Speakers

Zack Abbott is the founder and CEO of ZBiotics, a company working to develop practical applications of synthetic biology. After completing his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan, he founded ZBiotics, using genetic engineering to build new probiotics that could help solve everyday problems in unique ways. At ZBiotics, he works with a talented team, ultimately aiming to make biotechnology more accessible and useful in people's daily lives. He believes in the potential of synthetic biology to create practical solutions and continues to explore new possibilities in this field. 

Emily Clise Tully is the Vice President of National Technology Strategy at In-Q-Tel, the strategic investor that connects the U.S. national security community with cutting-edge technology companies, and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, working at the intersection of national security and emerging tech. She served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she worked to reorient the post-9/11 national security community to America’s emerging strategic conflict with the Chinese Communist Party, profoundly shaped by technology. Emily began her career at the CIA, where she served nearly a decade writing for the president as a political analyst, completing a warzone tour, and holding leadership positions in the Director’s Area in the Office of Public Affairs and Congressional Affairs. Emily most recently was Senior Director of National Security at Ginkgo Bioworks, leading business development efforts to help the international and U.S. national security communities understand and incorporate biotechnologies. A Carnegie Mellon University graduate and proud native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she lives in Washington, DC with her family.

Grey Frandsen was appointed to the role of Flyttr CEO in 2017. During his tenure, the company has expanded its public health and agriculture technology pipeline, upgraded its gene technology platform, established new R&D collaborations, and strengthened core R&D and operational capacities globally. Since 2017 the company has also expanded strategic partnerships in agriculture, developed its first commercial solutions, seeded new country programs, and secured landmark regulatory approvals for the company’s first-in-class agricultural and public health technologies.

Dr. Paul Friedrichs recently joined Rand as Senior Biopreparedness Fellow and is also a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an Adjunct Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University. Previously, he served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and inaugural Director of The White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.

Paul also served as Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council. Before moving to the White House, he served as the Joint Staff Surgeon at the Pentagon, where he provided medical advice to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and coordinated military medical support across the Department. In addition to caring for patients in combat, Antarctica and other austere locations, he has led DOD's global medical evacuation system and assisted in multiple major domestic and international responses to natural disasters and biological outbreaks.

He was awarded the Bronze Star and is a Chevalier of the French Ordre National du Mérite. Paul’s father served in the US Navy at the end of World War II and his mother fought in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He is married to Dr. Rita Friedrichs, a former Army physician, and they are the proud parents of two children, one of whom is a Marine.

Brian Hie is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation Stanford Data Science Faculty Fellow, and an Innovation Investigator at Arc Institute. He leads the Laboratory of Evolutionary Design, which conducts research at the intersection of machine learning and biology. Previously, Brian was a Stanford Science Fellow in Biochemistry, a researcher at Meta AI, received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and his B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford.

In addition to his Hoover fellowship, Stephen Kotkin is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School), where he taught for 33 years. He earned his PhD at the University of California–Berkeley and has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

Kotkin’s research encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present. His publications include Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (Penguin, 2017) and Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (Penguin, 2014), two parts of a planned three-volume history of Russian power in the world and of Stalin’s power in Russia. He has also written a history of the Stalin system’s rise from a street-level perspective, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (University of California 1995); and a trilogy analyzing Communism’s demise, of which two volumes have appeared thus far: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000 (Oxford, 2001; rev. ed. 2008) and Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross (Modern Library, 2009). The third volume will be on the Soviet Union in the third world and Afghanistan. Kotkin’s publications and public lectures also often focus on Communist China.

Kotkin has participated in numerous events of the National Intelligence Council, among other government bodies, and is a consultant in geopolitical risk to Conexus Financial and Mizuho Americas. He served as the lead book reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Business Section for a number of years and continues to write reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal, among other venues. He has been an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Mike Kuiken is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and serves as Vice Chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

In the private sector, Mike is the Managing Member of Silver Valley Strategies, where he advises founders, CEOs, and investors on geopolitical and government strategies. He is an advisor to the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and a member of Anthropic's National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council. He serves on the boards of the National Defense Industrial Association and the Planetary Science Institute. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Newsweek, and the Boston Globe.

