Speaker Profile
Biography
Charles Chiu, M.D. Ph.D. is a Professor at UCSF, Director of the UCS-FAbbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center (VDDC), and Associate Director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Chiu currently leads a translational research laboratory focused on clinical metagenomic sequencing assay development for infectious diseases and genomic investigation and surveillance of emerging pathogens, including the SARSCoV2 coronavirus. He also uses RNASeq transcriptome profiling to develop predictive models using machine learning for host response based diagnosis of COVID19 and other infections. Chius work is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), philanthropy, and the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine. He has authored more than 100 peer reviewed publications (20 on COVID19), holds over 15 patents and patent applications, and serves on the scientific advisory board for Mammoth Biosciences, Danaher Dx, Biomesense, and Flightpath.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins University
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Klaus Pantel, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf / ELBS
• Daniel De Carvalho, University of Toronto
Keynote: Early Detection of Cancer by Multimodal Liquid Biopsy Analysis
• Klaus Pantel, UKE / ELBS
From Mutation to Methylation: The Next Wave of Liquid Biopsy Biomarkers
• Chair: Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins University
• Daniel De Carvalho, University of Toronto
• Manel Esteller, Sant Pau Research Institute
• Gordon Sanghera, Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Advancing Minimal Residual Disease Detection Through cfDNA & cfRNA Profiling
• Chair: Luis Diaz, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• Anne-Renee Hartman, Adela
• Klaus Pantel, UKE / ELBS
AI-Informed Biomarker Trials: Turning Early Signals into Actionable Designs
• Chair: Manish Kohli, University of Utah
• Luis Diaz, MSKCC
• Eric Klein, GRAIL
• Peter Bach, DELFI Diagnostics
• Samuel Levy, ClearNote Health
Role of AI in Liquid Biopsies & Cancer Detection
• Chair: Amoolya Singh, DELFI Diagnostics
• Matthew Baker, Dxcover
• Pankaj Vats, NVIDIA
Fragmentomics for Early Detection
• Varsha Rao, Claret Bioscience
Integrating Genetic Risk with Early Detection
• Giordano Botta, Allelica
Metagenomic Diagnostics & Global Pathogen Surveillance
• Charles Chiu, UCSF
AI-Driven Host–Pathogen Signatures from Plasma cfDNA
• Sivan Bercovici, Karius
Ultra-Sensitive Multimodal Liquid Biopsy for Early Cancer Detection
• Atul Sharan, CellMax Life
AI-Enhanced Proteomic Signatures for Early Cancer Detection
• Diana Abdueva, Aqtual




