and the deployment of Python-based tools. He also worked closely with Pharma partners on research projects and collaborations. Woody has published on a broad range of topics, including induced-fit docking, ensemble docking, molecular dynamics, free energy simulations, protein design, small molecule optimization, cheminformatics, hybrid ligand/structure-based methods, charge optimization, pharmacophore modeling, and more.

Karen Silence brings more than 25 years of experience in antibody development, from pre-clinical research through to early clinical studies. She was actively involved in the start-up of two successful biotech companies, Ablynx and arGEN-X. At both companies, she was the project manager responsible for advancing the discovery and pre-clinical/clinical development of their products, which eventually led to Sanofi’s acquisition of Ablynx and arGEN-X’s exclusive global collaboration and license agreement with Cilag GmbH International, an affiliate of Janssen in 2018. She also worked for Staten Biotechnology, supporting their product discovery and pre-clinical development.

Jeffrey Skolnick is a Regents’ Professor and the Director of the Center for the Study of Systems Biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair in Computational Systems Biology and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology. He attended graduate school in Chemistry at Yale, receiving a PhD in Chemistry. He then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Laboratories. Next, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Then, he moved to Washington University. Following his emerging interest in biology, he joined the Department of Molecular Biology of the Scripps Research Institute, where he held the rank of Professor. Among his awards are the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) Distinguished Scientist Award, the Sigma Xi Sustained Research Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the Biophysical Society, and the St. Louis Academy of Science. He is the author of over 400 publications, has an h-index of 92 and has served on 21 editorial boards. Dr. Skolnick’s current research interests are in computational biology and bioinformatics. He has developed AI based approaches to predict disease mode of action proteins, drug efficacy and side effects, diagnostic tools to identify early-stage cancers and a non- Mendelian approach to precision medicine. He has applied these tools to aging, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome and cancer metabolomics. He has also done substantial research on the possible origins of the biochemistry of life.

Mikolaj Slabicki, Ph.D., is a Principal Investigator at the MGH Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Affiliate Faculty Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Mireia Solà Colom, PhD, is a protein engineer, biochemist, and a member of the founding team of AI Proteins. She leads the immune cell engager programs for the company, where she is Investigator, Head of Immunotherapeutics. Prior to AI Proteins, Mireia was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Chris Bahl at the Institute for Protein Innovation, Harvard Medical School where she developed novel methods to predict the evolution of viruses. She obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen where she developed nanobody discovery methods and used them to investigate the mechanisms of nuclear pore complex assembly. Prior to that, Mireia received her MS in Pharmaceutical Design and Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark.

Parthiban Srinivasan, an experienced data scientist, earned his PhD from Indian Institute of Science, specializing in Computational Chemistry. After his PhD, he continued the research at NASA Ames Research Center (USA) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). Then he worked at AstraZeneca in the area of Computer Aided Drug Design for Tuberculosis. Later, he headed informatics business units in Jubilant Biosys and then in GvkBio before he floated the company, Parthys Reverse Informatics and later an AI consultancy, Vingyani. Then he returned to academia as a Professor of Data Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. Currently, Parthiban is a Professor and Director at the Center for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Missions Research Foundation, AV Medical College and Hospital, Puducherry, India

Edward Stahl is an assistant professor and pharmacologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. Ed received his PhD in Pharmacology from Penn State University, located in Hershey, PA, where he studied allosteric modulation of muscarinic receptors. After receiving his degree, he worked at GraphPad Software Inc. in LaJolla, CA, before returning to benchtop research with Professor Laura Bohn at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, FL. The Bohn Lab has since relocated and now studies functional selectivity of G protein-coupled receptors at USF. Ed's research focuses on mathematical models of receptor signaling. This focus emphasizes understanding the mechanisms of receptor action and ligand selectivity. Specifically, Ed’s work on the mu opioid receptor has investigated novel forms of receptor signaling and the biochemistry of active state signaling in both the in vitro and in vivo context. This research has recently been published in Nature as well as Nature Communications.

