PNNL

We are proud to announce the second Predictive Phenomics conference organized by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and University of Washington to be held on September 22–23, 2026 in Washington, DC. The theme of the 2026 conference is Advances in Microbial Design using AI and Automation

The conference will consist of keynotes, invited talks, poster sessions, panels, and a forum for scientists to present research on approaches to study the molecular basis of biological function with a vision to better understand and predict how genomes interact with their environment to produce phenomes. We expect up to around 200 attendees who specialize in pushing predictive phenomics forward via state-of-the-art technologies, automation for microbial phenotyping and design, and AI for microbial design and engineering function.

Conference Topics

High-throughput (HTP) Workflows for Microbial Phenotyping: Integration of measurements with HTP experimentation through scheduling and provenance tracking across instruments.

Automating Platforms with AI: AI approaches, data models, and pipelines to connect experimental platforms with AI for microbial phenotyping and design.

Autonomous Experimentation Through Self-driving Laboratories: Integration of robotics, agentic AI and laboratory information systems for autonomous strain design-build-learn-test cycles.

AI-guided Protein Engineering: Models and automated platforms for enzyme and protein variant design.

AI-guided Pathway Engineering: Multi-omics and phenotypic measurement integration for AI-driven pathway engineering.

Predictive Models for Microbial Engineering: AI models for strain optimization, community interactions, or robust conditions for optimizing phenotype. 

Invited Speakers

• Dorothy Koch (Tentative) - Associate Director for Biological and Environmental Research, 
  Department of Energy's Office of Science
• Michelle O'Malley - Professor and Interim Chair of Bioengineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Paul Jensen-  Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan
• Arvind Ramanathan - Computational Science Leader 1, Argonne National Laboratory
• David Weston - Staff Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Planning Committee

Dr. Bobbie-Jo Webb-Robertson, Division Director, Chief Scientist, PNNL

Dr. Katrina Waters, Laboratory Fellow, Chief Scientist, PNNL

Dr. Kristin E. Burnum-Johnson, Science Group Leader for Functional and Systems Biology, PNNL

Dr. Hector Garcia Martin, Staff Scientist, Berkeley Lab

Dr. James Carothers, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Co-Director of the UW Center for Synthetic Biology University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Dr. Dionysios A. Antonopoulos, Division Director, BIO EVS, Argonne National Laboratory