CALS Innovation Day - Keynote Address by Gerald Chan

Keynote: The Democratization of Innovation and Its Role in University Education Grant-supported scientific research conducted in universities has been the breeding ground for spawning technology-based innovation. While this continues to be the case, in certain fields, the barrier to entry for innovation has been lowered sufficiently for student-led innovation to become possible. As AI democratizes the accessibility to knowledge, innovation should have a heavier weighting in the undergraduate curriculum. About our keynote speaker Gerald Chan is a scientist who cofounded Morningside, a venture investment enterprise that works on technology-based startups. Working with academic scientists, he started over two dozen biotech companies across diverse therapeutic areas. In a number of cases, these companies opened up entirely new fields of medicine such as diseases arising from mitochondrial dysfunction or dysregulation of the innate immune system. Gerald is the chairman of Nasdaq-listed biotechnology company Apellis Pharmaceuticals. He is also a board member of several privately held biotech companies. In healthcare delivery, Gerald has started a number of companies which use AI to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare. These include Linus Health whose AI assessment of cognition is sensitive enough to detect cognitive impairment in subjects who are pre-symptomatic by clinical standard, Cognoa which renders fast and accurate diagnosis for subjects on the autism spectrum, and Ieso which uses agentic AI to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy. He is a trustee of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and a member of the Dean’s Board of Advisors of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He chairs the Advisory Committee of Emory University’s Center for Innovative and Affordable Medicine, and was the past chair of the Innovation Advisory Committee of the Wellcome Trust in London. Gerald received his BS and MS degrees in engineering from UCLA, his Master’s degree in medical radiological physics, and Doctor of Science degree in radiation biology from Harvard University. He received his post-doctoral training in the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has been honored with honorary degrees from eight universities and was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary fellowship in the British Academy of Social Sciences. In 2019, he gave the Andrew Carnegie Lecture at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and held a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge University. In 2025, he gave the Inaugural Dean’s Distinguished Lecture at the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, University of California, Berkeley and the Inaugural McKay Lecture at University of Michigan.