Daniel Steiner is Senior Vice President Research at Molecular Partners. In his previous role with Molecular Partners, Daniel built the department responsible for DARPin generation for all research pipeline projects, specifically establishing the DARPin platform for systemic PK-extension. While earning his PhD at the University of Zurich under Professor Andreas Plückthun, Daniel established a novel in vitro selection system enabling the efficient selection of DARPins for complex antigens. In addition to his doctorate studies at University of Zurich, Daniel performed his undergraduate studies at the ETH Zürich and at the Imperial College London.

Erland Stevens is formally trained as a synthetic organic chemist, with a PhD from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He specialized in nitrogen heterocycle synthetic methodology. After completing his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, he joined the chemistry faculty at Davidson College in Davidson, NC. In addition to teaching organic chemistry, he created an undergraduate medicinal chemistry course and later published a textbook, Medicinal Chemistry: The Modern Drug Discovery Process, with Pearson Education. He then created an online medicinal chemistry course, which has been continuously revised and publicly available for approximately 10 years. He subsequently worked with Novartis to create additional online materials that are used with employees for continuing education purposes. He maintains two YouTube channels - Chem Help ASAP and Inside Drug Discovery.

I have a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and completed post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Neal Castagnoli at Virginia Tech. I have over 20 years pharmaceutical industry experience with over forty co-authored publications. I have spent most of my career at Pfizer in various roles within PDM (DMPK), supporting projects ranging from oncology to neuroscience and currently, Inflammation and Immunology (I&I). I am currently a Research Fellow, and my responsibilities include setting the DMPK research and project strategies within the I&I Research Unit. In addition, my team and I function as Project Representative within I&I while I also have responsibilities as a Research Project Lead for various Discovery programs. My interests include prediction of human ADME as well as exploring physicochemical properties and how they relate to ADME with a focus on absorption. PROTACs are of special interest given their unique beyond Rule-of-5 properties and the ADME challenges they present relative to classical small molecules.

Yuki Tachibana, PhD, is Head of the Laboratory for Drug Discovery Chemistry at Shionogi & Co., Ltd. He received his PhD in Chemistry from Hokkaido University, where he studied the structure and function of antifreeze glycoproteins. Since joining SHIONOGI, he has led medicinal chemistry and structure-based drug design programs across antiviral, endocrinology, oncology, and allergy research. Dr. Tachibana has played a central role in the discovery of oral antiviral drugs, including the SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease inhibitor ensitrelvir, and has contributed to multiple clinical candidates. His research interests include structure-based and fragment-based drug discovery, de novo design, and emerging drug discovery technologies. He is a co-author of numerous publications, and a recipient of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Drug Research and Development 2025.

Asad Taherbhoy is Senior Director of Discovery at Foghorn Therapeutics, where he leads platform and project teams focused on targeting chromatin remodeling mechanisms using diverse small molecule modalities, including enzyme and PPI inhibition, targeted protein degradation, and induced proximity. Previously, Asad worked on E3 ligase-focused drug discovery at Nurix. He completed his postdoctoral training at Genentech and earned his PhD at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with Brenda Schulman, studying the ubiquitin pathway.

Muhammet Tanc, PhD, is Co-Founder & CEO of Nuclide Therapeutics, a biotech company developing next-generation radiotheranostic for therapy-resistant cancers. With over 15 years of experience in cancer drug development across academia and translational research, he works at the intersection of drug discovery, radiopharmaceutical innovation, and clinical translation. He is focused on building science-driven programmes into clinically impactful, investable companies.

Naoki Tarui, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer of SEEDSUPPLY INC., a CRO advancing both client-driven and proprietary drug discovery through the quantitative analysis of protein–ligand interactions. With more than three decades of experience in pharmaceutical research, he built a distinguished career at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, where he served as Director of Biomolecular Research Laboratories, leading the institute's drug discovery initiatives. Dr. Tarui is a recognized expert in affinity-based screening technologies and has pioneered advances in Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), enabling direct binding measurements of small molecules to membrane proteins under near-native conditions. At SEEDSUPPLY, he leads the development of large-scale, standardized binding datasets across GPCRs, SLC transporters, and other challenging targets, supporting both experimental drug discovery and AI-driven approaches. He received his PhD for research on microbial applications in drug discovery from Osaka Prefecture University.

