Four Nobel Laureates will lead the over 30 distinguished prize winners at the 2027 Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC 2027) (January 27-29, in Santa Clara, California). Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, will receive the PMWC’s inaugural J. Craig Venter Visionary Award for pioneering the CRISPR-CAS9 genome editing technology. She is the Founding, Scientific and Managing Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin.
In addition, 16 Pioneer Awards and 21 Luminary Awards will be presented to outstanding scientists. The PMWC Pioneer Awards are given to venerable individuals whose foresight and ground-breaking contributions to precision medicine propelled the movement in earlier years, allowing it to gain momentum to evolve into the standard of care that it is becoming today. The PMWC Luminary Awards recognize the recent contributions of prominent figures who have accelerated precision medicine into the clinic. See below for the 2027 PMWC Pioneer and Luminary Award winners. You may register for the can’t miss 2027 PMWC conference here.
PMWC Pioneer Awards
Randy Schekman, PhD, UC Berkeley, 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the machinery that regulates vesicle transport—how cells organize, package, and deliver cargo such as proteins and hormones, and Thomas Christian Südhof, MD, Stanford, 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work revealing the molecular machinery of synaptic transmission, are among the 15 scientists selected for 2027 PMWC Pioneer Awards. Famed geneticist Mary-Claire King, PhD, University of Washington, will also receive a PMWC Pioneer Award for her work locating the BRCA1 gene and founding the field of inherited cancer genetics. See below for the additional 12 Pioneer Award winners and 20 Luminary Awardees.
Additional Pioneer Awards
Christian Behrenbruch, PhD, CEO, Telix Pharma, is recognized for leading the development and commercialization of Illuccix, helping doctors locate prostate cancer and identify patients eligible for targeted radioligand therapy.
Jay Bradner, MD, EVP R&D, Amgen, is awarded for pioneering chemical biology and targeted protein degradation for precision therapeutics. He is responsible for advancing Amgen’s pipeline, which includes potential first-in-class or best-in-class medicines in all stages of development across the company’s four therapeutic areas of focus: oncology, inflammation, general medicine, and rare disease, in addition to biosimilars. He is also responsible for Amgen’s worldwide research efforts. He also has been a clinician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded and built several biotechnology startups.
Lieping Chen, MD, PhD ,Professor, Yale, is honored for discovering PD-L1, paving the way for modern cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Chen is one of the founding figures of modern cancer immunotherapy, whose work gave oncology both a new class of treatment and a way to identify patients most likely to benefit. In 1999, his laboratory discovered B7-H1, now also known as PD-L1, and established the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway as a mechanism by which tumors evade immune attack. This work helped lay the foundation for checkpoint blockade, part of the cancer immunotherapy revolution named Science’s 2013 Breakthrough of the Year. Chen went on to co-initiate the first-in-human clinical trial of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade in 2006 and pioneered PD-L1 tumor staining as a predictive biomarker, work that informed FDA approvals and helped redefine treatment across multiple cancers. His contributions began even earlier with foundational work showing that B7-CD28/CTLA-4 family molecules could be manipulated to strengthen antitumor immunity.
Wendy Chung, MD, PhD, Chief, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard, is recognized for pioneering rare disease genomics and newborn sequencing for earlier diagnosis. She has identified the genetic basis for more than 60 novel human Mendelian conditions and has helped define how genomic discovery can be translated into clinical care for children with rare and complex disorders. Her work has also been central to the implementation of genomic medicine at scale, including major efforts in autism and rare neurogenetic disease through SPARK and Simons Searchlight.
Daniel Drucker, MD, Senior Investigator, Sinai Health System, is awarded for pioneering GLP-1 and GLP-2 biology powering modern metabolic medicine. In his lab, Dr. Drucker studies the action of peptide hormones that regulate multiple aspects of metabolism. His lab has carried out basic science supporting the development of two new classes of therapies for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, new medicines for obesity, and a new therapy for patients with short bowel syndrome requiring parenteral nutrition.
