After 3 years away, BIO marked by first-time handshakes and a drive to survive a bear market’s claws

Six days after the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, Shafique Virani, M.D., landed a brand new job.

Following a two-year stint leading a couple of subsidiaries of BridgeBio, the Roche-Genentech alum jumped to Recursion Pharmaceuticals to be the chief corporate development officer of the AI-driven drug discovery company. Roughly two weeks later, the 2020 BIO International Convention was moved completely online. The tectonic plate shifts impacting society at large created a vacuum initially filled with uncertainty and unease. But soon after came an era of hyper-productivity, says Virani.