Speaker Profile
Biography
Benjamin Neale is a core institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is also co-director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. He also serves as associate director of flagship disease projects for the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease at the Broad. He is an associate professor in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he directs the Genomics of Public Health Initiative. He is also an associate professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Neale is strongly committed to gaining insights into the genetics of common, complex human diseases with a heavy emphasis on severe mental illnesses.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Chair: TBA
PMWC Award Ceremony Honorees
• Mark Daly, Broad Institute
• Daniel MacArthur, CPG/Genomes/gnomAD
• Gordon Sanghera, Oxford Nanopore
• Howard J. Jacob, Abbvie
The Data Factory: Building Systems to Integrate Millions of Genomes for Variant Interpretation
• Chair: Stephen B. Montgomery, Stanford
• Carlos D. Bustamante, University of Oklahoma
• Mark Daly, Broad Institute/FinnGen
• Manuel Rivas, Stanford
• Mark McCarthy, Genentech
• Nilah Ioannidis, UC Berkeley
Biobanks to Bedside: Cutting VUS in Cancer, Cardio & Rare—What’s Working Now
• Chair: Ben Neale, Broad Institute
• Daniel MacArthur, CPG/Genomes/gnomAD
Beyond the Read: Integrating Long-Read Data into the Clinical Variant Pipeline
• Chair: Gordon Sanghera, Oxford Nanopore Technologies
• Hanlee P. Ji, Stanford
DNA to FDA: How Genetic Targets Win Labels & Coverage
• Russ B. Altman, Stanford
Common Diseases in Clinical Cohorts – Not Always What They Seem
• Howard J. Jacob, Abbvie
DNA to FDA: How Genetic Targets Win Labels & Coverage
• Chair: Razelle Kurzrock, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Russ B. Altman, Stanford
25+ Years of the Human Genome — What Made It to the Bedside
• Chair: Ralph Snyderman, Duke
• J. Craig Venter, Craig Venter Institute (JCVI)
• Brook Byers, KPCB
• Lee Hood, Phenome Health




