Speakers
Managing Director at Washington Research Foundation, WRF Capital
Speaker
Dr. Will Canestaro is a venture capitalist, health economist and meta-epidemiologist with a demonstrated history of working in the biotechnology industry. He manages the Foundation’s biotech and engineering VC investment portfolio. Through WRF, Dr. Canestaro has made 25 investments in 19 Washington-based companies. He teaches courses at the UW School of Business and School of Pharmacy on Health Innovation and Meta-Analytic methods, respectively. Will earned his doctorate from the University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program and he received an M.Sc. in medical anthropology from Oxford University and an A.B. in medical sociology from Dartmouth College.
CEO & Founder at Absci
Speaker
Sean McClain is the Founder & CEO of Absci, pioneering a new era of medicine at the intersection of AI and biology to design life-changing drugs.
Sean envisions a world where we move beyond managing symptoms by dramatically shrinking timelines, slashing costs, and ultimately redefining how lifesaving medicines are created to find cures by design.
From a 400 sq. ft. basement lab to an industry-leading biotech platform, his journey reflects a deep belief that the future of health lies in merging human ingenuity with machine intelligence.