John D. Halamka, MD, Professor, Mayo Clinic, is honored for advancing healthcare informatics from national strategy to scalable AI-enabled clinical data platforms. For over 40 years, Dr. Halamka, has been dedicated to the technology and policy that enable information exchange among clinical, educational and administrative stakeholders. In particular, Dr. Halamka is focused on bringing people together for multidisciplinary collaboration and career development at all levels. He works across government, academia and industry to form consortia that accelerate progress in informatics and patient care. As Dwight and Dian Diercks President of the Mayo Clinic Platform, Dr. Halamka is currently collaborating with Young J. Juhn, MD, MPH, on research addressing algorithmic bias. This work has profound implications for artificial intelligence (AI) research and health equity and is a high priority of the Mayo Clinic Platform and Mayo Clinic as a whole. Before transitioning to Mayo Clinic, he served as a professor at Harvard Medical School for 25 years.
Samir Hanash, MD, PhD, Professor, MD Anderson, has research interests in cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. His group’s discoveries are based on deep profiling of plasmas for diagnostics and tumor cells for therapeutics. Each biospecimen that’s profiled for discovery results in enough data to fill a laptop. Discovery is followed by due diligence to identify the most promising biomarkers for diagnostics and most promising targets for therapeutics. Much of the group’s discoveries are based on mass spectrometry for proteomic, metabolomic, and immunomic profiling of plasma and for identifying therapeutic targets in tumor cells based on in-depth analysis of the surfaceome, secretome, exosomes, nucleome, immunoproteome, phosphoproteome, glycoproteome, cryptoproteome and PTMOme.
David Holtzman, MD, is recognized for pioneering amyloid and tau biology for biomarker-driven Alzheimer’s prevention. Dr. Holtzman is one of the defining figures in Alzheimer’s disease research. His work established key foundations of the disease biology that now underpin biomarker-driven detection and therapeutic development, including the role of apolipoprotein E in amyloid-beta metabolism and in tau-mediated neurodegeneration, the role of the innate and adaptive immune response in neurodegeneration, and the influence of the sleep-wake cycle on amyloid accumulation and tau-mediated injury.
Eric Lander, PhD, Founding Director and Core Institute Member, Broad Institute, is awarded for helping launch genomic medicine through the Human Genome Project and Broad Institute. Dr. Lander is one of the defining leaders of modern genomics. A mathematician, geneticist, and molecular biologist, he was a leader of the international Human Genome Project and head of its largest sequencing center, and helped build the genomic foundation on which variant interpretation, rare disease diagnosis, and genomic medicine now rest. As founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dr. Lander created one of the world’s most influential engines for biomedical discovery, uniting genomics, computation, biology, and medicine at scale.
Fei-Fei Li, PhD, Professor, Stanford, is recognized for creating ImageNet, accelerating modern computer vision and deep learning. Dr. Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and a Founding Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. In industry, Dr. Li has served as a Vice President at Google and Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud (2017-2018), board member or advisor in various public or private companies (notably Twitter). She is currently a Co-Founder/CEO of World Labs, an AI company focusing on Spatial Intelligence and generative AI.
Alexandre Loupy, MD, PhD, Professor of Nephrology and Head of the PITOR Institute, APHP – UPC – Inserm,is awarded for developing iBox and redefining transplant rejection through data-driven pathology. He is an internationally recognized physician-scientist who has transformed how transplant rejection and long-term graft survival are characterized and predicted. He is at the head of the Paris Institute for Transplantation & Organ Regeneration, where he has built large, deeply characterized cohorts integrating clinical, biological, immunologic, histologic, and transcriptomic data. He led the development of iBox, a prediction system that combines kidney function, proteinuria, donor-specific antibodies, and biopsy findings to estimate an individual patient’s risk of kidney-allograft loss.
Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, Director of Translational Genetics, Johns Hopkins, is a pioneer in cancer genetics and multi-cancer early detection. At Johns Hopkins, he helped define the genetic basis of hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, now central to understanding mismatch repair defects and inherited cancer risk. He later helped lead the development of CancerSEEK, a blood-based multi-analyte test combining circulating tumor DNA mutations and protein biomarkers to detect multiple common cancers, including cancers with no routine screening option. As a senior leader of DETECT-A, he helped move multi-cancer early detection beyond technical promise into a prospective interventional screening study in nearly 10,000 asymptomatic women. His work has helped shift liquid biopsy from tumor profiling toward earlier detection, clinical localization, and real-world implementation, a central frontier in precision oncology.
