AI in Pharma Virtual Summit

Dr. Calum MacRae is a cardiologist, geneticist and developmental biologist who graduated from Edinburgh and London before coming to Boston in 1991. After postdoctoral fellowships in human genetics with Drs. Christine and Jon Seidman and developmental biology with Dr. Mark Fishman, as well as additional clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology, he joined the Division of Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2001. His research is focused on understanding the genetic contribution to common cardiovascular disease using human studies and complementary high-throughput biology in the zebrafish.

Dr. MacRae is also theVice Chair for Scientific Innovation, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His clinical interests include the management of inherited heart disease and cardiac involvement in systemic diseases.

In addition, Dr. MacRae is a leading investigator at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Genomics Center, a principal faculty member at the Cardiovascular Research Center and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an associated member at the Broad Institute.

Healthcare Data Expert, Public Speaker, Mentor, Author and Innovator with experience in both the research and business aspects of healthcare – from drug discovery to clinical development and new product and services commercialization. Entrepreneurial and passionate about finding solutions to improve healthcare for all stakeholders – patients, practitioners and industry.

Presently working on the leadership team of Novartis’ Data42 Program.

Formerly serving as the Founder and Managing Director of Oak Health Partners – a boutique healthcare technology consulting firm. Primary areas of engagement were on matters of commercial and product strategy for healthtech-oriented businesses including real world data, digital health and precision medicine.

Also recently served as Chair of the Data Workstream at Harvard Business School’s Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator. Developed and launched the Under the Datascope Podcast and developed numerous real world data & analytics landscapes.

Formerly, served as the VP of Product Strategy at GNS Healthcare and as the General Manager and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PatientsLikeMe among other positions.

Ryan Copping, a data scientist, is the Global Head of Personalized Healthcare Analytics at Genentech, which is part of Hoffmann-La Roche.

Puneet Batra is a machine learning scientist, software engineer, and physicist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Batra co-leads the Machine Learning For Health group at the Broad, which creates new machine learning tools to drive biological discovery and clinical impact.

After a successful academic career as a theoretical particle physicist, Batra decided to move to Silicon Valley to work on the emerging data problem of our time: how do we derive meaning from the vast amounts of data captured by the internet? Working across multiple domains, including healthcare and spatial analyses, Batra became a pioneering entrepreneur and data scientist known for building world-class teams and scalable data infrastructures. Batra joined the Broad in 2019 to tackle the next great data problem of our time: how do we apply machine learning on the vast rams of clinical and genomic data to drive breakthroughs in how we prevent, diagnose, and treat disease?

Batra completed his B.A. in physics at Harvard University and has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University.

Christian Baber, is a chemist by training and holds undergraduate and PhD degrees in computational chemistry with a focus on AI techniques to assess the synthetic accessibility of de novo design compounds. 

Christian continued this work with a post-doctoral fellowship on the automated design of targeted combinatorial libraries at the Department of Knowledge Engineering, Osaka University, Japan before moving into industry initially as a computational chemist and cheminformatician. 

Christian has a wide breadth of experience across companies ranging from startups to large pharma and diverse therapeutic areas with a focus on informatics and predictive modeling but has also managed lab groups and automation teams including compound management and high-throughput purification. Prior to J&J, Christian was at Shire initially as Head of Scientific Computing & Informatics before moving on to lead R&D IT from 2017. Christian remained with Takeda following its acquisition of Shire in 2019 as Global Head of Scientific Informatics, managing technology and decision support across all of the scientific R&D functions from Research to Non-Clinical Development and Pharmaceutical Sciences. In addition, Christian sits on of the board of the Pharmaceutical R&D Information Systems Management Executive (PRISME) forum and the Scientific Advisory Board of New Equilibrium Biosciences.

John Reynders, Ph.D. MBA, is the former Vice President, Data Sciences, Genomics, and Bioinformatics (DGB) at Alexion. In his role, Dr. Reynders led the DGB organization in the design, building, and deployment of data-sciences solutions spanning R&D, Commercial, Strategy, and Business Development. These solutions include a graph-database of the entire rare-disease landscape annotated with prevalence, severity, clinical trial options, and genetic signature; a genomics-based rare-disease patient prevalence platform to inform licensing/acquisition opportunities; and AI-based phenotype- and genome-driven rare-disease diagnosis decision-support systems.

In parallel to his DGB responsibilities at Alexion, Dr. Reynders also led the R&D strategy, portfolio and project management department, leading efforts across R&D capability strategy, pipeline project management, portfolio optimization, governance, and R&D operating models. Prior to joining Alexion, Dr. Reynders served as CIO of Moderna Therapeutics, where he created a fully cloud-based biotech across all enterprise functions and developed informatics solutions to enable the design of messenger RNA therapeutics. Previously, John served as Vice President of R&D Information at AstraZeneca R&D leading teams in the US, UK, Sweden, Russia, Japan, and China to enable informatics and technology solutions across discovery, translational, clinical, pharmaceutical development, and regulatory functions. Before this, John served in leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson including VP Integrative Neuroscience and Biomarkers, Head of Informatics, and VP R&D Information Technology. Previously, John served as Information Officer with Lilly Research Laboratories, VP of Informatics at Celera Genomics, and held roles as Director and Program Manager at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Dr. Reynders received a Bachelors, Summa Cum Laude, in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton University, and a Masters of Business Administration from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

Gayle M. Wittenberg, Ph.D. is Director of Integrated Solutions and Informatics, Janssen Neuroscience and Head of Translational Research & Precision Medicine, Research IT. She has lead Janssen’s mood informatics initiatives, bringing together the best available datasets with state of the art analytics to identify and profile different biological and phenotypic subtypes of Major Depression as candidates for targeted therapies. Her work analyzing immunology and oncology trials for improvements in depressive symptoms led in part to running a proof of concept study of an immunology compound in depressed patients. In her Research IT role, she is working to bring about a new era of analytics that is more inclusive of data and less siloed to drive us to answer our most important questions using ‘all the data in the world’.

