Speakers
Keynote speaker
Chris Gibson, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion, a leading clinical stage TechBio company leveraging the latest in automation and AI to decode biology to radically improve lives. Chris developed the technology behind Recursion’s approach as part of his graduate work in the lab of Dr. Dean Li (currently President of Merck Research Labs) at the University of Utah and launched the company in 2013. Now, he has built Recursion into a global AI drug discovery powerhouse with offices in Salt Lake City, New York City, London, Oxford, Toronto, Montreal and the Bay Area; an industry-leading proprietary biological and chemical dataset; the most powerful supercomputer in pharma; active partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi and Roche and Genentech; and a robust pipeline of clinical-stage assets in oncology and rare disease.
Chris is dedicated to supporting the next generation of founders. He serves on the Board of BioHive, the public-private partnership driving expansion of Utah's life-science ecosystem. In 2020, he established Altitude Lab, an incubator for healthcare startups, and serves on Altitude’s Board. In 2025, he launched the Chris and Summer Gibson Fellowship to support underrepresented and first-time founders as they transition from academia to entrepreneurship, and the Altitude Lab Fund, a pre-seed venture fund dedicated to supporting the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry. He is also active as an advisor and mentor, both formally and informally, to many biotech founders.
Chris is a graduate of Rice University with degrees in bioengineering and management.