Li-Huei Tsai, PhD, Picower Professor of Neuroscience, MIT, is recognized for pioneering gamma entrainment as a new path for precision neurology. Dr. Tsai pioneered the use of non-invasive sensory stimulation to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders. She is a recipient of the Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 Hans Wigzell Research Foundation Science Prize for her research on Alzheimer’s disease, and 2025 Distinguished Lecturer for Parkinson’s Disease Research, Helis Medical Research Foundations. In 2022, she was named a Visiting Professor of the Vallee Foundation.
PMWC Luminary Awards
Michael D, Abramoff, MD, PhD, is honored for pioneering autonomous AI diagnostics, bringing the first FDA-authorized autonomous AI system into clinical care.He is a computer engineer, fellowship-trained retina specialist, and neuroscientist. A Fellow of IEEE, and ARVO Gold Fellow, he is the Robert C. Watzke, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Iowa, with a joint appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He’s the Founder of Digital Diagnostics, the first in any field of medicine to get FDA authorization for an autonomous AI, as well as sustainable nationwide reimbursement, where AI makes a medical decision without human oversight.
David Baker, PhD, University of Washington, 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design, is among the 21 scientists selected for PMWC Luminary Awards. His lab develops software for protein design and uses it to create new molecules that address challenges in medicine, technology, and sustainability.
Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Metabolism and Endocrinology, UCSF. Dr. Jeff Bluestone is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor in the Diabetes Center at UCSF and a managing director of Vie Ventures. He served in various other roles over 25 years at UCSF, including as a member of the faculty, Founding Director of the Diabetes Center, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. He is an international leader in the field of immunotherapy and has published more than 500 papers focused on understanding the basic processes that control T-cell activation and immune tolerance in autoimmunity, organ transplantation, and cancer. His research has led to the development of the first FDA-approved drug that delays/prevents autoimmune Type 1 diabetes and the first FDA-approved checkpoint inhibitor for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and other cancers.
Sarah-Jane Dawson, MD, PhD, Professor, U. of Melbourne, is recognized for pioneering the clinical use of ctDNA to monitor treatment response, detect residual disease, and anticipate cancer relapse. Following postdoctoral studies at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, she returned to Melbourne in 2014 to head the Molecular Biomarkers and Translational Genomics Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Her current research interests are focused on the development of noninvasive blood-based biomarkers (“liquid biopsies”) for clinical application, including early detection, risk stratification, and disease monitoring in cancer management.
Joe DeRisi, PhD, Professor, UCSF, is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF and President at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub SF, a nonprofit research institute affiliated with UCSF, UCB, and Stanford. Dr. DeRisi specializes in infectious diseases, including viral, fungal, and parasitic microbes, in addition to autoimmune syndromes in humans. He is a member of the NAS, the NAM, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Victor Dzau, MD, President, National Academy of Medicine, is awarded for translating renin-angiotensin biology into life-saving ACE inhibitor therapies. As president of the National Academy of Medicine, he led major initiatives in precision health, human genome editing, clinician well-being, pandemic preparedness, global health, and equitable innovation. He previously served as Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University and President and CEO of Duke University Health System, and held senior academic leadership roles at Stanford and Harvard. In 2026, Dzau returned to Duke as James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Chancellor Emeritus for Health Affairs, and Director of the Mandel Center for Hypertension and Atherosclerosis. His career reflects the PMWC mission: turning science into systems that improve lives at scale worldwide today everywhere.
Rebecca Fitzgerald, OBE, FRS, FMedSci, Professor of Cancer Prevention; Director, Early Cancer Institute, and Head, Academic Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge, is honored for her work in cancer prevention and early detection. She is best known for developing Capsule Sponge or Cytosponge, the “sponge on a string” test for identifying Barrett’s esophagus and early esophageal cancer, providing a practical, less-invasive model for risk-based screening and reducing reliance on endoscopy. Her work has carried this technology across the full translational arc, from mechanistic and biomarker research through large randomized trials, NHS pilots, and large-scale population screening studies, setting a benchmark for how an early detection tool moves from concept to clinical implementation. As Director of the Early Cancer Institute at Cambridge, she has built a program focused on intercepting cancer at its earliest and most treatable stages.