Mallory Tollefson, Ph.D., is Project Manager for the OpenFold and OpenADMET initiatives at the Open Molecular Software Foundation, where she leads global collaborations spanning academia, biotech, and pharmaceutical partners. She directs consortium strategy, partnerships, and technical project management to advance open-source AI platforms for biomolecule prediction and ADMET chemistry. Her work focuses on building sustainable ecosystems in which open science and industry engagement accelerate the translation of AI models into real-world applications.

Momar Toure studied chemistry at ENSCM, France, where he earned his M.Sc. degree. He then moved on to complete his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry in the research group of Drs. Jean-Luc Parrain and Olivier Chuzel at Aix Marseille University, France. Momar then went on to conduct postdoctoral work in the research group of Professor Craig Crews at Yale University, where he worked in the TPD field (PROTAC). After Yale, Momar began his professional career in the medicinal chemistry group at EMD Serono, Inc. (Merck KGaA), where he held various positions from Scientist to Principal Scientist. Momar is currently a Director of Medicinal Chemistry at MOMA Therapeutics.

L. Nathan Tumey is joined Binghamton University in 2017, following 15 years of medicinal chemistry experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. His research focuses on the design of antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancer, auto-immune disorders, and rare diseases. Specific research projects include immune-stimulating antibody conjugates, glucocorticoid-antibody conjugates, legumain-cleavable linkers, and site-specific conjugation technology. He is a frequent consultant at various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and serves on the scientific advisory board of multiple ADC-related organizations. Dr. Tumey received his PhD in chemistry from Duke University in 2001, under the supervision of Michael Pirrung. During his years in the pharmaceutical industry, Tumey was a key leader in multiple drug-discovery programs including the development of 5HT2c agonists for obesity, PKC-theta inhibitors for asthma, IRAK4 inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis and antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancer.

20+ years of scientific research experience, spanning the fields of redox biology, metallobiochemistry, biophysics, biochemistry and cell biology. I am a Principal Scientist in the Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology department at Genentech and act as a functional lead on porfolio projects. Previous roles include Scientist at BioElectron Technology Corp. (Mountain View, CA) and post-doctoral researcher at UCSF.

Dr. Atul Varadhachary is President and CEO of Radiomer Therapeutics and Managing Partner at Fannin, Radiomer’s parent company and a leading Texas-based early-stage life sciences group. Radiomer is advancing a next-generation radiopharmaceutical platform based on Raptamers, engineered nucleic acid ligands designed for targeted delivery of therapeutic radioisotopes. Atul previously served as President and COO of Agennix, Inc., where he advanced the company’s lead program into Phase 3 clinical trials and a successful exit. His career also includes roles as President of U.S. Operations at Reliance Life Sciences and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Atul holds an MD from the University of Bombay and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has held adjunct faculty appointments at Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas, and currently serves on several biotech boards, including Allterum Therapeutics, Pulmotect, RDG, Brevitest, and BioHouston.

Dmitry is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the Centre of Membrane Proteins and Receptors (COMPARE), University of Nottingham. Dmitry provides leadership in structural and biophysical pharmacology of G protein coupled receptors. Following a PhD in protein folding at the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Ohio State University, USA, he joined the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering and later at the RC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK as a postdoctoral fellow and as a staff scientist, on the biophysical studies of the tumor suppressor p53. In 2010 he became a group leader at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zürich in Switzerland where focused his research on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). In 2017 Dmitry joined COMPARE, a joined venture between the University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham. In 2021 he co-founded Z7 Biotech, a CRO developing and providing innovative GPCR drug screening and precision pharmacology services.

Fabien Vincent is a senior drug discovery scientist with experience as both an in vitro pharmacology group leader and a drug discovery project leader. He gained expertise in pharmacology at Pfizer (2010-2025) as a laboratory head in the Primary Pharmacology Group. There, his laboratory supported the small molecule portfolio of the Immunology & Inflammation research unit, helping deliver 15 clinical candidates with two becoming FDA approved drugs (Abrocitinib, Ritlecitinib). His remit spanned target identification & validation, designing and executing hit identification & validation strategies, structure-activity relationships (SAR) support, mechanistic studies and study reports for the FDA. His main research interests are centered on drugging tough-but-well-validated targets and improving the translation of preclinical research to patients using physiologically relevant assays and phenotypic screening.

