(Event) Cambridge Wide Open Week: “Cambridge: Our New Frontier”

Cambridge Female Founders Network

June 12, 2025 – Cambridge

As part of Cambridge Wide Open Week, CFFN hosted two dynamic panels—The Synthetic Revolution and AI and the Future of Clinical Trials—at Cambridge Judge Business School. The sessions brought together founders and researchers working at the intersection of biotech, AI, and systems-level innovation to ask: how do we build a more predictive, preventative, and interdisciplinary future?

Moderated by Nicola Patron (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge), and James Thomas (Cambridge Angels), the conversations surfaced bold ideas and hard truths from those building the future of medicine, food systems, and health.

The panels sparked sharp insights and deep cross-disciplinary exchange—a reminder that we’re entering a new era where interdisciplinary teams, synthetic data, and AI-driven tools are reshaping health, agriculture, and beyond.

Discussion Highlights:

Clarisse Beurrier (Cellcraft): “We’re building Cellcraft with glass walls by design.” — a vision of transparency and public trust in cultivated meat.

Blanca Baez (DBounce): “If you can’t explain it, you can’t use it.” — on the role of interpretability and scientific communication in AI tools.

Irina Babina (Concr): “The next step is to try and get patients in earlier lines of therapy into clinical trials.”

Zoe Kourtzi (Prodromic): “AI can help build synthetic data, but we need real-world data before we go to patients.”

Agata Nyga (SynLaia Innovations): “We need trans-disciplinary teams in synthetic biology.”

Dr. Carina Kern (LinkGevity): Advocated for mechanistic models in biology and B2B licensing strategies to fast-track pharma partnerships and build investor confidence.

The future on display was one of convergence: between disciplines, between discovery and delivery, and between the people pushing innovation forward here in Cambridge.