Alexander Fleming, MD, Co-Founder & President, Kitalys Institute, is recognized for work to promote the translation of scientific advancements in healthy longevity into material, accessible improvements in public health. At the US Food and Drug Administration from 1986–98, Dr. Fleming was responsible for therapies related to nutrition; disorders of growth, development, and reproduction; diabetes and its complications; and other metabolic and endocrine diseases. He led reviews of landmark approvals including metformin and the first statin, insulin analog, PPAR-agonist, and growth hormone for non-GH deficiency indications. He helped shape FDA policies and practices related to therapeutic review and regulatory communication. He was a major contributor to FDA’s Good Review Practice (GRP) initiative and led the committee responsible for education and training at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). He conceived of and directed the first FDA pilot project to utilize the internet for regulatory communication.
Daphne Koller, PhD, CEO & Founder, Insitro, is awarded for building AI-driven platforms for computational biology and drug discovery. Insitro is a causal AI therapeutics company focused on discovering and advancing novel, transformative medicines. Dr. Koller was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. She was also co-CEO and President of Coursera and Chief Computing Officer of Calico Labs.
Adrian Krainer, PhD, Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, is recognized for developing the RNA-targeted medicine behind Spinraza for spinal muscular atrophy. Dr. Krainer’s lab at CSHL uses multidisciplinary approaches to elucidate pre-mRNA splicing mechanisms and alternative splicing regulation. An important goal is to apply this knowledge to uncover the roles of defective splicing in genetic diseases and cancer. The lab also uses antisense technology to develop novel therapeutics that target pre-mRNA or mRNA to modulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. One notable application—in collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Biogen—was the development of the antisense oligonucleotide nusinersen (Spinraza), which became the first approved drug for spinal muscular atrophy, a severe genetic disease that causes motor-neuron degeneration. Research from the Krainer lab has also implicated splicing alterations in cancer, and his lab is currently pursuing antisense-therapeutic approaches in the context of various cancers.
Frederick L. Locke, MD, Department Chair and Senior Member, Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy Program Leader, Cellular Immunotherapy, Moffitt Medical Group Program Leader, Immuno-Oncology Program, Moffitt Research Institute, Moffitt Cancer Center, is awarded for work that has helped shape the development and safe delivery of CAR T-cell therapy worldwide. As a leader of the pivotal clinical trials that established CAR T-cell therapy as a standard treatment for lymphoma, including ZUMA-1 and ZUMA-7, he has helped define the field’s understanding and management of its potentially life-threatening toxicities. Through collaborations spanning academia, industry, professional societies, and treatment centers, Dr. Locke has helped develop the evidence, standards, and best practices that have enabled cellular therapies to safely reach patients around the world.
Andrea Maier, MD, Director, NUS Academy for Healthy Longevity, National U. of Singapore, is awarded for advancing geroscience from aging biology to healthy longevity medicine. Her work focuses on translating the biology of aging into clinical practice to extend healthspan rather than prolong lifespan. She has led international cohort and intervention studies to understand aging mechanisms and apply them to prevention and care. Dr. Maier has shaped precision geromedicine as an organized field. She is the Founding President of the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society, Scientific Advisory Board member of the Biomarkers of Aging Consortium, and serves on the Board of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, placing her at the center of defining standards and direction for this emerging area.
Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, Mount Sinai,is recognized for defining macrophage and dendritic cell biology in cancer and inflammatory disease. Dr. Merad is Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai in New York. She is an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist and a leader in the fields of immunology and oncology. Her discoveries have reshaped immunology textbooks by revealing previously unrecognized complexity within the immune system and redefining its role in several major human diseases. She is particularly renowned for her pioneering research on macrophages and their contributions to cancer, inflammatory conditions, and age-associated diseases. Her laboratory now focuses on developing macrophage-targeted therapies to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases and to prevent age-related disorders.
David Miklos, MD, PhD, Chief of Stanford BMT and Cell Therapy Program, is a leading figure in cellular immunotherapy and central to the clinical development of CAR-T cell therapy. He led the trials supporting FDA approval of axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) in large B-cell lymphoma and brexucabtagene autoleucel (brexu-cel) in mantle cell lymphoma. He directs one of the largest cell therapy programs in the country, and his lab identified antigen loss as the major cause of CAR-T failure and pioneered circulating tumor DNA for lymphoma minimal residual disease. His work on the biology and safe management of CAR-T continues to make the therapy more precise and durable for patients.