Pat Walters was formerly the Chief Data Officer at Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. His career prior to Relay spanned over two decades at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, culminating in his role as Global Head of Modeling & Informatics. He was the 2023 recipient of the Herman Skolnik Award for Chemical Information Science from the American Chemical Society. Pat co-authored the book “Deep Learning for the Life Sciences,” published in 2019 by O’Reilly and Associates. He received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Arizona, where he studied the application of artificial intelligence in conformational analysis.

Sujata grew up in a small rural village in India, where access to education was limited, especially for girls. Encouraged by her supportive family and community, she pursued studies in biotechnology and earned advanced degrees from prestigious institutions in India and Australia. Her PhD focused on discovering new medicines with novel targets for malaria and toxoplasmosis, where she identified new drug candidates with potential as therapeutics against globally and economically relevant parasites. As a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, she now applies her expertise to designing novel protein-based immunotherapies and highly targeted antibodies for blood cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia. Sujata’s work bridges basic science and medicine, combining structural biology, protein engineering, and biophysics to develop safer, more effective immunotherapies that could transform treatment options for patients worldwide and address critical unmet medical needs.

Dr. Wang is heading Research Analytics of UCB Pharma’s Data and Translational Sciences department, based in Cambridge, MA. In her current role she brings computational analytics and data strategy to tackle challenges in novel chemical biology and therapeutic modality in severe diseases. Prior to joining UCB she was working for Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, and F. Hoffman La Roche in Basel, Switzerland.

Dr. Shaomeng Wang obtained his chemistry B.S. degree from Peking University in 1986 and his PhD in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1992 and did his postdoctoral training at NIH. Dr. Wang is currently the Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Professor in Medicine in the University of Michigan Medical School and professor of medicine, pharmacology and medicinal chemistry. Dr. Wang is the Director of University of Michigan Center for Therapeutic Innovation. Dr. Wang has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, American Chemical Society since 2012. Dr. Wang has co-founded 5 biotech companies to develop novel small-molecule drugs invented from his laboratory and has advanced 7 compounds into clinical development. Dr. Wang has published >300 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor of 55 issued US patents and hundreds of international patents. Dr. Wang was elected as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019 and was inducted into the Fall of Fame of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2020. Dr. Wang was the 2014 University of Michigan Distinguished Innovator and won the 2020 Division of Medicinal Chemistry Award of ACS.

Dr. Wang received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Peking University and PhD in physical organic chemistry from the Ohio State University. As a postdoc at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked in the field of drug delivery and nanomedicine. His independent research centers on chemistry and serves biology, spanning from chemical biology tools and method development to rational design of therapeutics, including small molecule inhibitors, protein degraders, and antibody-drug conjugates. His scientific contribution has been recognized by multiple awards including the Distinguished Faculty Award from Chinese-American Chemistry & Chemical Biology Professors Association and Michael E. DeBakey, MD, Professorship in Pharmacology.

Matt Welborn, PhD, is Vice President of Machine Learning at Iambic Therapeutics, an AI-driven drug discovery company he helped spin out of Caltech in 2019. He leads multiple ML teams focused on developing and translating modern machine learning into practical, scalable systems that support drug candidate design and prioritization. His team's work includes NeuralPLexer, a pioneering cofolding model for protein-drug interactions, and Enchant, a multimodal transformer for molecular property prediction. Matt earned his PhD in Chemistry from MIT and completed his postdoctoral research at Caltech.

Alon is the co-founder of Aureka Biotechnologies, where he currently holds the position of Vice President of Biology. With over five years of experience as a senior postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine, he specialized in developing advanced systems for accelerated antibody engineering. Alon's work involved integrating yeast surface display with orthogonal replication techniques. He obtained his PhD from the prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, under the guidance of the late Dan Tawfik.

