AI in Pharma: Discovery

Wade Davis is VP of Computational Science at Moderna. He holds a PhD in Statistics and completed an NIH Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics. Afterwards, he began his career in academia at Baylor University and then University of Missouri School of Medicine, where he was a tenured Associate Professor. Wade has received research funding from dozens of federal research grants and served on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Wade then joined AbbVie, where he took roles of increasing responsibility and ultimately became Global Head of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Later, he was VP of Analytics and AI at Karius, a late-stage start-up using artificial intelligence for unbiased diagnosis of pathogens using microbial cell-free DNA. In his current position at Moderna, he leads wet and dry lab teams using computational methods to solve complex problems in R&D. Throughout his career, Wade and his teams have received many awards and he has given multiple conference keynotes. He has authored 100+ publications with dozens focused on target identification, predicting target-indication success, mechanism of action, and precision medicine.

Dr. Xiong Liu is a Director of Data Science and AI at Novartis. He was previously a principal data scientist and NLP lead at Eli Lilly. In the past 10 years, Dr. Liu has led data and AI programs to accelerate drug development, from early discovery to clinical trials and post-marketing research. His work has broad applications across the pharma value chain and impacted several marketed drugs. Prior to Pharma, he has won multiple Small Business Innovation Research awards from US government agencies for his research in data mining and informatics. He received his Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh and did postdoctoral work in Bioinformatics at Johns Hopkins University.

Nishtha Jain is a strategic, innovative, and futuristic leader with 13+ years of global information technology experience in driving strategic business partnerships, digital technology and platform transformation and innovation in biopharma with past employers – Biogen and GlaxoSmithKline. Experienced in wide range of industry verticals ranging from Healthcare IT, Consulting, Biotech, Pharmaceutical and Vaccine industry– R&D Clinical, R&D Quality, Drug Development, Regulatory, Manufacturing, Medical and Commercial. Trusted adviser to executive leadership seeking to solve highly complex enterprise business challenges in fast-paced, rapidly changing, and challenging environments.

Nishtha is currently Head of Innovation and Digital Technology at Takeda Pharmaceuticals where her role expands across Global R&D Quality in driving digital and data initiatives from concept to execution leveraging emerging technologies and design principles. She has a strong passion for not only for applying emerging and digital technologies in improving patient healthcare but also for diversity and inclusion initiatives. She is currently member of Chief and serves as President for Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association’s (HBA) Mid- Atlantic chapter.

Hannah’s expertise encompasses disease biology and leveraging AI and ML technology to link the right tools to the biggest opportunities in drug discovery. Working with multiple cross-functional teams at Enveda, Hannah’s exceptional ability to establish and implement effective processes and infrastructure enables her to harmonize the strengths of various disciplines.  Outside of her work at Enveda, Hannah enjoys spending time with her family, yoga, backcountry piloting, and exploring the beautiful mountains of Boulder.

Kyle Kaniecki, PhD, is a Vice President of Life Sciences and Healthcare at the NYC Economic Development Corporation where he works to help implement the mayor’s $1B LifeSci NYC initiative by supporting translational R&D and accelerating startup formation, IP creation, and job growth. Before joining NYCEDC, Kyle was Director of Operations for Perception Neuroscience, a VC-backed neuropharmacology company where he led preclinical development.  He spent years at Columbia Technology Ventures supporting licensing activities and startups coming from Columbia University and led the development of the companion diagnostic for the blockbuster drug, Kalydeco.  Kyle earned his PhD in Genetics & Development from Columbia University, his MS in Biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University, and his BS in Zoology from UW-Madison. 

