AI4Healthcare Workshop (Jan. 2026)
This event I went to at the beginning of the year in January (Sat. 1/10/26). I decided to book a plane ticket on a whim to the San Francisco Bay Area and attend a healthcare workshop/hackathon. This was not typically something I would do, but I did it for three reasons: 1) I wanted to experience and see for myself what the tech/startup scene was like in the Bay, and 2) I wanted to do some networking for career purposes. I’ve worked hard and built a strong network on the East Coast (think D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and to an extent New York City), but the West Coast was a total unknown to me. I felt like this was an opportunity too good to pass up because of who the sponsor was: Mithril.ai, which is a biotech startup that recently raised a couple million dollars. Moreover, I could not pass on this opportunity because of where the event was located: AGI House, a hacker house that I’m intimately familiar with. I was at both hackathons they hosted in D.C. in 2025 and both events were amazing. 3) Lastly, I could not pass up the event because two of the three datasets that they provided for the workshop were NIH datasets, and I have a small healthcare background. I worked before for a healthcare startup and as an NIH intern when I was 19. I had never been to the Bay Area except for the airport once and did not know what to expect. As someone who doesn’t travel much and doesn’t really enjoy traveling at all, I was somewhat nervous to go on the trip. I hesitated, and then decided f*ck it and booked the plane ticket thinking, why not? I set an aggressive timeline: I booked a United flight on Tue. 1/6/26, I would fly out on the evening of Fri. 1/9/26 (which incidentally was my birthday lol), stay the night at an Airbnb, attend the event the next day Sat. 1/10/26, take a red-eye flight back to the East Coast as soon as the event ended, and arrive in Baltimore the morning of Sun. 1/11/26.
The flight out to the West Coast on my birthday Fri. 1/9/26 from BWI was fine, but the ground shuttle at BWI took much longer than expected and that was frustrating. Once I got to the Bay, I took an Uber to my Airbnb and stayed with a nice Airbnb host from Taiwan in Burlingame, CA. The next day, I did a ~1.5 mile walk to AGI House, which was located in Hillsborough, CA. The walk I took in a typical Bay Area suburb was honestly shocking to me. I walked by multi-million dollar houses in Burlingame and they were some of the smallest multi-million dollar houses I’ve ever seen in my life! Add to that the lack of street parking and the high cost of living, and I could not understand why anyone would find living in California enjoyable.
The event itself was fantastic. AGI House is a $67M mansion in the middle of Hillsborough and the house was definitely fancy from just seeing the decor. I knew the AGI House founder from the two hackathons that were hosted in D.C last year and he was definitely shocked to see I flew out there to be at the event. In fact many people were shocked when they found out I flew more than 2000+ miles to be at the event from the East Coast. Many talented people were there that day, with an eclectic group present: students, graduate students, science researchers, tech workers (i.e. think places like Google and Meta), startup founders, venture capitalists, etc. The founder of Mithril as well as a few other founders gave nice talks about healthcare and of course: AI in healthcare. I ended up working with a team of four, but two of the them had to drop out of the event early. I worked for the majority of the day on a science liturature review automation project with another individual who’s very talented. We collaborated and worked well together deliberating and designing the project, working through the kinks, and finally vibe-coding a solution. I enjoyed working on the project, even though I was extremely tired that day. I’m glad I pushed through to the end. Our project is located right here and the pitch presentation is located right here.
Key takeaway: I think the biggest takeaway from the event is I got to experience firsthand what makes the Bay Area culture and ecosystem so conducive to entrepreneurship. It’s a powerful pipeline really: Graduate from Stanford or Berkeley > work for a few years in FAANG or FAANG-adjacent companies > start your own startup. If you are really good, then the pipeline is: Dropout from Stanford or Berkeley or graduate from college, forgoing the workforce > start your own startup right away. The environment is dynamic in the sense that it’s easier to meet the right people with capital and people are more open to risky ideas. There is a strong networking culture and people seem to know each other only a couple degrees of separation away. It seems easier in the Bay to find someone who could introduce you to the people who you really want to talk to when compared to other U.S. cities. The culture was something really unique and the amalgamation of that many smart people was quite sublime. Would I enjoy living in the Bay? Maybe not, but I’m glad I got to experience the real Silicon Valley culture and the hacker mentality at this event.
After the event, I quickly took my Uber to the airport to catch my red-eye flight. The flight back to Baltimore was rough and I almost threw up on the plane in the middle of the night. It was an awful experience and I literally could not sleep. I barely made it back to Baltimore and I was exhausted Sunday morning, needing the whole day to rest and recover. This was quite the adventure. I’m glad that I did it looking back, but it was definitely harrowing at times and was definitely unforgettable!