
SynBioBeta 2026 Speaker
Miki Heller
Brain Repair Foundation
Co-founder
Miki is a strategy and operations leader, and a mother of four whose work now sits at the intersection of rare disease, AI, and brain repair. She studied aerospace engineering at Cal Poly, began her career teaching middle school math through Teach For America, and later earned a joint MPP/MBA from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Most recently, she worked at Astranis, where she spent eight years as Vice President of Operations and Strategy helping scale the company and leading all core business functions.Mikiโs entry into biology and medicine came through her son Levi. After typical early development, Levi began a slow regression at age two and a half, eventually losing language, social engagement, motor skills, and the ability to follow directions. After years of advocating for deeper testing, Miki and her husband Jake learned that Levi has DEE-SWAS, a rare epileptic encephalopathy causing near-continuous abnormal brain activity.That diagnosis launched their work to stop Leviโs seizures, identify root cause, and pursue brain repair. Miki and her husband Jake are now building the Brain Repair Foundation to support research, drug repurposing, neuromodulation, and other approaches that may help Levi and others living with neurological injury.



Reagan
Jarvis
Anocca AB
CEO, Co-founder

Alex
Rives
CZI Biohub
Head of Science

Karenโฏ
Akinsanya
Schrodinger
President, R&D โ Therapeutics

Christopher
Arendt
Takeda
CSO, Head of Research

Stef
van Grieken
Cradle
CEO

Michael
Koeris
DARPA
Director, BTO

Jennifer
Dionne
Pumpkinseed
CEO

Daniyal
Hussain
GSK
Exec. Dir., Tech BD

Cynthia
Hong
Novartis
Dir., Search & Evaluation
SynBioBeta 2027 May 3-6, San Jose, California