Shane is VP in AI/ML at GSK working on early target discovery. He has been building data
driven products for a little under 15 years, spanning early-stage start-ups, large
organizations, and companies making the transition between the two. He holds an MS in
Computational and Mathematical Engineering from Stanford, and degrees in Mathematics
and Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Hall is a technology leader and advisor with 30 years of leadership experience in growing, scaling, and
transforming global business in the life sciences industry.
Having worked as an information technology executive for three leading pharmaceutical companies –
Merck, Amgen and Pfizer, the largest blood bank in the United States – American Red Cross, and the
nation’s leading provider of laboratory diagnostic testing Quest Diagnostics, Hall possesses a unique set
of experiences and leadership skills.
Hall is currently serving as the Chief Portfolio Officer for the Pistoia Alliance, a non-profit organization
whose mission is to lower the barriers to innovation through pre-competitive collaboration.
Highlights of Hall’s work include:
– Delivering digital, automation and analytics strategies and solutions,
– Transforming global technology organizations and their culture to deliver greater value,
– Serving on and influencing industry coalitions,
– Serving on company leadership teams responsible for business transformation and driving
inclusion and diversity
Hall is an active member and former board member of the PRISME Forum and is also on the board of
Girls Inc. Of Chattanooga. She is passionate about fostering pre-competitive collaboration and
encouraging and supporting women in STEM.

Neil Dhawan is the co-founder, CEO and CSO of Totus Medicines, where he has dedicated his life to finding treatments for untreatable diseases. Prior to founding Totus Medicines, Neil co-founded Dual Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotechnol­ogy company whose lead asset was licensed to Bristol Myers Squibb in a $225 million deal. Neil co-founded Totus Medicines, the first drug discovery company using breakthrough chemical biology and AI to make the total human genome druggable. Neil’s mission for Totus and his team is to translate revolutions in chemistry, biology and computation into life changing covalent medicines at scale.

Aaron Mackey, PhD, is VP of Data & AI/ML at Sonata Therapeutics, where he leads all data engineering, modeling, and insight delivery activities in support of Sonata’s therapeutic development programs and the underlying proprietary biology platform used to identify novel targeted therapeutic candidates that induce immunogenic tumor cell death. Aaron’s 20+ years of career experience have spanned many diverse academic and industrial positions, large pharma and small biotech companies, preclinical and clinical organizations, and scientific and operational management. Originally trained as a wet-bench cellular immunologist, he chose to use his long-standing academic skills and interests with computer science and statistics to cross-train as a computational biologist during the era of the Human Genome Project and is now a generalist in pharma-related AI/ML methods and applications. A frequent speaker and open-source community mentor, he continues to hunt opportunities to mine multiomic data in search of mechanistic hypotheses that reveal disease-relevant (and therapeutically exploitable) insights. Aaron received his B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Reed College; his M.S. in Immunology from Washington University in St. Louis; and his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Virginia, with a short postdoc at the Penn Genomics Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed the first methods for statistically integrated, consensus eukaryotic gene structure prediction.

Ryan is a computational biologist with over a decade of experience designing algorithms and pipelines for analyzing high-throughput sequencing data at scale and building machine learning models with large sequence datasets. He has led the development and launch of computational infrastructure for multiple platform technologies and clinical products. As VP of Data Science at A-Alpha Bio, Ryan leads the development and application of AlphaBind, utilizing the immense size and quantitative resolution of AlphaSeq data to build ML models that accelerate the design and optimization of new therapeutics.  Prior to joining A-Alpha, Ryan led the Computational Biology department and the Antigen Map project at Adaptive Biotechnologies.  Ryan earned his PhD in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington School of Medicine and his MBA from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.

Brad Parry, Ph.D. is the Head of Artificial Intelligence at AI Therapeutics. Dr. Parry graduated with a Ph.D. from Yale University in the lab of Christine Jacobs-Wagner where he pursued questions in biological physics concerning single living cells. To answer these questions, he developed novel experimental and computational approaches based in machine learning and deep learning to investigate the physical nature of the cytoplasm. After completing his degree, he continued developing and applying deep learning based approaches to investigate questions in cell biology as a research scientist at Yale. He now leads efforts to develop new datasets, algorithms and predict novel disease treatments as the Head of AI at AI Therapeutics.

Pillhun Son earned his PhD from Texas Tech University in Organic and Computational Chemistry and then moved on to work on Material Science and Physical Chemistry during his Postdoc. Pill has also achieved a MS in Information Systems from Northwestern University, gaining strong insights within new emerging technologies and their cutting edge applications. He has worked on several database building and information solution initiatives for CAS and served in multiple areas of the organization involving data governance, product development and business development. His previous work has been focused on solution development for informatics and computational chemistry in the pharmaceutical, consumer products, cosmetics and agrochemical space. His recent work involves supporting data governance, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics initiatives with various organizations so that they could leverage the full value of content through multiple facets.

