Brendan Frey is an internationally acclaimed entrepreneur, engineer and scientist. He is Founder, CEO and Chief Engineer of Deep Genomics and he co-founded the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Brendan made fundamental contributions in the fields of deep learning, genomic medicine, and information technology. He co-authored over 200 papers in these areas, including over a dozen that appeared in Nature, Science and Cell and were on multiple occasions highlighted on the front covers of those magazines. His work with Geoffrey Hinton on the 'wake-sleep algorithm' helped to launch the field of deep learning (Science 1995). His work on deep learning and on factor graphs forms the foundation of thousands of products used world-wide; for example, the WiFi telecommunications standard is based on an algorithm that Brendan co-invented.

Brendan was a pioneer in developing AI systems that could accurately predict normal and pathological cell and genome biology, facilitating biomedical breakthroughs. This work led to the discovery of new biology, the founding of Deep Genomics in 2015, the first AI system for predicting pathogenic mutations and identifying therapeutic targets, and the development of new therapeutic candidates for patients with genetic disorders. 

Brendan is Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Toronto and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Brendan has advised the leadership of Microsoft Research on machine learning and deep learning technology, and he was a member of its Technical Advisory Board. He has held numerous researcher and professor positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cambridge University in England, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the University of Waterloo.

Brendan received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1997.

Dr. Walter R. Strapps is the interim Chief Scientific Officer of Deep Genomics.  He also serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of Liberate Bio, a seed stage company in the lipid nano-particle space, and is the co-founder and CEO of Carver Biosciences, Inc.  His past roles include Chief Scientific Officer at Gemini Therapeutics where he led all aspects of pre-clinical research, PK and biomarkers for Gemini’s clinical trials.  Before joining Gemini, Dr. Strapps was Vice President of Discovery at Intellia Therapeutics, leading programs across a range of therapeutic areas.  Dr. Strapps held previous roles in RNA Therapeutics at Merck & Co., Inc in Pennsylvania and California and at Sirna Therapeutics and Sentigen Biosciences in Colorado and New York respectively.  Dr. Strapps obtained his doctorate, M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Columbia University and B.Sc. from McGill University.  Dr. Strapps serves on the board of Sona Nanotech. Walter was born and raised in Nova Scotia and is a proud Bluenoser.

David B. Johnston, Chief Financial Officer. Dave brings over thirty years of senior financial leadership experience. Currently, he is principal of dbjconsulting llc, providing financial and strategic advice to emerging life science companies. Most recently he was Chief Financial Officer for ImmunoGen, Inc. an oncology focused biotech based in Waltham, MA. During his tenure at ImmunoGen he led several public offerings as well as a creative, non-dilutive royalty financing.

Prior to ImmunoGen, Dave served as CFO for Aveo Oncology and Genzyme Biosurgery where he led both of their initial public offerings as well as leading several strategic initiatives, both on the buy side as well as the sell side.

Mr. Johnston earned a B.S. at Washington and Lee University and an MBA at the University of Michigan. Mr. Johnston sat on the board of directors of RAW Art Works, a nonprofit youth arts organization, as well as Tissue Banks International, one of the largest eye and tissue bank non-profits in the United States.

Amit Deshwar is the Senior Vice President and Head of Platform at Deep Genomics.  Under his leadership, Deep Genomics has developed more than 40 machine learning models of molecular phenotype and developed novel GalNAc hepatocyte delivery technology.  Recently his team has released the AI Workbench 2.0, that fuses deep mechanistic understanding of SBO activity, predictive models and high throughput sequencing datasets that enables rapid development of expression increase SBOs.  

Prior to Deep Genomics, he worked at Google where he built a highly distributed log parsing system and power supply firmware that enabled co-ordinated reductions in peak power consumption.  In addition, he founded a startup that matches employers and potential employees using predictive models of personality and workplace attributes. 

Amit received bachelor degrees in Software Engineering and Psychology from the University of Calgary.  His Ph.D. is from the University of Toronto, where he studied machine learning for oncology, and built tree-structured Baysesian nonparametric models for untangling the complex biology of intra-tumour heterogeneity. 

