Transforming Care for Rare Diseases Through AI
Let’s make a difference for those living with rare diseases! Join our event to explore innovative solutions, team up with experts, and make a meaningful difference for millions. Your participation brings hope to those who need it most.

Event Recap
What’s waiting for you:
Expert Panel
What’s waiting for you:

JC Muyl
JC is a digital health executive with 30+ years of experience launching and scaling tech-enabled health startups. His work in rare disease includes co-founding MyRareData.com and Mental Health for Rare and serving on the board of Ben’s Friends. He focuses on leveraging digital health and AI to improve lives and create sustainable, patient-centered models.

Daniel Fletcher
Daniel Fletcher is Vice Chair for Bioengineering and the Purnendu Chatterjee Chair in Engineering Biological Systems and a professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. His research interests include optical and force microscopy, microfabrication, mechanical properties of cells. He is also the director for UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing economies.

Sadaf Ashtari

Natalia Vassilieva
Natalia is VP and Field CTO, ML at Cerebras Systems. She has decades of R&D experience in NLP, CV, ML and IR. Prior to Cerebras, Natalia was a Sr. Research Manager at Hewlett Packard Labs, where she led the Software and AI group in 2015-2019 and served as the head of HP Labs Russia in 2011-2015.

Laurel Crosby
Dr. Laurel Crosby, PhD, is the Director of Innovation at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. For over 25 years, her research has focused on developing technologies to improve diagnostic accuracyin healthcare, with a particular emphasis on idiopathic fatigue-related disorders and rare diseases that appear in adulthood.

David Apple
David Apple is the founder of Shark Tooth, a biotech dedicated to developing treatments for Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 1A (CMT1A), a rare genetic disease affecting 1.6M people, including his 4-year-old son. David is a 3x founder and was an early team member at prominent companies such as Notion and Typeform. David holds an MBA from Imperial College London and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.
Hackathon Mentors
Meet with our brilliant domain experts across many disciplines
Babak Rasolzadeh
AIML @ Apple | Product Leader | Startup Advisor | PhD in Computer Vision and Robotics
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Claudia Iriondo
Principal Machine Learning Scientist @ Genentech, Bioengineering PhD from UC Berkeley

Mohsen Hejrati
AI/ML Engineer at Apple. Previously Senior Director of AI at Genentech. Co-Founder at March.
Karthik Viswanathan
AI Solutions Lead at Cerebras Systems, expertise in Generative AI model development and deployment
Sadaf Ashtari
Associate Professor of Information Systems and Business Analytics at California State University-Sacramento
Zahra Hejrati
PhD in Management Science and Engineering with focus on entrepreneurship at Stanford University

Yahya Tabesh
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Sharif University of Technology. Visiting Professor Stanford University. Senior Fellow University of California, Berkeley.
We look forward to seeing you there! Grab your spot now!
Saturday, April 19th
10:00 AM - 7:30 PM PT
Berkeley, California

Hosts
Special thanks to our sponsors at Berkeley AMENA Center who made this event possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can attend the Hackathon?
This event welcomes everyone passionate about health and innovation. Whether you're a patient, caregiver, healthcare professional, researcher, technologist, developer, advocate, or policymaker.
What is the goal of the Hackathon?
The Hackathon is all about teamwork and innovation. Our main goal is to create solutions that improve the lives of those living with rare conditions.
How long is the Hackathon?
It’s a one-day event packed with collaboration, ideation, and impactful innovation.
Do I need to have a technical background to participate?
Not at all! Participants from all backgrounds are welcome. We believe that the best solutions come from bringing people with diverse perspectives.
How can I register for the event?
You can register online through our event page. Simply fill out the registration form to secure your spot.