Bay Area Frontier Research Club #16 | AI x Bio Track Launch (dinner + paper discussion @ Stanford University)

Introducing the Frontier Research Club Life-Sciences Track.
Modern biology has become a computational science. Virtual cells, single-cell genomics, protein and molecule design, AI-driven drug discovery — the questions that used to take a lab a decade are being reframed by people who read a genome the way engineers read a codebase. This track puts the researchers doing that work in one room with the founders building on it and the investors backing it.
Same bar as every FRC session: concrete work, real methods and results, short talks so most of the night goes to questions and critique. What's new is the subject — biology at single-letter resolution, argued over dinner.

The Frontier Research Club is a curated forum for rigorous, technical discussion at the frontier of AI. We convene researchers from the frontier labs, Stanford, Berkeley, and the teams building in production to examine concrete work — papers, methods, and results — with a bias toward assumptions, evaluation methodology, failure modes, and what would count as convincing evidence.
Each session features 2–3 talks selected for rigor and discussion value. Presentations are intentionally brief so the majority of time is reserved for questions and critique. Papers and supporting materials are shared in advance to ensure a high-baseline conversation.

Agenda
5:30pm: Doors open
5:30pm – 6:30pm: Networking + light dinner
6:30pm – 8:00pm: Research presentations + discussion
8:00pm – 8:30pm: Networking

Presenters & topics
Talk 1: Repairing a Broken Molecular Machine in Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death worldwide, and more than 80% of cases trace back to a single broken molecular machine — the destruction complex that normally keeps cell growth in check. Despite thirty years of study, there's still no approved drug for this pathway.
This talk shows how the team mapped that machine at single-letter resolution with state-of-the-art genome editing, then used careful biochemistry to uncover a hidden logic: in cancer cells, the very protein the machine is meant to destroy becomes the glue holding it together. Tuning the binding affinities between its components repaired the broken complex and slowed cancer-cell growth — a reminder that the most actionable therapeutic ideas often come from mechanism-first research.
Ganesh Pusapati, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist in Stanford's Department of Biochemistry (Rohatgi Lab), studying how cells interpret signals and how those systems fail in cancer. He co-led the July 2026 Nature Genetics study mapping the WNT/β-catenin destruction complex, with prior work in Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics.

Talk 2: TBA

Want to present your work?
If you have a research paper you’d like to discuss at one of our next sessions, please submit it for consideration.

Submit your paper here!

Who should attend
Experimental researchers
Computational scientists across domains (bio/chem/materials/climate/neuro/physics)
Research engineers + lab automation people
Folks building tools for literature review, experiment planning, robotics, simulation, or scientific data
Capacity is limited.

We will take photos and short video clips for event recap and promotion. By attending, you consent to being photographed and recorded, and to the use of those images and clips by the organizers on social media and other event marketing channels.

🌐 Connect with Frontier Research Club
Luma Calendar: luma.com/frontiersyndicate
YouTube: youtube.com/@FrontierResearchClub
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/frontier-research-club
Instagram: @frontierresearchclub
Email: kristopher@frontiersyndicate.vc

Hosted by
Frontier Syndicate is a venture community connecting frontier tech researchers, builders, and investors through curated convenings and early-stage capital. Across the Bay Area, we host a recurring series of research forums, builder nights, and intimate investor dinners — and back exceptional companies emerging from the labs, communities, and technical networks we convene.

Hexo Labs is a neolab for recursive self-improving AI. Their open-source SIA framework is the first to update both the harness AND the model weights of a task-specific agent in the same self-improvement loop — clearing state-of-the-art results across multiple domain benchmarks. Hexo backs the broader research community through grants and direct collaboration on hard problems in science and engineering.