Dr. Wittenberg graduated summa cum laude with degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering Physics at Oregon State University, and received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Neuroscience at Princeton University where she studied computational neuroscience and learning in complex networks. She was a Princeton Council on Science and Technology Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow where she designed a new introductory biology course for physics and engineering students. She came to Janssen from Siemens Corporate Research where she headed the Personalized Healthcare group. While there, through mining genetic databases, she and her team designed PCR primers for the H1N1 flu within 3 days of the US outbreak, which outperformed those in use at the time. Previously she has worked at Trojan Nuclear Plant, installed the first computers used for electronic trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange working with Renaissance Technologies, spent a summer at Bell Labs recording birds singing in helium, and worked the salmon run in Naknek, Alaska.

Dr. Lili Peng is currently the Associate Director, Data Sciences in Biogen’s R&D External Innovation Unit, where she is applying analytics and AI/ML towards expanding Biogen’s neuroscience pipeline. Formerly a technology consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, she worked on data management and software implementation on clinical trials at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration.  Prior to that, she was a data scientist at AstraZeneca’s research and development, medical affairs, and medical evidence and observational research.

Dr. Peng completed her postdoctoral training in computational chemistry and machine learning for drug discovery, at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University. For her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, where she established and managed an academia-industry collaboration of 35 people for five years resulting in high-impact publications on computational polymer modeling.  She holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was the Vice President of the Biomedical Engineering Society and Vice President of Society of Women Engineers.

Shemra Rizzo is a senior data scientist in Genentech’s Personalized Healthcare group. Shemra’s role includes leading research on COVID-19 using electronic health records, and the development of data-driven approaches to evaluate clinical trial eligibility criteria. Shemra obtained her PhD in Biostatistics from UCLA. Before joining Genentech, Shemra was an assistant professor of statistics at UC Riverside, where her research covered topics in mental health, health disparities, and nutrition. In her free time, Shemra enjoys spending time with her family and running.

Martin-Immanuel Bittner MD DPhil FRSA is the Chief Executive Officer of Arctoris, a platform company that he co-founded in 2016. He graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Freiburg in Germany, followed by his DPhil in Oncology as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. Martin has extensive research experience covering both clinical trials and preclinical drug discovery and is an active member of several leading cancer research organisations, including EACR, AACR, and ESTRO. In recognition of his research achievements, he was elected a member of the Young Academy of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

PhD in Biophysics from the University of Cincinnati and over 15-years’ experience applying data science and machine learning approaches in healthcare from the NIH, to start-ups, and consulting firms. Today, he is the Sr. Director for CAS Custom Solutions creating tailored approaches for your unique scientific information challenges.

Dr. Mohak Shah is a technology executive with an established history of leading high-impact initiatives in AI, IoT, digital transformation, & building data-driven businesses & strategies. Before joining H1, he was the Vice President of AI & ML at LG Electronics, & prior to that was the Head of Data Science at Bosch. He is deeply passionate about responsible development, introduction, adoption, & integration of AI capabilities in industry & society at large. Dr. Shah’s experience in leading technology initiatives spans a broad range of verticals, leading diverse teams from research, software, & businesses.

Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital, where she invests in transformative technologies streamlining analog industries and improving lives and livelihoods. She is particularly interested in intersectional and polymath entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies and accelerating advances and equity in human and population health.

Since joining Lux in late 2019, Deena has led multiple investments in transformative technologies that are improving lives, particularly in healthcare. She currently sits on the boards of Maven Clinic, SteadyMD, Alife Health, H1, Adyn, AllStripes, and Shiru.

Prior to joining Lux, Deena was a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), previously led product partnerships at Google for early stage products in healthcare, AI/ML, and search at Google, and directed social impact investments at Google.org.

Before tech and venture, Deena had diverse partnership-centric experiences as an aspiring anthropologist, journalist, diplomat, aid worker and technologist. She was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010. Her non-traditional path to VC landed her in roles that that fostered partnerships through diplomacy, public service, and technology. It has also cultivated Deena’s deep conviction in the potential of breakthrough ventures to positively transform the future and garnered her unparalleled network to help them achieve it.

Deena serves on the Boards of several non-profits including Tarjimly, TechWadi, and AMIDEAST. She is a Kauffman Fellow, Aspen Finance Fellow, CFR Term Member, and a founding VC member of the Valence Fund Network for Black entrepreneurs. A Forbes contributor, she has also been featured in TechCrunch, Fortune, Crunchbase and the WSJ. Financially independent since the age of 18, Deena self-funded her undergraduate and graduate degrees through a variety of merit scholarships and side hustles, including co-founding her first company while still in college. Deena earned a joint BA in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard (where she delivered the graduation address) and an MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. She is also a Lecturer in the School of Engineering at the Stanford Design School and was recently recognized in 2021 by Business Insider as a Top 30 Under 40 in Healthcare.

Joshua is Lead AI Scientist at Absci where he and his team integrate deep learning, bioinformatics and high-throughput biology to discover new protein therapeutics and biomanufacturing solutions at scale. Previously, he led the research platform for protein language modeling at Facebook AI Research where his group published a series of papers demonstrating the promise of unsupervised learning for protein sequence design. Earlier in his career, Joshua worked on reinforcement learning at OpenAI, managed product for virtual reality at Google, and built MIT’s CRISPR-ML design platform. Joshua studied CS & Chemistry at Harvard. He lives in NYC and likes running, classical music, and Broadway shows.