Highlights from Benchtalk 2024

Unlocking the power of biotechnology is the mission that drives us forward here at Benchling. It’s also the thread woven through every session at our annual conference, Benchtalk. 

This year’s Benchtalk was our biggest ever, bringing together more than 750 lab scientists, R&D executives, IT leaders, and Benchling partners in Boston and London for learning, sharing industry best practices, and hands-on product training.

We kicked off the two-day conference in both locations by showing off exciting new Benchling functionality to power analysis, AI productivity, computation, and more. Then attendees moved into tailored sessions on industry hot topics and best practices, workshops on all things Benchling, live product demos, fireside chats, networking breaks, and even a chance to snap a photo with JeffyP. Read on for more highlights from Benchtalk 2024.

New Benchling functionality for AI, analysis, and beyond 

We’re constantly shipping new Benchling functionality, and every year at Benchtalk, our executive team and product experts announce some of our most-anticipated updates. Here's a recap of what we launched.

Benchling executives and product leaders announced new functionality on stage in a keynote to kick off Benchtalk in Boston and London.

Go from experiment to analyzed data in seconds with Benchling Analysis

Scientists need to be able to analyze data and gain insights in a way that’s fast, scalable, and reproducible — not riddled with error-prone copy and paste steps. With Benchling Analysis you can query data in Benchling, collate and transform it, and produce finished analysis with tables, charts, and beyond. Best of all? You can use Benchling Analysis without writing a single line of code.

Analysis is available now for all customers, including: dataset creation, data transformation, basic charting and visualization, Notebook embedding of results tables and charts. Regression, interpolation, and analysis templates are available now under limited release. Read more about Benchling Analysis.

Transform lab work with AI

Now there are two new ways you can use AI in Benchling to improve your experience in the lab. With Guided search, you can use natural language prompts and let the LLM configure search filters and parameters for you. The configuration is editable so you can always tweak it to find exactly what you need in Benchling.

Notebook check gives you an automated review of entries. It can identify entry consistency issues like missing sections and data irregularities like copy-and-paste errors. Automated reviews can be customized to your team’s standards using natural language. 

Both features are in open beta. Learn more about Benchling Intelligence.

Build custom UI experiences with App Canvas

Benchling’s App Canvas helps you build custom UI experiences in Benchling, so you can create exactly the workflows you need and keep data updated in real time. Now, embed an App Canvas directly into the Notebook — so it feels like the UI experience you create is native to Benchling. 

Easily share Benchling integrations with Shareable Apps

Shareable Apps in Benchling make it easy to share your integration across many tenants and with other Benchling customers. It gives you a single app definition you can manage in one place, and for 3rd party apps, you get a single install link you can share with other Benchling customers. And, Shareable Apps lets you access data storage, modeling, and permissions, so you don’t have to build those on your own. Learn more about Shareable Apps. 

Build what your team needs with Benchling’s V3 API

We know it’s important to be able to build what you need on Benchling, so we’re constantly improving our API. With our V3 API launching soon, we've invested in giving you schema-typed endpoints, upsert support, standard error messaging, broader coverage, more reliable performance, improved rate limits, flatter models, and more. We are also updating the Benchling Developer Documentation, now tailored to your tenant, organization, and data model. The V3 API is in closed beta.

PipeBio joins Benchling

Closing out our exciting updates at Benchtalk, we announced that Benchling has acquired PipeBio, a leader in high-scale bioinformatics analysis, to drive biologics discovery. PipeBio’s product excels at antibody screening, empowering scientists to process millions of sequences, visualize data, and identify lead candidates. Their focus on large-scale sequence analysis complements Benchling and enables us to offer a complete software stack for end-to-end antibody discovery and development, from screening millions of sequences for early hits to developing the processes to manufacture clinical candidates. 

Learn more about our vision for Benchling and PipeBio. 

Expert-led sessions from 40+ innovative biopharmas and startups 

From instrument connectivity to AI-powered research, process development best practices to digitization strategies, this year’s sessions at Benchtalk covered a range of the industry’s most-discussed topics in 2024 and the year ahead. Speakers and panelists from global biopharmas including Johnson & Johnson, BMS, Eli Lilly, Novonesis, Sanofi and more shared their perspectives, alongside leaders from innovative startups such as Shape Therapeutics, Umoja, Cambrium, Hoxton Farms, and several others. 

In London, a panel of leaders from bit.bio, Start Codon, The Francis Crick Institute, NK:IO, and Benchling took the stage for the Women in Biotech session "Deconstructing the language behind authenticity, power, and stereotypes."

We want Benchtalk attendees to walk away feeling inspired for the future of biotech and their own careers, so every year we bring in R&D innovators to share their personal stories and learnings from years of experience in the industry. This year in Boston, Benchling CEO Sajith Wickramasekara sat down with Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of FogPharma, who formerly led R&D at Johnson & Johnson and founded Theravance. In London he led a fireside chat with John Tsai, CEO of Forcefield Therapeutics and Executive Partner at Syncona Investment Management Limited, who also held drug development and Chief Medical Officer roles at Novartis, Amgen, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. 

Benchling CEO and cofounder Sajith Wickramasekara chatted with Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of FogPharma about his experience leading R&D at Johnson & Johnson, biotech decision making, development of the COVID vaccine, and more.

Workshops on all things Benchling

It wouldn’t be Benchtalk without a day of hands-on Benchling workshops. Benchling users sat down with product specialists for a full day of step-by-step trainings, covering building apps in Benchling, sample management techniques, how to improve productivity with Benchling’s AI features, best practices for data collection and analysis, how to streamline process development, and more. Attendees left sessions with workflows, guides, and knowledge to bring back to their entire organizations. 

Customers attended Benchling workshops and watched live demos of new functionality.

See you at Benchtalk 2025

There’s no better time of year than Benchtalk, when our customers get to meet each other, connect with our team, learn, and have some fun while doing it. 

This year our favorite jellyfish JeffyP was the life of the party, floating around the scene to meet everyone face-to-face and take some photos. 

Want to learn more about this year’s releases at Benchtalk? Check out our What’s New page for the details or join the Benchling Community for ongoing updates. If you want to experience the fun next year with us in person, save the date for October 14-15, 2025 in Boston and Oct 22-23 in London. See you there!