Dr. Nagy-Szakal has 15+ years of experience in translational medicine and microbiology, extensively focused on clinical metagenomics using NGS-based technologies powered by AI. She led cutting-edge clinical trials on fecal microbiota transplantation, gut-brain axis, multi-omics studies and the COVID-19 pandemic response with the ultimate goal of improving diagnostics and developing novel therapies. She currently holds a position as a Research Assistant Professor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, and also the Chief Medical Officer at Biotia, where she drives strategic communications with the FDA, CDC, NYS DOH, leading enterprise medical centers and is responsible for the clinical operations, medical affairs and clinical/R&D laboratory operations. She earned her MD and PhD in clinical medicine from Semmelweis University of Medicine in Hungary, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital and Columbia University.

With over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, Han is a seasoned leader in applying advanced analytic methods for drug discovery and clinical development across multiple therapeutic areas. He currently leads a team of analysts using bioinformatics, statistics, and AI to advance BMS’ oncology R&D pipeline.

Dr. Mohindru is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of Novasenta, Inc. a privately held biotechnology company focused on the discovery of novel targets to develop innovative therapies for cancers. She also serves as a member of the board of directors of CytomX Therapeutics and Cardiff Oncology. Prior to Novasenta, she has held senior leadership positions in the biotech industry, having served as Chief Executive Officer of CereXis, Inc. (private), Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer of Cara Therapeutics, Inc. (public), and Chief Strategy Officer of Curis, Inc (public). 

Prior to her leadership roles in the biotechnology industry, Dr. Mohindru spent several years as an equity research analyst covering the biotechnology sector at UBS, Credit Suisse and ThinkEquity. She also co-founded a private biotechnology company and was a healthcare industry consultant. On the non-profit side, she is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute of Northwestern University and a member of the Scientific Investment Advisory Committee of the Gates Center of Regenerative Medicine at the University of Colorado. 

Dr. Mohindru received her Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Northwestern University and her Masters in Biotechnology and BS in Human Biology (Hons) from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India.

Dr. Artem Trotsyuk is a bioengineer and computer scientist by training. Currently, he is a Venture Partner with LongeVC where he serves as an investment advisor to the Managing Partners, focusing on life sciences investments and incubator formation. He is also an AI Ethics Research Fellow at Stanford University and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona. At Stanford, he teaches a wide variety of courses at Stanford, spanning topics of longevity, AI, ethics and entrepreneurship. He completed his PhD in Bioengineering and Masters in Computer Science at Stanford University and his undergraduate at the University of California, Davis.

Shahar Harel is the VP of AI at Quris. He brings a vast knowledge in machine learning and previously led data science teams both in NASDAQ-listed companies and smaller, highly innovative startups. Shahar holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. During his research with Dr. Kira Radinsky, Shahar developed machine learning methods for the generation of novel chemical compounds with unique characteristics, with the ultimate goal of accelerating drug discovery and development. His research works were presented at high profile data science conferences and published in top-tier pharmaceutical science journals.

Niki Santo is the co-founder and CEO of Swaza, a biopharmaceutical company developing nanotechnology oxygen solutions for respiratory distress.
focused on innovation and strategy. She serves as President of the Harvard Club of Silicon Valley. She is on the AI Governance committee of R42 Group, an AI and deep tech investment fund, and is a mentor in the R42 Institute founders’ program, a foundry that builds new companies with a focus on new and beneficial applications of AI. She is also a member of the OpenAI Forum.

Ami Lakdawala heads AI Product at GSK, overseeing the end-to-end portfolio of products from early discovery to clinical development. She brings a unique perspective with over 15 years of prior experience delivering data products across GSK’s early portfolio. Ami has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Emory University and joined GSK in the Computational Chemistry and Molecular Modelling team leading target and drug discovery efforts across therapy areas.

Pradeep Bandaru heads Data Strategy at Generate Biomedicines, overseeing a suite of data products and data assets spanning early discovery to clinical development. He brings a perspective informed by data infrastructure and artificial intelligence having been at Palantir Technologies and GSK prior to Generate. Pradeep has a PhD in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and a BS in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University.