Mike previously served as Senate Majority Leader Schumer's National Security Advisor. He was a 'Gang of Eight' staffer for over seven years. He architected the legislative strategy to pass the CHIPS and Science Act and played a key role in establishing the Senate's Artificial Intelligence Insight Forums. Prior to the Leader's office, Mike spent over a decade on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a career that began with the late Senator Carl Levin.

His work has spanned the most consequential challenges of the post-9/11 era—from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's strategic competition with China. He has shaped U.S. responses to the Arab Spring, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, economic statecraft, and strategic cyber competition, working on the ground in over 85 countries to bring a frontline perspective to national policy.

Mike earned his B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Calvin University and his M.A. in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University.

Dr Filippa Lentzos is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Science & International Security in the Department of War Studies, where she also serves as Impact & Innovation Lead and as Dissertation Lead for the 500+ Masters students in the Department.

Alongside her role at King’s, she holds concurrent appointments as Associate Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden and as Non-Resident Scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) in the United States.

Dr Lentzos chairs the WHO Technical Advisory Group on the responsible use of the life sciences and dual-use research (WHO RULS DUR) and serves as a member of the WHO Health Security Interface – Technical Advisory Group (WHO HSI-TAG). She is a rostered expert for the UN Secretary-General’s Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical or Biological Weapons and acts as NGO Coordinator for the Biological Weapons Convention.

In addition, she is a columnist at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and an Editor of the social science journal BioSocieties.

As an early pioneer in the high-throughput synthesis and sequencing of DNA, Dr. Leproust is disrupting markets to enable the exponential growth of DNA-based applications including chemicals/materials, diagnostics, therapeutics, food and digital data storage. In 2020, BIO presented her with the Rosalind Franklin Award for Leadership. Foreign Policy named her one of their 100 Leading Global Thinkers and Fast Company named her one of the Most Creative People in Business. Prior to Twist Bioscience, she held escalating positions at Agilent Technologies where she architected the successful SureSelect product line that lowered the cost of sequencing and elucidated mechanisms responsible for dozens of Mendelian diseases. She also developed the Oligo Library Synthesis technology, where she initiated and led product and business development activities for the team. Dr. Leproust designed and developed multiple commercial synthesis platforms to streamline microarray manufacturing and fabrication. She serves on the board of directors of GeneDx and Atlas Data Storage as well as the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington DC-based nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing biological threats. She is an investment advisor for NFX Bio and co-founder of

Petri, an accelerator for start-ups at the forefront of engineering and biology. Dr. Leproust has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers – many on applications of synthetic DNA, and is the author of numerous patents. She earned her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Houston and her M.Sc. in Industrial Chemistry.

Sam Levin is a biotech entrepreneur and accomplished scientific leader with 15 years of research experience and over a decade of leading complex, multidisciplinary scientific enterprises. He has deep expertise at the intersection of genetic engineering, automation, and complex systems biology. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals and serves as an advisor to multiple companies and research organizations. His work has been featured in top outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, and the Discovery Channel.

Prior to Neion Bio, Sam was the Co-Founder and CEO of Melonfrost, where he built the world’s most high-throughput automated bioreactor system, integrated with proprietary machine learning algorithms to direct microbial evolution for industrial biotechnology. Sam holds a PhD and Bachelor’s Degree in the field of evolutionary biology from the University of Oxford.

Lee Lilley's service as North Carolina's Secretary of Commerce began on January 1, 2025. Appointed to the office by Governor Josh Stein, Secretary Lilley brings extensive economic development experience to the role.

Immediately prior to joining the department, Secretary Lilley served as the Director of Economic & Pandemic Recovery for Governor Roy Cooper. In that position, he coordinated statewide pandemic recovery efforts, served as State Infrastructure Coordinator, and led economic development initiatives for the Cooper Administration. Lee also advised Cooper Administration leadership on strategy and communications.

Lee joined the Governor’s Office in 2018 as the Director of Legislative Affairs, where he led all Gubernatorial and Executive Branch engagement with the North Carolina General Assembly and served as the principal advisor to the Governor on policy and legislative strategy. Lee was previously senior vice president and deputy director of federal practice at McGuireWoods Consulting, LLC, based in Washington, D.C. There he represented a diverse group of clients including Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, trade associations, and non-profits before Congress and the federal Executive Branch. He led public affairs strategies for clients facing political and regulatory scrutiny of international mergers and acquisitions, litigation, and trade disputes. Prior to joining McGuireWoods, Lee served as legislative director for Congressman G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), a member of U.S. House Democratic leadership and the Energy & Commerce Committee, and the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He served as the Member’s senior legislative strategist and policy advisor. Lee is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A native of Williamston, North Carolina, Secretary Lilley lives in Raleigh with his wife and daughter.

