Minds, Medicine & Machines: AI and the Future of Healthcare

Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD

General Partner, Bio + Health Investing Team, Andreessen Horowitz

Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) where she leads investments for the firm’s bio + health fund across biotech, life sciences software, and digital health, with a focus on companies leveraging unique technologies and datasets to advance drug development, personalized medicine, and innovation in patient care delivery.

Prior to joining a16z, Vineeta held many different roles in the healthcare space: as a physician taking care of patients; as an operator at healthtech startups; and as a venture investor on the GV (Google Ventures) life sciences team. She has been a data scientist; a management consultant for biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device clients at McKinsey & Co; and a Director of Product Management at Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche), where she led the company’s partnership with Foundation Medicine to integrate real-world clinical and genomic data into national-scale data products to accelerate research and development in oncology. She has conducted academic research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Broad Institute, where she did graduate work in computational biology and human genetics.

Vineeta holds a B.S. in biophysics from Stanford University, and MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School / MIT. She completed her clinical residency at Stanford, and is board certified in internal medicine. Vineeta continues to see patients at Stanford as an adjunct clinical professor in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health.

Vineeta serves on several portfolio company boards, including Amber Bio, BigHat Biosciences, Gate Bio, GC Therapeutics, knownwell, Orbital Therapeutics, Pearl Health, Pomelo Care, Rezo Therapeutics, Thyme Care, and Waymark. She also serves on the board of Tenet Healthcare and is currently Board Chair at the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

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Jonathan Chen, MD, PhD

Director for Medical Education in Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University School of Medicine

Jonathan H. Chen MD, PhD leads a research group to empower individuals with the collective experience of the many, combining human and artificial intelligence approaches to deliver better care than either alone. Dr. Chen continues to practice medicine for the concrete rewards of caring for real people and to inspire this research focused on discovering and distributing the latent knowledge embedded in clinical data.

Before his medical training, Chen co-founded a company to translate his Computer Science graduate work into an expert system for organic chemistry, with applications from drug discovery to an education tool for students around the world. His expertise is regularly featured in popular press outlets with over 100 publications in leading clinical and informatics venues and awards from the NIH, National Library of Medicine, American Medical Informatics Association, International Brotherhood of Magicians and more.

In the face of ever escalating complexity in medicine, informatics solutions are the only credible approach to systematically address challenges in healthcare. Tapping into real-world clinical data like electronic medical records with machine learning and data analytics will reveal the community's latent knowledge in a reproducible form. By delivering this back to clinicians, patients, and healthcare systems as clinical decision support, he aims to uniquely close the loop on a continuously learning health system.

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Pooja Malik, CFA

Founding Partner, Chief Investment Officer, Nipun Capital, L.P.

Pooja Malik is Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Nipun Capital - a specialized asset management firm focused on Emerging Markets and Asian equities. She brings over 20 years of asset management experience to the Nipun team and her areas of focus are portfolio management and research.

Prior to Nipun, Pooja was a Managing Director at Barclays Global Investors (BGI)/BlackRock in the Active/Scientific Equities group, where she led teams that managed various long-only and long-short portfolios in excess of $100 billion for institutional investors. As the co-head of the North American investment teams, she led all aspects of portfolio management and research for U.S. Small Cap and Canadian strategies as well as shared responsibility for U.S. Large Cap strategies. At BGI/BlackRock, she co-headed the largest investment team within the Active/Scientific Equities group. Before focusing on portfolio management, Pooja was active in research for the Asian strategies. Pooja worked at BGI from Feb 2001-Dec 2010. Prior to that, she worked at ICICI Bank (1997-1999), India’s largest private bank where she managed a loan portfolio.

Pooja is an award-winning thought leader and regular speaker on Bloomberg Asia Day Break and at 100 Women in Finance events. Her numerous coveted awards include Hedge Fund Rising Star 2015, by Institutional Investor; Best Female Hedge Fund Manager, 2016, Eurekahedge; and Tomorrow’s Titan: 2016, by Ernst & Young with Hedge Fund Journal. Pooja is passionate about encouraging and supporting women in asset management. Pooja has been an outspoken advocate for advancing women’s careers and most recently in 2021, she co-founded the California chapter of the Bloomberg Women’s Buy Side Network.

Pooja graduated from Delhi University and received an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst charterholder and has most recently earned CFA’s certificate in ESG Investing in 2022.

: pooja-malik-nipun

Janine Sengstack, PhD

Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Junevity

Janine Sengstack, Ph.D., is a cell biologist and entrepreneur advancing therapeutics for age-related diseases. She co-founded Junevity in 2023 to develop novel siRNA therapeutics for transcription factors, securing over $10 million in venture capital seed funding. During her doctorate work in cellular aging at UC San Francisco (UCSF), Sengstack created the foundation for the Junevity RESET discovery platform to find novel transcription factor targets to reverse aging in human cells. She was a finalist in the Nucleate Activator Program, receiving the Scientific Excellence Award. Sengstack was a Hillblom graduate fellow and received funding support from Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. She graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with her Bachelor of Science in biology, summa cum laude.

At Junevity, Sengstack leads development of the RESET discovery platform from concept through siRNA candidate nomination for clinical development. Her work to date includes promising programs in metabolism and neurodegenerative diseases. She leads a team of scientists and participates in every part of growing the company, including fundraising and business development. Sengstack is a frequent speaker at conferences and podcasts about Junevity, the science of transcription factors and longevity, and inspiring the next generation of scientists and founders.

: janine-sengstack

Karan Singhal

Head of Health AI, Open AI

Karan Singhal is Health AI Team Lead at OpenAI, where he leads efforts to develop large language models for healthcare applications with a focus on expanding access to medical expertise and ensuring safety in high-stakes clinical settings. His work centers on advancing reliable, aligned AI systems that can support better health outcomes at scale.

Prior to OpenAI, Karan was a Staff Research Scientist at Google, where he co-led teams working on medical AI, foundation models, and representation learning. He played a key role in the development of Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM 2—large language models designed for medical question answering—which were deployed via Google Cloud and featured in leading publications including Nature, Scientific American, and The Economist.

Karan’s research spans biomedical AI, AI safety, and large-scale machine learning systems, with publications in top academic venues such as Nature, NeurIPS, and ICLR. He has also contributed to advancing AI education, co-founding and teaching Stanford University’s first course on AI for Social Good.

He holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.

: karan1149