high-throughput-screening
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Helena Mancebo
Helena Mancebo is the founder and CEO of Multispan, Inc., a Hayward, California biotech she has run for more than 20 years. She built a company around G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) - still among the most prolific class of drug targets - and grew it into a maker of the industry's largest collection of highly characterized human GPCR cell lines and 1,600-plus assay tools. A Yale-trained immunologist and geneticist, she pairs hard cell biology with a service obsession: next-day assay turnaround, native receptor pharmacology, and a culture built on empathy, integrity, and productivity. In 2023 Multispan's cell engineering and assay services were folded into Avantor's catalog; in 2025 she partnered with AI-automation firm Synfini to push GPCR drug discovery forward.
Shawn Manchester
Shawn Manchester is the CEO of Triplebar, an Emeryville-and-Oakland based biotech building generative AI 'genome language models' paired with ultra-high-throughput phenotypic screening to slash the cost of biologic therapeutics and food proteins. A chemical engineer by training (BS Brown, PhD MIT), he was the lead scientist in the first AI-versus-human strain engineering contest at Zymergen before joining Triplebar in 2021, where he rose from VP of Product to COO to CEO in March 2025.
Swamy Vijayan
Swamy Vijayan is the CEO and cofounder of Zafrens, a San Diego biotech reinventing drug discovery by shrinking a 96-well plate down to 200,000 microwells that image and sequence single cells at once. A physicist by training who admits he was driven less by a love of biology than by dissatisfaction with theoretical physics, he is a serial founder whose previous company Omniome sold to Pacific Biosciences for up to $800 million. His stated goal is not a quick exit but a foundation for smart people to do important things for the next 100 years.