Speaker Profile
Ph.D., Co-Founder, Chairman, & CEO, Xaira Tx
Biography
Marc Tessier-Lavigne is co-founder, Chairman CEO of Xaira Therapeutics. Previously,he held executive positions at Genentech, where he was chief scientific officer, and inacademia, where he served as president of The Rockefeller University and of StanfordUniversity, where he remains professor of Biology. He also served previously on thefaculty of the University of California, San Francisco, and was an investigator with theHoward Hughes Medical Institute. A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Tessier-Lavigne has been aleader in understanding mechanisms that direct brain wiring. He has received numerousscientific awards, including the 2020 Gruber Neuroscience Prize, and has been electedto multiple scientific societies, including the US National Academy of Sciences and USNational Academy of Medicine; he is also an Officer of the Order of Canada. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne has co-founded two neuroscience startups, Renovis and Denali, and served onthe boards of Agios, Regeneron, Pfizer, Juno and Denali.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures and Gad Getz, Broad Institute
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Steve Wozniak, Apple
• Greg Brockman, OpenAI
Fireside Chat
• Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
• Greg Brockman, OpenAI
Target Discovery: Beyond Genomics – Revealing Hidden Layers of Biology with AI
• Keynote: Stephen Quake, CZ Biohub
• Chair: Cindy Lawley, Olink
• Aritro Nath, City of Hope
• Massa Shoura, Phinomics
• Omar Serang, DNAnexus
Accelerating Immunotherapy Discovery Through Multimodal AI
• Ron Alfa, Noetik
A Data-Integrated Approach to Target and Biomarker Discovery
• Liat Dassa, Cytoreason
Harmonizing Data to Accelerate Drug Discovery
• Vitalay Fomin, Numenos
Closing the Loop: Coupling AI with In Vivo Validation
• Gabriel Musso, Biosymetrics
Interpretable AI for Biomarker Discovery: Accelerating Drug Development
• Sanoj Punnen, University of Miami
• Shivanni Kummar, OHSU
• Mark Burkard, UI
Can AI Really Create the Next Blockbuster Drug?
• Chair: Amar Das, Guardant Health
• Ari Caroline, Weave Bio
• Dina Katabi, Emerald/MIT
• Andrei Georgescu, Vivodyne
• James Zou, Stanford
Gemini Digital Twins Accelerate Precision Medicine
• Collin Hill, Aitia
Scaling Rare Disease Discovery with AI
• Lisa Gurry, GeneDx
Enabling Targeted Precision Drug & Gene Delivery with Predictive AI
• Andre Watson, Ligandal
Is AI the New Drug or the New Therapeutic Modality
• Chair: Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures
• Michael J. Kahana, Nia Therapeutics
• Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Xaira
