Speaker Profile
M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Harvard
Biography
Sylvan Baca is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Raised in Albuquerque, NM, Dr. Baca received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School. He trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and completed his fellowship in Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Baca received his post-doctoral training in cancer epigenetics with Dr. Matthew Freedman at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He is on faculty at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a Physician and Investigator. In addition to caring for patients, he conducts research at the interface of computational biology and epigenomics to find better ways to treat cancer.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2027 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Rebecca Fitzgerald, University of Cambridge (Luminary)
• Mary-Claire King, University of Washington (Pioneer)
• Nickolas Papadopoulos, Johns Hopkins (Pioneer)
Featured Speakers
• Mary-Claire King, University of Washington
• Rebecca Fitzgerald, University of Cambridge
• Nickolas Papadopoulos, Johns Hopkins
• Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins
• Phil Castle, NIH
• Elad Ziv, UCSF
• Ash Alizadeh, Stanford
• Hamed Amini, Hepta
• Becky Taub, Madrigal Pharmaceuticals
• Trevor Pugh, University of Toronto
• Doga Gulhan, Harvard
• Pranav Rajpurkar, Harvard
• Chris Douville, Johns Hopkins
• Sylvia Katina Plevritis, UCSF
In Precision Medicine, Almost All Diseases Are Genetically Rare
A genetics-first keynote framing risk, prevention, and actionability.
The Reckoning
What the first wave of early detection got right and wrong.
The End of One Size Fits All
Risk-stratified screening, high-risk populations, and single-cancer tests.
Treating Disease at the Earliest Stage
Where detection and therapeutic interception begin to converge.
Pre-Cancer Detection & the Liver Disease Frontier
cfDNA and clinical action across the liver-disease-to-cancer continuum.
AI Across Multimodal Signals
Fragmentomics, methylation, imaging, pathology, and integration: hype versus real science.
PMWC Hall of Impact
Previous Speakers Include
Nobel laureates, technology founders, regulators, CEOs and scientific pioneers who have taken the PMWC stage.