Andrew Ng, PhD, Founder, DeepLearning.AI; Managing Partner, AI Aspire, Managing General Partner, AI Fund; Chairman and Co-Founder, Coursera; Adjunct Professor, Stanford University, DeepLearning.AI, is honored for scaling modern AI from research into real-world precision medicine applications. Dr. Ng is one of the most influential leaders in modern artificial intelligence and AI education. He was the founding lead of Google Brain and previously served as VP and Chief Scientist at Baidu, helping move deep learning from research into large-scale real-world use.
Ziad Obermeyer, MD, Chief Scientist, Dandelion Health, is honored for his work using machine learning to help doctors make better decisions, and help researchers make new discoveries—by “seeing” the world the way algorithms do. His efforts is work on algorithmic racial bias has impacted how many organizations build and use algorithms, and how lawmakers and regulators hold AI accountable. He is a cofounder of Nightingale Open Science and Dandelion Health, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was named an Emerging Leader by the National Academy of Medicine. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and continues to practice emergency medicine in underserved communities. He earned his MD at Harvard Medical School.
Aviv Regev, PhD, Head, Executive Vice President, Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), Genentech, is honored for shaping modern single-cell genomics and AI-driven drug discovery. She is responsible for the management of all aspects of gRED’s drug discovery and drug development activities. In addition, Dr Regev is a member of the Genentech Executive Committee and Board of Directors, and a member of the expanded Corporate Executive Committee for Roche. She also runs an active research lab focused on developing and applying experimental methods and computational algorithms to decipher intra- and intercellular circuits in cells in tissues. She is a founding co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas.
Katy Rezvani, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCPath Vice President and Melvyn N. Klein Family Endowed Director, Institute for Cell Therapy Discovery & Innovation Barnts Family Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research Professor of Medicine Medical Director, Stem Cell Transplant and GMP Laboratories, MD Anderson Cancer Center, is recognized for building translational CAR-NK cell therapy into a scalable immunotherapy platform. Dr. Rezvani is a pioneering physician-scientist whose work has helped define and advance the field of engineered natural killer cell therapy. She has driven the development of cord blood-derived, off-the-shelf NK cell platforms from early discovery through manufacturing and clinical translation, helping establish a new class of cellular immunotherapies and a platform with the potential to expand access, improve scalability, and reduce barriers to adoption. Her group provided the first clinical evidence that CAR NK cells can induce meaningful anti-tumor responses with a favorable safety profile, a landmark advance that helped accelerate the field’s growth. Her work has helped move engineered NK cell therapy from promising concept to clinical reality and has played an important role in shaping the future of scalable cell therapy. Through these contributions, Dr. Rezvani has helped broaden the impact of cellular immunotherapy and open new possibilities for patients.
Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, Director, Tumor Immunology, Cancer Center; Director, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, UCLA, is honored for helping shape modern cancer immunotherapy and its clinical translation. Dr. Ribas is a physician-scientist conducting laboratory and clinical translational research into how melanoma responds to or resists cancer immunotherapies, and developing gene engineered adoptive cell transfer therapies. He has been instrumental in the clinical development of several agents approved by the FDA, including the first anti-PD-1 pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the anti-CTLA-4 tremelimumab (Imjudo), as well as two combinations of BRAF and MEK inhibitors, vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and cobimetinib (Cotellic), and dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist). He is a past president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
Sarah Teichmann, PhD, FMedSci FRS, Chair in Stem Cell Medicine, U. of Cambridge, is recognized for co-founding the Human Cell Atlas, mapping human cells and tissues at scale. In 2016, she was appointed as the Head of the Cellular Genetics program at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and co-founded the Human Cell Atlas initiative. From April 2024, she was appointed chair in Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Cambridge, within the Department of Medicine and the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. Additionally, Dr. Teichmann dedicates part of her time to GlaxoSmithKline, is a non-executive director of 10x Genomics, and has co-founded two startup companies. The Teichmann lab focuses on developing and applying cell atlas technologies to understand human tissue architecture, particularly examining how cellular diversity is generated in the immune system and during development.
Henrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD, Professor, U. of Gothenburg, is a Professor of Neurochemistry in the UW Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin, the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and University College London, UK. He is also a Clinical Chemist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, and leads the UK DRI Fluid Biomarker Laboratory at UCL. His main research focus and clinical interest are fluid biomarkers for brain diseases, neurodegenerative diseases in particular. He has published more than 2800 scientific articles and received many awards.
Can’t-Miss Conference
This is a can’t-miss conference for anyone interested in the latest advances in the rapidly expanding field of precision medicine and, again, you may register here.