"Reading, writing, and editing DNA were just the prelude. The new frontier is composition—designing entire genomes like symphonies, guided by AI models trained on millions of sequences. In this new paradigm, biology becomes a writable medium where genes, circuits, and chromosomes are arranged with intention rather than discovered by chance. From AI-optimized CRISPR systems and compact editors like TIGR to CRISPR SWAPnDROP and Bridge Recombinases capable of megabase-scale rewrites in human cells, a new toolkit is emerging that treats the genome not as a fragile molecule but as an editable architecture. These molecular instruments bypass the cell’s own repair machinery, offering a level of precision and predictability that brings genome design closer to true composition—a craft as deliberate and creative as writing code or composing music.

For the first time, AI is enabling us to imagine medicines that “think” — turning on only inside diseased cells or under specific physiological conditions. This session explores how neural networks, trained on RNA and protein data, are unlocking programmable therapies with unprecedented precision. Imagine cancer drugs that remain inert until they meet tumor markers, or RNA vaccines that adapt to evolving viral landscapes in real time. The future of medicine isn’t static molecules — it’s intelligent, adaptive therapeutics

Fortune 500 companies are turning to synthetic biology to drive efficiency, resilience, and sustainability across their value chains. By integrating biotech, they can reduce reliance on scarce resources, accelerate product innovation, and respond to shifting consumer and regulatory demands. This session brings together leaders from global companies to share how biology is reshaping sourcing, production, and product portfolios. Attendees will gain insights into strategic approaches, cross-industry collaboration, and the investments enabling large-scale transformation, providing a glimpse into how the world’s largest companies are leveraging biotech to stay competitive, meet sustainability goals, and shape the future of industry.

Join Boltz co-founder Gabriele Corso for an interactive, hands-on masterclass exploring how next-generation AI models are transforming molecular design, protein engineering, and therapeutic development. In this live workshop, attendees will step inside the Boltz platform to learn how structure-based generative modeling pipelines can be applied to real-world design challenges. Participants will see how AI-driven predictions are reshaping the drug discovery workflow — from identifying high-value molecular hits to optimizing binders, and therapeutic candidates. This session is designed for scientists, founders, and R&D leaders looking to understand how to actually use cutting-edge AI to accelerate biological innovation.

What if brain damage—from strokes, neurodegeneration, or even aging itself—could be reversed? ARPA-H is launching an ambitious effort to make this vision real, catalyzing technologies that repair neural circuits, restore lost tissue, and recover cognition. In this interactive workshop, we’ll ask: What could be the role of programmable biology in healing the brain? Could engineered cells rebuild damaged regions? Could synthetic gene circuits guide regeneration? Could AI-designed therapies restore function after injury or decline? Participants will join ARPA-H leaders to explore these questions, identify high-risk, high-reward opportunities, and help shape the future of neurorepair powered by programmable biology.

For over a century, antivenoms have relied on serum extraction from animals — a process that’s costly, inconsistent, and limited to specific snake species. Today, advances in synthetic biology and antibody engineering are pointing toward a different future: a universal antivenom capable of neutralizing toxins across the world’s deadliest snakes. This session dives into the science and story behind this breakthrough — from the man who endured more than 200 bites to generate a unique immune response, to the researchers using those antibodies to design broad-spectrum, recombinant therapies. Together, they’re charting the path from survival experiment to programmable immunity.

As AI, automation, and scalable biotechnologies accelerate the design and deployment of biology, the line between innovation and risk is increasingly blurred. This session explores how advances in programmable biology are reshaping biosecurity and biodefense, from dual-use risks and supply-chain vulnerabilities to new models for detection, governance, and defense. Leaders from industry, government, and research will discuss how to responsibly accelerate biology while protecting public health and national security.

Plant-based food sales may be slowing, but that doesn’t mean innovation on the plate is stalling. Instead, momentum is shifting toward breakthrough technologies and smarter ingredient combinations. Cultured meat and precision fermentation are driving the next wave of sustainable ingredients, from proteins to cultured fats that bring authentic flavor and texture. This session highlights advances in cell culture, fermentation platforms, and scale-up strategies, along with the partnerships moving products from R&D to dining tables. Hear how food innovators are combining biology and culinary creativity to build a resilient, delicious, and sustainable future for global diets.

Why do so many in silico models fail when moved to the lab or clinic? Too often, they’re trained on incomplete, non-human, or non-representative datasets. This session tackles the “data gap” head-on: from interoperability bottlenecks and the black box problem to the limits of current virtual cell simulations (~50 million perturbations vs. the billions biology demands). Panelists will explore how to create “human-first” datasets that reflect real biology, unlock mechanistic interoperability, and close the discovery–development divide. The goal: build AI tools that can directly identify viable drug candidates instead of stalling in silico.

The next frontier of biology isn’t in predicting a single static protein structure, but in capturing how proteins move, fold, and interact across time and environments. This session explores how AI can illuminate protein conformations and dynamics, and extend those insights into virtual multi-cellular or tissue models. Experts will discuss the challenge of integrating heterogeneous datasets and instruments, and how breakthroughs in dynamic modeling could reshape drug design, disease understanding, and biomanufacturing. Can we build models that reflect the living, breathing complexity of biology—not just snapshots, but motion?

Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level while interventions work at the tissue, organ, or whole-patient scale. This mismatch can make accurate cell-level predictions irrelevant in the clinic. This session dives into strategies to bridge that gap: multiscale modeling that nests single-cell dynamics within organ-level simulations, spatial transcriptomics that preserve context, and surrogate models that translate cell-level outputs into clinical biomarkers. Speakers will ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the real complexity of patients?

As the U.S. accelerates into the age of biotechnology, the future of our national competitiveness, economic growth, and security depend on a workforce and citizenry fluent in biotechnology. This panel brings together leaders to explore how bioliteracy and a biotech-ready workforce can become strategic assets to power the U.S. bioeconomy.

Join Stanford’s Le Cong for an immersive, hands-on masterclass exploring how CRISPR, genome engineering, and next-generation biological foundation models are converging to redefine programmable biology. This live workshop will walk attendees through CRISPR/GPT — an emerging class of AI-assisted editing frameworks that pair large biological language models with precise genome engineering tools to accelerate design, improve specificity, and unlock new editing modalities. Participants will step inside real CRISPR/GPT workflows to see how multimodal models interpret genomic context, predict repair outcomes, suggest optimized guide designs, and generate editing strategies for complex loci. Le Cong will demonstrate how AI-driven reasoning is beginning to streamline experimental planning, reduce screening burden, and push forward new frontiers in base editing, prime editing, and programmable gene modulation. This session is designed for scientists, engineers, founders, and R&D leaders who want to understand how AI-powered CRISPR design actually works in practice — and how these tools can accelerate therapeutic development, functional genomics, and next-generation editing technologies.