SynBioBeta Speaker

Lilly Wollman

Synteny

CEO & Co founder

Lilly is the co-founder and CEO of Synteny. Synteny combines frontier AI and frontier biology to solve the "holy-grail" challenge: the law of molecular recognition. Lilly previously was co-head of the Growth Equity platform at Generation Investment Management, the $32 billion AUM investment firm founded by Al Gore and David Blood. Lilly started her career at Goldman Sachs (Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities) and held leadership positions at Fortress Investment Group and the Baupost Group.Lilly has been a member of the Board of Directors of Sophia Genetics, Andela, Cibo Technologies.Lilly received her BA in Mathematics magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College, an MBA from INSEAD, an MSc Finance from London Business School and an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge (graduated with distinction). At Cambridge, she worked as a research associate in the Early Cancer Institute (in the lab of Synteny’s scientific co-founder, Jamie Blundell) and completed her thesis focused on generative models of T cell receptors.

Sessions Featuring

Lilly

This Year

Breakout Session

•

3:30 PM

-

4:15 PM

Human Health

Programmable T Cells: Engineering Living Immune Systems

T cells are evolving from targeted killers into fully programmable cellular systems. Advances in synthetic biology, AI-driven receptor design, and genome-scale datasets are enabling immune cells that not only recognize disease, but sense context, compute signals, adapt over time, and execute coordinated responses inside the body. This session brings together leaders across academia and industry to explore how next-generation CAR and TCR design, structural modeling, and large biological foundation models are reshaping immune engineering. Beyond receptor optimization, we will examine logic circuits, combinatorial sensing systems, control layers, and in vivo reprogramming strategies that transform T cells into dynamic therapeutic platforms. As immune cell engineering moves toward off-the-shelf products and in vivo editing approaches, we will address the deeper architectural questions: How do we design cells that avoid exhaustion, function within hostile tumor microenvironments, and maintain safety over time? What does it mean to treat T cells as living software systems? And how do we build programmable immune therapies that are scalable, durable, and globally accessible?

Featuring

Lilly Wollman

Synteny

CEO & Co founder

From growth equity to gen-AI T-cell engineering.

Kyle Daniels

Stanford University

Assistant Professor

Engineering immune-cell “programmable receptors” with synbio + machine learning.

Connor Tsuchida

Azalea Therapeutics

Scientific Co-founder, VP, R&D

Abhishek Singharoy

ASU

Professor

John Robson

BioOra

Managing Director

Deep-tech investor turned CAR-T scale-up leader.

Victoria Mascetti

University of Bristol

Assistant Professor

Stem-cell biologist translating regeneration into real therapies.

Breakout Session

•

3:30 PM

-

4:15 PM

Human Health

Programmable T Cells: Engineering Living Immune Systems

T cells are evolving from targeted killers into fully programmable cellular systems. Advances in synthetic biology, AI-driven receptor design, and genome-scale datasets are enabling immune cells that not only recognize disease, but sense context, compute signals, adapt over time, and execute coordinated responses inside the body. This session brings together leaders across academia and industry to explore how next-generation CAR and TCR design, structural modeling, and large biological foundation models are reshaping immune engineering. Beyond receptor optimization, we will examine logic circuits, combinatorial sensing systems, control layers, and in vivo reprogramming strategies that transform T cells into dynamic therapeutic platforms. As immune cell engineering moves toward off-the-shelf products and in vivo editing approaches, we will address the deeper architectural questions: How do we design cells that avoid exhaustion, function within hostile tumor microenvironments, and maintain safety over time? What does it mean to treat T cells as living software systems? And how do we build programmable immune therapies that are scalable, durable, and globally accessible?

Featuring

Lilly Wollman

Synteny

CEO & Co founder

From growth equity to gen-AI T-cell engineering.

Kyle Daniels

Stanford University

Assistant Professor

Engineering immune-cell “programmable receptors” with synbio + machine learning.

Connor Tsuchida

Azalea Therapeutics

Scientific Co-founder, VP, R&D

Abhishek Singharoy

ASU

Professor

John Robson

BioOra

Managing Director

Deep-tech investor turned CAR-T scale-up leader.

Victoria Mascetti

University of Bristol

Assistant Professor

Stem-cell biologist translating regeneration into real therapies.

Previous Speakers Include