Speaker Profile
Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Pharm Chem, UCSF
Biography
Michelle Arkin is a chemical biologist. Her research focuses on developing methods and molecules that target currently undruggable proteins, including protein-protein interactions and dynamic or intrinsically disordered proteins. For this work, in 2024 she received the ACS Cope Scholar Award and ACSBiochemistry Gordon Hammes Lecturer Award. Michelle has been highly involved academic drug discovery community as past President of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, editor of the Assay Guidance Manual, member of the joint research committee for the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) consortium, and past director of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening. Prior to UCSF, Michelle was a founding scientist at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover small molecule inhibitors of IL-2IL-2R and LFAICAM (the anti-inflammatory drug lifitigrast, marketed by Novartis). She serves on the advisory boards for several pharmaceutical companies and is a co-founder of Elgia Therapeutics and co-founder and director of Ambagon Therapeutics.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2025 Silicon Valley
Track Chair: Keith Yamamoto, UCSF
- PMWC 2025 Award Ceremony:
Pioneer Honoree: Robert Califf, FDA
Luminary Honoree: Ida Sim, UCSF
- Fireside Chat: Keith Yamamoto, UCSF, Robert Califf, FDA, and Kathy Giacomini, UCSF
- Keynote: Harnessing Computational Tools in Precision Medicine: Implementation and Future Directions
- Ida Sim, UCSF
- AI-driven Advances in Precision Medicine (PANEL)
Chair: Sharat Israni, Bakar Institute, UCSF
- Peter Norvig, Google
- Susan Lynch, UCSF
- Olivier Gevaert, Stanford
- Michelle Arkin, UCSF
- New Federal Programs Driving Transformative Health Breakthroughs (PANEL)
Chair: Keith Yamamoto, UCSF
- Charles Romine, NIST
- Erwin Gianchandani, NSF
- Jim Brase, Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) - AI-Driven Protein Design (PANEL)
Chair: Tanja Kortemme, UCSF
- Franziska Seeger, Genentech
- William Degrado, UCSF - AI and Ethical Challenges (PANEL)
Chair: Alex John London, Carnegie Mellon University
- Jianying Hu, IBM
- Cora Han, University of California Health
- Ida Sim, UCSF