Hyla Pollak is Vice President of People Operations at Deep Genomics with more than 25 years of experience in Human Resources.

Prior to Deep Genomics, Hyla was Vice President of People at Newtopia Inc., where she helped the company grow from six employees to a team of more than 150 personnel and implemented talent management strategies throughout the company’s expansion. During her tenure at Newtopia, the company earned the Great Place to Work® (GPTW) designation in 2020. Prior to this, she was partner/consultant at Gemini Consulting where she developed company training programs, was business owner of Discovery Toys, and started her career at Sony of Canada as human resources benefits administrator.

Hyla received her BA in Psychology from York University and a Post Graduate certificate in Human Resources Management and Services from Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology.

Troy Simpson is the Vice President and Head of Research Operations at Deep Genomics. Joining the founding team as a software engineer, Troy helped design and build the infrastructure and teams that enable machine learning and experimental biology at Deep Genomics. Troy has managed strategy and operations of the platform, recently focused on the growing business development efforts at Deep Genomics, and leads external partnerships.

Prior to joining Deep Genomics, Troy was an early team member and founder of several startups, utilizing big data and cloud computing for analytics. 

Troy received his Bachelor of Honours Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in 2006.

Asha Rostamianfar is the Head of Software and Data Engineering at Deep Genomics. He and his team have the mission to engineer software around genome biology to accelerate data-centric, AI-driven drug discovery and development processes.

Prior to Deep Genomics, he worked at Color Health, where he was the technical lead of the bioinformatics team. At Color, he primarily focused on building the large-scale computational infrastructure to process all of Color’s genomic data as well as supporting large-scale initiatives like the NIH All of Us Research Program. Prior to that, he worked at Google for more than 7 years and was one of the founding members of the Google Cloud Healthcare & Life Sciences initiative. He led a team of engineers to build software solutions to analyze genomic data at scale on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). He also led a team of engineers to develop novel solutions for combating malware in Google’s advertising network via both machine learning models and efficient manual review tools.

Asha received a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and a master’s degree in Computational Biology from the University of Toronto.

Jennifer Cook, a Strategic Advisor at Deep Genomics and a Special Advisor to its CEO, has had a 30-year career in Biotech and Pharmaceuticals and is currently focused on providing advisory support to senior executives in the healthcare field. She serves on the Boards of Directors of Denali Therapeutics, BridgeBio Pharma, Ambys Medicines, Gyroscope Therapeutics, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. 

Most recently, she was the Chief Executive Officer of GRAIL, a healthcare company focused on the early detection of cancer. Previously, Jennifer was at Roche Pharmaceuticals/ Genentech where she held a number of senior management positions, covering the full life-cycle of pharmaceutical product development and commercialization. Jennifer started her career in research and early development at Genentech and a venture-backed start-up company. In 2016, Jennifer was recognized for her contributions to the healthcare industry and her inspirational leadership when she was named Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. 

Jennifer holds a B.A. in Human Biology and M.S. in Biology from Stanford University, as well as an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Peter Barton Hutt is a senior counsel in the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, specializing in food and drug law for more than five decades.

From 1971 to 1975 Mr. Hutt was Chief Counsel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and led the establishment of key regulations related to nutrition labeling, drug requirements, and medical devices that govern to this day. He has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine since its founding in 1971 and is a member of the board of directors of public biotechnology companies such as Moderna, Inc., Immunomedics, Inc., Flex Pharma, Inc. and Q Therapeutics, Inc., as well as a member of Boards of Directors and advisory committees of private companies. He has received numerous awards, including being named one of the 40 best healthcare attorneys in the United States by the National Law Journal.

Peter received a B.A. from Yale University, an L.L.B. from Harvard Law School and an L.L.M. from New York University School of Law. 

Steve Jurvetson is an early-stage venture capitalist with a focus on founder-led, mission-driven companies at the cutting edge of disruptive technology and new industry formation.  Steve was the early VC investor in SpaceX, Tesla, Planet, Memphis Meats, Hotmail, D-Wave, Boring, Zoox and the deep learning companies Mythic and Nervana.  He also led founding investments in five companies that went public in successful IPOs and several others that became billion-dollar acquisitions.