Matt McKnight is the Chief Executive Officer of Perimeter, the leading biosecurity infrastructure platform for national security. He began his career as an officer in the United States Marine Corps before supporting business development at Palantir Technologies. He subsequently spent seven years as an investor and served as President and COO at Decision Resources Group. Matt also serves as a General Partner at Four Cities Capital, a seed stage venture capital firm.

Before founding Perimeter, Matt worked at Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) as head of its biosecurity business unit and as Chief Commercial Officer where he played a central role in scaling the company through its IPO in 2021.

Matt holds a degree in History from Dartmouth College and is a graduate of the joint MBA/MPP program at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Zuckerman Fellow. He currently serves as a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where he focuses on the intersection of biotechnology and national security.

Deborah Moorad serves as the Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce. She brings years of experience in entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, and economic development to the state. As the founding CEO and owner of Jax XII Holdings, she helps innovators and companies scale through technology. Previously, she led multiple biotech companies through transformative growth, including serving as CEO of Nature Technology Corp. Under her leadership, NTC pioneered breakthrough gene therapy technologies, ultimately leading to its acquisition by Aldevron, a Danaher Company. She also played a pivotal role in post-merger operations for Dentsply Sirona following its $14.5 billion merger.

Dr. Parker has held technical to executive leadership positions throughout 36 years of public service at the federal level as a leader in biodefense, high consequence emerging infectious diseases, global health security, and all-hazards public health/medical preparedness. This included overseeing the coordination of federal medical/public health responses to Hurricanes Katrina thru Alex, to the 2009 Pandemic and Haiti earthquake. His service includes more than 26 years on active duty in the United States Army leading medical research and development programs and organizations, including command of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Parker held senior executive-level positions at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Department of Defense (DOD); including serving as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense at DOD. Dr. Parker is currently the Associate Dean for Global One Health at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, and in this role, he also serves as Campus Director for Global One Health at Texas A&M University and Director for the Pandemic & Biosecurity Policy Program at the Bush School of Government & Public Service.

 Padmini Pillai Ph.D. was selected as a 2024-25 White House Fellow. An immunoengineer by training, Dr. Pillai has bridged cutting-edge advances in immunology with the development of new biomaterials to treat human disease. She completed her Ph.D. in Immunobiology at Yale University under the mentorship of Prof. Akiko Iwasaki. Her research, featured in her first-authored Science publication and a Nature Reviews Immunology article, reveals how excessive inflammation in the lung could drive mortality from flu infections. Her findings also suggest a new potential strategy to boost disease tolerance to improve survival in vulnerable individuals. Inspired to apply her expertise to develop new tools for both treating disease and exploring fundamental questions in immunology, Dr. Pillai joined the laboratory of Prof. Robert Langer at MIT. Her research is centered on engineering a tumor-selective RNA nanotherapy to eliminate cancer cells and boost anti-tumor immunity, for which she has been awarded over $2M in funding. She also received the prestigious CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship for the design of an anti-inflammatory biomaterial platform to treat chronic inflammatory diseases. Dr. Pillai has been featured in multiple media outlets to discuss vaccination and immunity during the COVID pandemic. She was selected as a 2019 Delegate to the American Academy of Achievement. Dr. Pillai is a singer and multi-instrumentalist who has performed music internationally ranging from Gospel to South Indian Classical. She has provided backup vocals for Grammy award-winning artist Angélique Kidjo since 2011 at venues including the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center, the Newport Jazz Festival, and Carnegie Hall. 

Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Pottinger served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy.

Before his White House service, Pottinger spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York.

Stephen Quake is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University and is co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. He received a B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1991 and a doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford in 1994. Quake has invented many measurement tools for biology, including new DNA sequencing technologies that have enabled rapid analysis of the human genome and microfluidic automation that allows scientists to efficiently isolate individual cells and decipher their genetic code. Quake is also well known for inventing new diagnostic tools, including the first non-invasive prenatal test for Down syndrome and other aneuploidies. His test is rapidly replacing risky invasive approaches such as amniocentesis, and millions of women each year now benefit from this approach. His innovations have helped to radically accelerate the pace of biology and have made medicine safer by replacing invasive biopsies with simple blood tests.