Rob Wells is a Senior Principal Scientist, Lab Leader at Denali Therapeutics, where he engineered the TransportVehicle platform to enable the delivery of large-molecule therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier. Rob’s work has advanced the brain delivery of antibody, enzyme, protein and oligonucleotide drugs by innovating novel Fc-engineered platforms for applications in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and lysosomal storage diseases. His efforts have led to the progression of multiple CNS-targeted therapies into clinical trials. Rob has been at Denali Therapeutics for over ten years. Prior to Denali, he was previously a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Shohei Koide at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University.

Laura Wingler, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Pharmacology & Cancer Biology at Duke University. Wingler received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University and then completed postdoctoral training in the Lefkowitz laboratory in the Department of Medicine at Duke University. In July 2020, she moved to the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University to open her independent research laboratory. The Wingler lab studies the molecular mechanisms of G protein-coupled receptors, the largest single class of drug targets, using approaches ranging from biochemistry to cell biology to pharmacology. Wingler is particularly interested in understanding why different ligands for the same receptor evoke different physiological responses, a phenomenon that has major implications for drug design.

Hua Xu received his PhD in Chemistry from Stony Brook University. After conducting his post-doctoral research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he joined Pfizer in 2013, and later received ACS Young Investigator Award in 2016. He led the chemical biology efforts for a number of Pfizer’s drug discovery programs in several therapeutic areas, such as immunology and inflammation, rare diseases, and cardiovascular & metabolic diseases. Hua then worked as Associate Director of Chemical Biology at Cygnal Therapeutics from 2020 to 2021, and built the chemical biology platform to support small molecule drug discovery programs and facilitate target discovery. Hua currently leads Chemical Biology and Proteomics group at AstraZeneca that leverages chemical tools and proteomics technologies to enable target discovery and supports projects across therapy areas.

Zi is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Wells lab at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on engineering custom antibodies for protein degradation, cancer therapeutics, and chemical biology applications. Before joining the Wells lab, Zi received his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, where he developed novel bioluminescent enzymes and substrates for in vivo imaging.

Jason Yu is a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute. His research integrates tissue engineering, biophysics, and machine learning to advance cell-based therapies and study tumor-T cell immunology. Holding a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UW-Madison, Jason has over a decade of cross-disciplinary publications spanning materials science, physics, and cell biology. He specializes in the precise ex vivo manipulation of physical and chemical microenvironments to uncover the mechanistic drivers of cell-cell interactions.

Dr. Zaro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. She received a BS and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Southern California. As an NSF graduate research fellow, her thesis work involved the development of bio-orthogonal chemical reporters of protein glycosylation with Matthew Pratt. She went on to Ben Cravatt's lab at Scripps Research where she was an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellow studying the mechanism of action of the immunomodulatory drug Tecfidera and developing methods to improve the selectivity of covalent small molecules. She gained additional training in innate immunity and hematopoiesis with Irv Weissman at Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Zaro started her independent career in 2019 . Her laboratory leverages chemical biology tools to study innate immunity and to enable the development of next-generation covalent therapeutics. She is a Beckman Young Investigator, Keck Fellow, and Bowes Biomedical Investigator.

Yuan Zhang, PhD, is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Medicine Design department at Pfizer. Yuan obtained his PhD from University of Utah under Professor Jon Rainier and conducted Postdoctoral research under Professor Timothy Jamison at MIT. Since joining Pfizer in 2016, Yuan has led medicinal chemistry campaigns in projects across multiple disease areas including neuroscience, cardiovascular, renal, and obesity.

Dr. Hailong Zhang, Founder and CEO of Yogar Therapeutics; before Yogar, Dr. Zhang worked at Array biopharma. Inc. and Novartis, holding various management positions. Dr. Zhang has published more than 30 research articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature. Dr. Zhang was involved in the discovery of many approved drugs such as BRAFTOVI/MEKTOVI(Pfizer), VITRAKVI (Eli Lilly), RETEVMO (Eli Lilly), GANOVO (Ascletis), KRAZATI(Mirati).