Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. In June 2015, she joined the faculty at Stanford University coincident with the launch of Stanford's ChEM-H institute.

Prof. Bertozzi's research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of cell surface glycosylation pertinent to disease states. Her lab focuses on profiling changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and exploiting this information for development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in the area of immuno-oncology. She has been recognized with many honors and awards for her research accomplishments. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, among many others.

Dr. Joseph DeRisi is the President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. He employs an interdisciplinary approach combining genomics, bioinformatics, biochemistry, and bioengineering to study parasitic and viral infectious diseases in a wide range of organisms, for the purpose of discovering and studying novel or unrecognized biothreats. Early work in his lab contributed to the identification of the SARS coronavirus in 2003. In a parallel effort, Dr. DeRisi studies P. falciparum, the causative agent of the most deadly form of human malaria, in order to develop faster, better therapeutic options. Dr. DeRisi was one of the early pioneers of DNA microarray technology and whole genome expression profiling and is nationally recognized for his efforts to make this technology accessible and freely available.

He received a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1992) from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1999) from Stanford University prior to joining the UCSF faculty as a Sandler Fellow in 1999. Dr. DeRisi was a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator from 2006-2016, which he left to take on the role of Co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a non-profit medical research organization affiliated with UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford University. Dr. DeRisi is a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. DeRisi is continuing to pursue efforts toward data-driven diagnostics for infectious disease, and recently, autoimmune disorders as well.

More recently, through his role as Co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, he has redirected his efforts to providing large-scale, rapid turnaround clinical COVID19 testing through a UCSF/Biohub collaboration called the “CLIAHUB.” As of November, the CLIAHUB has returned over 155,000 clinical results to Californians, in addition to thousands of full length SARS-CoV-2 genomes for genomic epidemiological studies, including studies of underserved and vulnerable populations. Starting in 2022, he has accepted the position as sole President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.

Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai is the inaugural director of a newly launched research division at the Carnegie Institute for Science, the Division of Biosphere Sciences and Engineering. This research consortium deploys an integrated, molecular-to-global approach to biology, focusing on topics from exploring the frontiers of basic biology to tackling the challenges of sustainability, resilience, and adaptation to a changing climate.

Before joining Carnegie in 2022, Dr. McFall-Ngai was a professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and served as the Director of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center from 2015 to October 2020. She has instituted the C-MAIKI center for microbiome research at UH-M, and is PI of the WM Keck Foundation’s environmental microbiome observatory. Her research laboratory studies two areas: (i) the role of beneficial bacteria in health using the squid-vibrio model; and (ii) the biochemical and molecular ‘design’ of tissues that interact with light. In addition, she has been heavily involved in promoting microbiology as the cornerstone of the field of biology, and co-organizes and runs an advanced summer course on microbial symbioses as a visiting professor at the Gulbenkian Institute in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. McFall-Ngai was (2011-2013) a Moore Scholar at California Institute of Technology, and a Guggenheim fellow, and she currently is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology (2002), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), and the National Academy of Sciences (2014). She received a Doctor Honoris Causa, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland in 2015. She became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in 2017, and was the ARCS Foundation Scientist of the Year in 2019. She currently chairs serves on the advisory committee for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR’s) program on Humans and the Microbiome, for the German Research Foundation Metaorganisms Consortium, and the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tuebingen.

Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson is a Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and carbon and how these elements are influenced by both natural and anthropogenic processes. Over the past two decades, she has authored or co-authored more than 130 articles and is continuously supported by substantial, multi-year research and education grants.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson’s many research honors include the Early Career Award in Oceanography from AGU and Fulbright and Marie Curie Fellowships. She is an AAAS Fellow and an ASLO Sustaining Fellow. Dr. Benitez-Nelson is also highly regarded as a teacher and mentor. She received the University of South Carolina’s Distinguished Professor of the Year Award, SEC Faculty Achievement Award, and Outstanding Faculty Advisor of the Year as well as the AGU Sulzman Award for Excellence in Education and Mentoring and the Oceanography Society’s Mentoring Award for Excellence and/or Innovation in Mentoring the Next Generation of Ocean Scientists. She is the current Chair of the National Academy of Science’s Ocean Studies Board.

Dr. Larry Corey is an internationally renowned expert in virology, immunology and vaccine development, and the former president and director of Fred Hutch. His research focuses on herpes viruses, HIV, the novel coronavirus and other viral infections, including those associated with cancer. He is principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, or HVTN, which conducts studies of HIV vaccines at over 80 clinical trial sites in 16 countries on five continents. Under his leadership, the HVTN has become the model for global, collaborative research. Dr. Corey is also the principal investigator of the Fred Hutch-based operations center of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, or CoVPN, and co-leads the network’s vaccine testing pipeline.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the Board of Scientific Counselors-Basic Sciences of the National Cancer Institute, a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and a member of the American Epidemiological Society and the Association of American Physicians. He is the recipient of the Pan American Society Clinical Virology Award, the American Society for STD Research Parran Award, the University of Michigan Medical School Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Infectious Diseases Society of America Ender’s Award. He was elected Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2012 and the recipient of the 2012 Cubist-ICAAC Award, American Society for Microbiology. He also sits on the scientific advisory boards of Immune Design and Vir Biotechnology.

Victoria's multidisciplinary research program spans the interface between environmental microbiology, geochemistry, and geology. Through the integrated application of environmental 'omics approaches, stable isotope analysis, and imaging, her group is characterizing the interspecies interactions and ecological physiology of archaea, bacteria, and viruses linked to the cycling of methane, sulfur, nitrogen, and metals in ocean sediments and extreme environments.

Victoria Orphan received a B.A. (1994) and Ph.D. (2001) from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was a National Research Council Associate (2002–2004) at the NASA Ames Research Center. In 2004, she joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, where she is currently the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Orphan is also, since 2008, an adjunct scientist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and her scientific articles have appeared in Science, Nature, Environmental Microbiology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, among many others.

Drew Endy is a member of the bioengineering faculty at Stanford University and BioBricks Foundation president (biobricks.org). His research teams pioneered amplifying genetic logic, rewritable DNA data storage, reliably-reuseable standard biological parts, and genome refactoring. Drew helped launch the new undergraduate majors in bioengineering at both MIT and Stanford; he also co-founded the iGEM competition, a global genetic engineering “olympics” now engaging over 6,000 students annually (igem.org). In 2013 the White House recognized Drew for his work on open-source biotechnology and, more recently, he received an honorary doctorate from the Technische Universiteit Delft.

Drew has served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the Committee on Science, Technology, & Law; he currently serves on the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Advisory Committee.

Drew was a co-founder of Gen9, Inc., a DNA construction company; he returned to serve as a director while Gen9 was successfully acquired. Drew worked briefly with the Rapid Evaluation team at Google [X] and also served on the building project team for the Shriram Center at Stanford. He is a founding co-director of the NIST/Stanford Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology (jimb.stanford.edu). Esquire magazine recognized Drew as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.