Prior to co-founding Future Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Steve was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his chip designs were fabricated. He also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT and management consulting with Bain & Company.  In 2017, Steve received the Visionary Award from SV Forum. In 2016, President Barack Obama appointed Steve as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Steve has also been honored as one of "Tech's Best Venture Investors" by Forbes, and as the “Venture Capitalist of the Year” by Deloitte.  

Steve completed his undergraduate Electrical Engineering degree at Stanford in 2.5 years, graduating #1 in his class, and went on to earn a MSEE and MBA from Stanford.

Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology fan. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, which is focused on impactful technology investments in software, AI, robotics, 3D printing, healthcare and more.

Mr. Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. One of Mr. Khosla’s greatest passions is centered around mentorship by being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology-based businesses. Mr. Khosla is driven by the desire to make a positive impact through the application of technology to reinvent societal infrastructure and multiply resources. He is also passionate about Social Entrepreneurship.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, New Delhi, a Master's in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Vern Norviel is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and a senior practitioner in the firm's patents and innovations counseling practice. Vern has three decades of experience formulating successful strategies for life science companies and helping them develop intellectual property programs. He represents a wide variety of companies as well as venture capital firms in areas such as therapeutics, diagnostics, nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, and personalized medicine. Vern's interest in the field of personalized medicine prompted him to become the first attorney to have had his or her entire genome sequenced and made available in a public database.

Before joining the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in 2003, Vern was the general counsel and corporate secretary of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., a start-up biotechnology company that scans the entire human genome for important therapeutic and diagnostic products. Previously, as senior vice president and general counsel, he was an early employee of Affymetrix, the biotechnology company that pioneered and developed DNA chip technology. He was also a partner at Townsend and Townsend and Crew in Palo Alto.

Vern received his J.D. with honors from the University of San Francisco School of Law, a Master’s degree from the University of Santa Clara, and an undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Colorado.

Tal Zaks is Strategic Advisor at Deep Genomics, with a focus on growing the company to take advantage of the many targets, mechanisms, and molecules generated by their ‘programmable medicines’ platform. As Venture Partner at OrbiMed, he is focused on finding and funding the next breakthroughs in drug development. Tal also serves on the Board of Directors of Adaptimmune Therapeutics and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

As Chief Medical Officer at Moderna, Zaks successfully led a team that pioneered the clinical applications of mRNA vaccines and therapeutics with more than two dozen preclinical and clinical programs advanced during his tenure, including Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Prior to his time at Moderna, Tal was Senior Vice President and Head of Global Oncology at Sanofi, where he was responsible for all aspects of oncology drug discovery, development, and commercialization. He began his industry career at GlaxoSmithKline in the genetics research group, where he built the oncology translational medicine team and led translational research on TYKERBⓇ. In addition to his industry work, he is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has served as a volunteer physician at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center, treating patients with genitourinary cancers.

Tal received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Ben Gurion University in Israel and conducted post-doctoral research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital, followed by a fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Arthur (Art) Krieg, M.D, has worked in the oligonucleotide field since the 1980s. He founded multiple biotech companies, beginning with Coley Pharmaceutical Group in 1997. In 2008, Pfizer acquired Coley and Art became Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer’s Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Unit until they exited the field in 2011. Subsequently, he co-founded RaNA Therapeutics, serving as its CEO through 2013, was CSO at Sarepta Therapeutics until July 2014, and most recently, was founder, CEO and CSO at Checkmate Pharmaceuticals until it was acquired by Regeneron in 2022. He co-founded the first antisense journal, Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, and the Oligonucleotide Therapeutic Society, for which he recently served as President. Art has published more than 250 scientific papers and is an inventor on >50 issued US patents covering oligonucleotide technologies.

Mark Edbrooke, Ph. D., has oligonucleotide experience spanning over two decades at AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and as an independent consultant. After earning his PhD in molecular biology from the University of London, he ran a transnational gene interference department at GSK that generated target identification and validation data for all therapeutic areas across the company. He founded and led the Discovery Performance Unit (DPU) within GSK focused on the development of therapeutic siRNAs and on therapeutic antisense oligonucleotides. He then joined AstraZeneca, where he worked on alliances with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Regulus Therapeutics and Moderna Therapeutics.

