SynBioBeta 2026 Speaker

Sharrol Bachas

Onava AI

Co-founder & CSO

Sharrol Bachas is a biophysicist, structural biologist, and protein engineer working at the intersection of AI and protein design. He is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Onava, where he is building a next-generation platform for therapeutic protein designโ€”combining generative models, protein engineering, structural biology, and a proprietary high-throughput wet lab to rapidly iterate on antibodies, peptides, and miniproteins for design and optimization.

Prior to founding Onava, Sharrol led AI-driven antibody engineering programs at Absci, directed scaled AIโ€“wet lab implementation of protein design workflows at EvolutionaryScale, and helped shape foundational infrastructure for integrating structural biology with machine learning in drug discovery. His work spans de novo design, structural grafting, display-based screening, and biophysics, with a strong emphasis on human-in-the-loop design cycles.

Sharrol earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and completed his postdoctoral research at the NIH, focusing on structureโ€“function relationships of proteins and RNAs using X-ray crystallography.

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Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure
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Blue watercolor splatter
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Reagan

Jarvis

Anocca AB

CEO, Co-founder

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Alex

Rives

CZI Biohub

Head of Science

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Karenโ€ฏ

Akinsanya

Schrodinger

President, R&D โ€“ Therapeutics

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Christopher

Arendt

Takeda

CSO, Head of Research

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Stef

van Grieken

Cradle

CEO

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Michael

Koeris

DARPA

Director, BTO

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Jennifer

Dionne

Pumpkinseed

CEO

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Daniyal

Hussain

GSK

Exec. Dir., Tech BD

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Cynthia

Hong

Novartis

Dir., Search & Evaluation

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Sarah Lynn

Tao

CSL Behring

Sr. Dir., S&E; Ig TA & Tech Lead

Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure
Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure
Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure
Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure
Blue watercolor illustration of a folded protein structure

SynBioBeta 2027 May 3-6, San Jose, California