Big VCs Join Xconomy in San Diego to Discuss Big Data, Big Biology

Photo by Teresa LoJacono

In the Boston office of GE Ventures, managing director Alex de Winter is overseeing investments in companies like Veracyte, which is applying machine learning to genomic sequencing technology to help doctors distinguish benign growths from cancer.

At Intel Capital in the Bay Area, investment director Ranjeet Alexis is an expert in bioinformatics who is scouting for deals at the intersection of computation, healthcare, and the life sciences. His investments include Synthego, a provider of technology used in CRISPR genome editing and research.

Then there is Amir Nashat, a Boston-based partner at Polaris Partners, whose firm’s life sciences portfolio includes Freenome, a San Francisco-based healthtech company applying machine learning to test patient blood samples for lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers. Nashat also serves as a director on the boards of San Diego’s aTyr Pharma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]), Fate Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:FATE]]), and Metacrine.

We are bringing these three venture investors together in San Diego as part of the Xconomy Forum on Big Data Meets Big Biology. We’ve invited them to offer their insights on the convergence of healthcare with advanced information technologies like machine learning and predictive software—and to explain how IT is being applied in healthcare and the life sciences. We plan to ask them about the trends they see as IT and healthcare come together, and why they invested in companies like Syapse, Freenome, and Synthego.

Nashat, de Winter, and Alexis also will be part of a broader discussion that includes the use of blockchain technologies in healthcare and genomics R&D, how IBM Watson is being used in studies of healthy aging, and how to scale a startup as it begins to incorporate massive amounts of data in its business.

Join the conversation at Xconomy’s half-day forum, beginning at 1:30 pm on Thursday, April 26 at the Illumina Theater at The Alexandria. Xconomy’s early bird discount ends at midnight, so register today and save $70.

Confirmed speakers include:

—Robin Thurston, CEO, Helix
—Jean Balgrosky, CIO, MintHealth
—Dawn Barry, Co-founder & President, Luna DNA
—Scot Chisholm, Co-founder & CEO, Classy
—Eduardo Esquenazi, Co-founder & Chairman, Sirenas
—Nik Schork, Professor and Director of Human Biology, J. Craig Venter Institute
—Tajana Šimunić Rosing, UCSD Center for Healthy Aging and IBM Watson Health Partner
—Steffanie Strathdee, Associate Dean of Global Health, UCSD Medical School and Professor of Epidemiology, Director, UCSD Global Health Institute
—Doug Winter, Co-founder & CEO, Seismic
—Alex de Winter, Managing Director, GE Ventures
—Amir Nashat, Managing Partner, Polaris Partners
—Ranjeet Alexis, Senior Director, Intel Capital

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.