Masad Damha, an advisor at Deep Genomics, is a Distinguished James McGill Professor of Chemistry with over 35 years of experience in nucleic acid drug discovery and development.  His research group at McGill University focuses on synthesis and structural analyses of chemically modified oligonucleotides directed toward biomedical and diagnostic applications. 

His 200+ publications and dozens of patents issued have been widely cited and used in both fundamental sciences and oligonucleotide based therapeutic applications. Masad is the recipient of several awards from the Canadian Society for Chemistry, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (Governor General of Canada), and McGill’s Fessenden Professorship in Science Innovation. He has recently served as President of the International Society of Nucleosides, Nucleotides, Nucleic Acids, and of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society.    

Masad graduated from McGill with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry (1983) and then a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry (1988) under the mentorship of Kelvin K. Ogilvie developing methods for the chemical synthesis of RNA and its analogues. 

Steven F. Dowdy, an advisor at Deep Genomics, specializes in the development of RNA therapeutics and in oligonucleotide delivery systems. He serves as a Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at University of California at San Diego School of Medicine His lab is focused on the molecular details of delivery of RNA therapeutics across the endosomal lipid bilayer and the synthesis of endosomal escape domains to overcome this rate-limiting billion year old barrier, and was the first to synthesize bioreversible, charge neutralizing phosphotriester backbone RNAi prodrug triggers that avoids kidney clearance, increases metabolic stability and enhances endosomal escape. 

Previously, Steven was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator for 18 years (1994-2012) and an Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis (1994-2001). He first started advising biotech and pharmaceutical companies when he was a graduate student and currently sits on five SABs.  Steven is a thrice-elected member of the Board of Directors of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society (OTS). 

He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from UC Irvine working on tumor suppressor genes, and performed his postdoctoral fellowship at MIT working on the biochemistry of the Rb tumor suppressor gene.

Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Facebook and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of Facebook AI Research and of the NYU Center for Data Science. He received an Engineering Diploma from ESIEE (Paris) and a PhD from Sorbonne Université. After a postdoc in Toronto he joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1988, and AT&T Labs in 1996 as Head of Image Processing Research. He joined NYU as a professor in 2003 and Facebook in 2013. His interests include AI machine learning, computer perception, robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Turing Award (with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio) for "conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing", a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Benjamin Neale is an associate professor in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he directs the Genomics of Public Health Initiative. He is also an associate professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an institute member at the Broad Institute. He co-leads the ADHD Initiative, a collaborative effort that focuses on genomic studies with the Broad Institute, is an active member of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) steering committee and analysis committee, and currently co-chair of the International Common Disease Alliance Maps Workgroup.In addition to many local research collaborations, Benjamin serves as advisor and analyst to international genetic research consortia on psychiatric diseases.

Benjamin has worked with many different international consortia, including the International Inflammatory Bowel Disease Genetics Consortium, GiANT and the Global Lipids Genomics Consortium. He has served as a statistical advisor to analysts in other PGC working groups including addictions, autism, cross-disorder, TS/OCD and schizophrenia groups. 

Benjamin holds a B.Sc. in genetics from the University of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Ph.D. in human genetics from King’s College in London, UK. Neale completed his postdoctoral training in Daly’s Laboratory at MGH. 

Brendan Frey is an internationally acclaimed entrepreneur, engineer and scientist. He is Founder, CEO and Chief Engineer of Deep Genomics and he co-founded the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Brendan made fundamental contributions in the fields of deep learning, genomic medicine, and information technology. He co-authored over 200 papers in these areas, including over a dozen that appeared in Nature, Science and Cell and were on multiple occasions highlighted on the front covers of those magazines. His work with Geoffrey Hinton on the 'wake-sleep algorithm' helped to launch the field of deep learning (Science 1995). His work on deep learning and on factor graphs forms the foundation of thousands of products used world-wide; for example, the WiFi telecommunications standard is based on an algorithm that Brendan co-invented.