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As Professor of Political Science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as Director, then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

She has authored and co-authored numerous books, most recently To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth (2019), co-authored with Philip Zelikow. Among her other volumes are three bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). She also wrote Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (2018) with Amy B. Zegart; Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; edited The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; and penned The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army; 1948-1983: Uncertain Allegiance (1984).

In 1991, Rice co-founded the Center for a New Generation (CNG), an innovative, after-school academic enrichment program for students in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California. In 1996, CNG merged with the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, an affiliate club of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BCGA). CNG has since expanded to local BGCA chapters in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Dallas. Rice remains an active proponent of an extended learning day through after-school programs.

Since 2009, Rice has served as a founding partner at Rice, Hadley, Gates, & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The firm works with senior executives of major companies to implement strategic plans and expand in emerging markets. Other partners include former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, and former diplomat, author, and advisor on emerging markets, Anja Manuel.

In 2022, Rice became a part-owner of the Denver Broncos as a part of the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group. In 2013, Rice was appointed to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, formerly the Bowl Championship Series. She served on the committee until 2017.

Rice currently serves on the boards of C3.ai, an AI software company; and Makena Capital Management, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and a trustee of the Aspen Institute. Previously, Rice served on various boards, including Dropbox; the George W. Bush Institute; the Commonwealth Club; KiOR, Inc.; the Chevron Corporation; the Charles Schwab Corporation; the Transamerica Corporation; the Hewlett-Packard Company; the University of Notre Dame; the Foundation of Excellence in Education; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and the San Francisco Symphony.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s in the same subject from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D., likewise in political science, from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Rice is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded over fifteen honorary doctorates.

Sam is a physicist and bioengineer, and is co-founder, director and CEO of FutureHouse. Sam has invented technologies for spatial and temporal transcriptomics, brain mapping, gene therapy, and nanofabrication, and ran an academic lab at the Francis Crick Institute prior to launching FutureHouse. He was also named to the 2025 TIME100 AI, a list recognizing the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.

Jenny is the Founder and Managing Director of Genoa Ventures, where she leverages her unique toolkit of genetics domain expertise, strategic business acumen, and venture investing to launch and empower the next generation of category-defying companies at the convergence of technology and biology. She has nearly two decades of investing experience, beginning at Fidelity Biosciences in 2006 as a Kauffman Fellow. After Fidelity, Jenny helped establish the investing function at the Gates Foundation, funding companies in genetic engineering, diagnostics, and synthetic biology.

Jenny started what would become Genoa Ventures in 2014 using the largest life sciences syndicate on AngelList and achieving one of the highest-performing AngelList syndicates in any sector. Jenny’s investments and board seats at Genoa include Intabio (acquired by Danaher Sciex), InterVenn, Aqtual, Meiogenix, and BrightSpec. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Jackson Laboratory. Her prior investments include Zymergen (IPO), Caribou (IPO), Accuri (acquired by Becton Dickinson), and Topaz (acquired by Sanofi). Prior to her investing career, Jenny was a management consultant with McKinsey focused on the pharma and biotech sectors. She also served in executive management roles at U.S. Genomics, leading Corporate Development and Research and Development.

Jenny studied physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and has a Ph.D. in genetics from Yale.

Jenny’s love of sailing inspired her to name the fund Genoa – the sail that increases the performance and stability of a sailboat. Recognizing that the entrepreneur is the captain of their ship, she aims to help them and their companies navigate the start-up life cycle with the power of her network and her experience building and advising companies to get to the target destination.

Nadia Schadlow is a National Security Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Previously, Dr. Schadlow served as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy and Assistant to the President of the United States. As the architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy, Dr. Schadlow coordinated strategic analysis and forged consensus across multiple government departments. She also oversaw the development of regional and functional strategies to deal with complex national security challenges. Prior to her most recent period of government service, she served as an executive at Smith Richardson Foundation where she directed assets to catalyze new thinking and analysis to improve the security and competitiveness of the United States. Her 2017 book, War and the Art of Governance: Consolidating Combat Success into Political Victory, explored the challenges of undertaking post-conflict operations and identified optimal practices. Her writings have appeared in The Hill, The Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, War on the Rocks, and several edited volumes.

