Speaker Profile
Biography
Stephen Quake is the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, supporting CZIs mission to cure, prevent and manage all diseases by the end of the century. His contributions to science are varied and include the invention of the biological equivalent of the integrated circuit, the development of whole-organism cell atlases, and the creation of diagnostics that have made medicine safer by replacing invasive biopsies such as amniocentesis with simple blood tests. He has received numerous awards for his discoveries and has been elected to several scientific honorary societies, including the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors. He has published more than 300 papers that have been cumulatively cited more than 100,000 times. Quake also holds a faculty position at Stanford University, where he is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics. Previously, he was the Head of Science at CZI (20222025) and founding co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco (20162022), an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (20062016), and professor at the California Institute of Technology (19962005).
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Co-Chairs:
Gad Getz, Broad Institute
Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures
PMWC Award Ceremony Honoree
• Greg Brockman, President & Co-Founder, OpenAI
• Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple
Keynote
• Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
Target Discovery: Beyond Genomics – Revealing Hidden Layers of Biology with AI
• Keynote: Stephen Quake, CZ Biohub
• Aritro Nath, City of Hope
• Massa Shoura, Phinomics
• Omar Serang, DNAnexus
Illuminating Drug Discovery: AI Models That Learn From Biology
• Erwin Estigarribia, HEADLAMP Health
Harmonizing the Data Economy: Enabling AI Across Institutions and Therapeutic Areas
• Noah Nasser, Datma
Can AI Really Create the Next Blockbuster Drug?
• James Zou, Stanford
Interpretable AI for Biomarker Discovery: Accelerating Drug Development
• Chair: Rajat Roy, PATHOMIQ INC
Closing the Loop: AI in the Messy Middle of Drug Development
• Ari Caroline, Weave Bio
• Dina Katabi, Emerald / MIT
Is AI the New Drug?
• Michael J. Kahana, Nia Therapeutics