Brendan was a pioneer in developing AI systems that could accurately predict normal and pathological cell and genome biology, facilitating biomedical breakthroughs. This work led to the discovery of new biology, the founding of Deep Genomics in 2015, the first AI system for predicting pathogenic mutations and identifying therapeutic targets, and the development of new therapeutic candidates for patients with genetic disorders. 

Brendan is Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Toronto and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Brendan has advised the leadership of Microsoft Research on machine learning and deep learning technology, and he was a member of its Technical Advisory Board. He has held numerous researcher and professor positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cambridge University in England, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the University of Waterloo.

Brendan received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1997.

Chip Baird is Chief Financial Officer at 2Seventy Bio (Nasdaq: TSVT), a commercial stage oncology cell therapy company. Prior to 2Seventy, Chip previously served as CFO for Bluebird Bio, Amicus Therapeutics, and PTC Therapeutics. Chip has more than 20 years of experience leading innovative biotech companies and also serves as a Director of Axcella Health. 

Adam is a partner at True Ventures. 

Prior to True Venture, Adam worked with True portfolio company B-Stock, an online marketplace for liquidating excess inventory, and initially joined the True Ventures team as an analyst in 2010.

Adam graduated magna cum laude from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s degree in finance. As an undergraduate, he launched and ran an independent, donation-based record label and later created “Digital Frontiers,” a course exploring how the internet and technology are changing the global business landscape, which he taught at the University of Florida. 

Maryanna Saenko is a co-founder of Future Ventures, an early-stage Venture Capital firm that invests in frontier technologies across diverse industries. She has an interest in robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, aerospace, and the future of food. 

Previously she was at Khosla Ventures, and prior to that at DFJ, where she focused on frontier technology investments. Maryanna was also an investment partner at Airbus Ventures where she led a series of venture investments strategically aligned with Airbus’ future-of-aerospace initiatives. Before Airbus, Maryanna was a consultant at Lux Research and a research engineer at Cabot Corporation.

Maryanna graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.S. in BioMedical Engineering and a B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering.

Matt was one of the founding employees of Deep Genomics and most recently served as Head of Finance and Business Operations. In his tenure, Matt established and scaled the finance, legal, and HR functions, helped build out the leadership team, and played a lead role in crafting and operationalizing the company's strategy. His contributions also included successfully closing the company’s Series A, B and C financings, as well as the partnership with BioMarin.  Prior to joining Deep Genomics, he spent several years as a marine microbiologist and worked in intellectual property law.

Matt received his J.D. and MBA from the University of Toronto with an emphasis on biotechnology, entrepreneurship, and strategy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he studied the genomes of soil bacteria using novel sequencing technologies.

Nessan (Ness) Bermingham, Ph.D., is Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he focuses on life science companies involving nucleic acids, novel delivery systems, gene and cell therapy, novel target identification and data analytics. He is a serial biotech entrepreneur and investor, most notably having founded Intellia Therapeutics, Korro Bio and Liberate Bio. Ness was President and CEO of Intellia from its inception in 2014 until 2017, and during that time he led the company through partnering deals, financings and an IPO in 2016. Ness has held investment roles at Atlas Venture and Omega Fund Management and is Chair of F-star, Executive Chair of Korro Bio, and Executive Chair of Stylus Medicine.

Jacqueline (Jackie) Fok, Ph.D., is an Investment Vice President at SoftBank Vision Fund, focused on life sciences and health tech. She has over 10 years’ experience in the life sciences industry and was previously an investor at IP Group and a scientist in the Oncology R&D unit at AstraZeneca.

Dion Madsen has more than 25 years of experience working with innovative startups and major public companies and is the co-founder and Partner at Amplitude Ventures. 

Prior to this, he was Senior Managing Partner of the Healthcare Venture Fund at BDC Capital where the fund built two billion-dollar Canadian companies showcasing the potential of Canadian innovation. He started his venture career with RBC Capital Partners’ and moved to San Francisco in 2002 to expand RBCs platform, he was recruited to lead Unilever’s Corporate venture fund in the USA and founded and was managing director of Physic Ventures, a pioneering investor in consumer driven health.  Dion is a founding member of the C100 – a group of the leading Canadians in Silicon Valley.

Dion received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan and is a C.F.A. charterholder.