She serves on several boards and commissions, including the National Endowment for Democracy and the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, Working Group on Innovation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Schadlow received a B.A. from Cornell University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Dr. Tim Schnabel is a scientist, bioengineer, entrepreneur, and Forbes 30 under 30 honoree in social impact. He is currently serving as the Founder and CEO of Switch Bioworks, a biotechnology company located in San Carlos, California, focused on engineering microbes that produce cost-effective, sustainable fertilizer to tackle climate change.

Originally from Germany, Tim came to the US to study chemical engineering and economics at Stanford University (’15). Under the guidance of Professor James Swartz, he researched the biological production of hydrogen fuel from sunlight and received Stanford's Kennedy Thesis Prize, the highest university recognition for undergraduate research. Tim’s research also won the Mason Award and Firestone Medal, and his academic recognition include the President’s Award, Terman Engineering Award, and Tau Beta Pi – the National Engineering Honor Society, of which Dr. Schnabel served as President (CA G chapter) and Advisory Board Chair.

Following his early training in biotechnology, Tim pursued a MS ’17 and PhD ’21 in bioengineering at Stanford, advised by Professor Elizabeth Sattely. He was awarded a BioX Bowes Fellowship for interdisciplinary research. Dr. Schnabel’s PhD thesis titled "Engineering Ammonia Production in Free-Living Diazotrophs for Plant Fertilization" is published in two single-author papers (patents pending), one of which was featured on the cover of ACS Synthetic Biology. Tim was also a scholar (’19) of the highly competitive Accel Leadership Fellows, a program that accelerates entrepreneurship training of PhD candidates in engineering.

Transitioning through an “Entrepreneur in Training” Postdoc ’22 in the Stanford Bioengineering Department Chair’s lab, Professor Jennifer Cochran, Tim founded Switch Bioworks – “the living fertilizer company” – of which he is CEO and on the Board of Directors.

In his free time, Tim is a beekeeper, homebrewer, and author of "Wake up! A young person's guide to spirituality."

Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall is currently a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is the Director of the Initiative on Bioconvergence, Biosecurity, and Bioresilience (IB3), which is situated within the Program on Emerging Technology, Scientific Advancement and Global Policy.

Dr. Sherwood-Randall has had a trailblazing career in national and homeland security, serving in key leadership roles at the White House, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. Most recently, she worked in the West Wing from 2021-2025 as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Deputy National Security Advisor. In that high stakes position, she pioneered Federal efforts to strengthen national preparedness for and resilience to emerging threats. She spearheaded Federal crisis management for a wide range of challenges including mass shootings, domestic and international terrorist attacks, extreme weather events, and critical infrastructure disruptions. She guided the development and implementation of new strategies to counter terrorism at home and around the world. She innovated policies to prevent, prepare, and respond to natural and pernicious biological risks, including mpox, avian flu, and the convergence of advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence. She built a counter-fentanyl campaign involving Mexico, Canada, and China, and mobilized a global coalition of more than 80 partner countries to disrupt the synthetic opioid supply chain and save American lives.

During the Obama Administration, Dr. Sherwood-Randall served in three successive roles: Deputy Secretary of Energy (2014-2017); White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and Arms Control (2013-2014); and Senior Director for Europe on the National Security Council (2009-2013). She served in the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia (1994-1996). At the beginning of her career, she served as Chief Foreign Affairs and Defense Policy Advisor to Senator Joe Biden. She has been repeatedly recognized for her leadership, including with the Secretary of Energy Exceptional Service Award, the Department of Defense Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Award, and the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

Dr. Sherwood-Randall has taught, conducted research, and mentored students at universities and think tanks including Harvard, Stanford, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also advised national laboratories, power grid and cybersecurity startups, and energy investment funds.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated from Harvard College and received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where she completed her doctorate in international relations. She is married to Dr. Jeffrey Randall, a neurosurgeon in the California Bay Area, and they have two sons.

Dr. Keith Wood is the CEO and co-founder of Light Bio, a company designing bioluminescent plants for consumer markets. Its first product, the Firefly Petunia, was featured on the cover of TIME magazine as a Best Inventions of 2024. A leader in applying synthetic biology to bioluminescence, Dr. Wood has introduced diverse technologies for studying cell metabolism and drug action. In addition to his publication record, he is an inventor on over 200 patents.