AI In Pharma Summit

As Global Head of Design, Structure, Prediction & Data science (DSPD), Vanita supports drug discovery (small molecule and biologics) with a global team of computational chemists, structural biologists, computational protein engineers, and data scientists.

Pat Walters is SVP of Computation at Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. His group focuses on novel applications of computational methods that integrate computer simulations and experimental data to provide insights that drive drug discovery programs. Prior to joining Relay, Pat spent more than 20 years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where he was Global Head of Modeling & Informatics.

Dr Williamson holds a DVM in animal dermatology and a PhD in human molecular and cellular dermato-pathology of autoimmune skin diseases from the University of Bern in Switzerland. She initiated her career at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland where she had the opportunity to create and lead the Animal Dermatology Research group at Novartis Animal Health. Lina was later transferred to Boston in an international assignment to the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) as part of a cross-divisional business development team. She later joined NIBR’s Strategic Alliances team where she was responsible for leading the global outreach and scouting for innovation efforts from academic institutions, including academic incubators and startup companies. During that time, she developed interest on cutting edge technologies in the biomedical engineering field. That interest led her to join a startup company – Emulate Inc., derived from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, focused on the development of Organs-on-Chips – and be part of the initial company creation team. Dr. Williamson joined the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2015, initially supporting the Brigham Research Institute as Innovation Strategists. Her entrepreneurial and strategic thinking & execution style, combined with more than twelve years of experience in the Pharma/Biotech industry, led her to take the challenge of create and establish the BWH Translational Accelerator, an initiative to support and speed up the transition of BWH’s innovation with commercial potential from bench to bed. Dr. Williamson currently serves as Founder, President & Chief Innovation Officer of the Translational Medicine Accelerator (TMA), a private biomedical development company formed to accelerate medical innovation that serves patients with unmet needs. Lina is also part of the NIH National Networks of Mentors in Entrepreneurship, a mentor for the post-doc program at Boston Children’s Hospital and supports entrepreneurship education programs from the Harvard Catalyst (Harvard Medical School).

Dr. Birgit Schoeberl currently serves as Global Head of Modeling and Simulation, PK Sciences at Novartis. Before joining Novartis, Birgit served as interim Senior Vice President, Scientific Value, at GNS Healthcare. During her time at GNS, she focused on applying causal machine learning to drug development. Prior to GNS, she was a member of the founding team at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and where she spent over 12 years in different roles. In her latest role as Head of Discovery and Early Development, she gained broad experience in oncology drug discovery and development. Birgit and her leadership team were responsible for multiple preclinical and early clinical programs.

Birgit received her Chemical Engineering degree from the Technical University in Karlsruhe, Germany, and her Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg. She was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Douglas Lauffenburger and Peter Sorger in the Biological Engineering Department at MIT.

Janak Joshi is a three-time entrepreneur successfully raising capital, building and selling companies with the mission of fixing healthcare. Janak has been co-founder and CIO at Synestesi Technologies (sold to Spry Media Group), CIO at Generation Health (sold to CVS Caremark), and CEO at Type I Diabetes Exchange before his current role as CTO and Head of Strategy at Life Image.

Sameen has over 20 years of experience in Pharmaceutical Industry. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering, a Masters in Business Administration and a Masters in Information Systems. He has worked in several functions including manufacturing, IT, regulatory and quality. He is a Senior Director at Celgene with a focus on Innovation within Pharmacovigilance(PV). He has authored several publications around use of AI & emerging technology within PV.

Experienced data scientist and award-winning educator. Chief Scientific Officer of BioSymetrics, Gabe is responsible for pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for biomedical research. Gabe’s experience includes using machine learning frameworks to predict gene and small molecule function, and identification of disease-causal genes using large-scale genomic datasets.