Speakers

Ava Amini is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA. Her research focuses on developing new AI methods to understand and design biology, with the ultimate aim of realizing precision biomedicines that improve human health. She is a co-lead of Project Ex Vivo, a collaborative effort between Microsoft and the Broad Institute, that is focused on defining, engineering, and targeting cell states in cancer. In addition to research, Ava is passionate about AI education and outreach — she is a lead organizer and instructor for MIT Introduction to Deep Learning, an in-person and global course on the fundamentals of deep learning. Learn more.

Francesca Grisoni is an Associate Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where she leads the Molecular Machine Learning Team. Over the past decade, Francesca has been fascinated by the challenge of pushing the boundaries of machine learning in the discovery of novel therapeutics. Francesca has worked in several institutions, at the University of Milano-Bicocca, the US Center for Computational Toxicology and ETH Zurich, as well as in industry for a year. Her team works at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and computer science, to advance the potential of machine learning for drug discovery. Francesca’s research has been recognized several prizes and grants, such as the Excellence Award from the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Early Career Award, a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and an ERC Starting Grant. Learn more.

Oren Kraus is an Associate Director of Machine Learning at Recursion, where he's led teams developing foundation models for cell imaging and gene expression data, as well as 3D molecular modelling. Before joining Recursion, Oren founded Phenomic AI, a startup leveraging computer vision and phenotypic screening to develop cancer therapeutics. During his PhD at the University of Toronto, Oren developed deep learning models for cell-microscopy data and interned at Apple and Borealis AI. He’s passionate about building machine learning models to decode biology. Learn more.

Anneli Nordqvist joined AstraZeneca in 2012 as a member of the computational chemistry team in Research and Early Development Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, where she became an associate principal scientist in 2014. She moved on to become a team leader for a synthetic and medicinal chemistry team and she currently holds a position as Director of Medicinal Chemistry. Her research interests are focused on the application of computational methods to facilitate drug discovery research. She has been leading the chemistry program for a number of projects, including leading the team in the FAP inhibitor program. Learn more.

As Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Psivant Therapeutics, Woody Sherman, Ph.D., drives the company's mission to design superior therapeutics. With over two decades of industry experience and more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, Woody's expertise spans molecular dynamics, quantum mechanics, machine learning, and computer-aided drug design. He is the original architect of the QUAISAR platform, leading its development and continuing to guide novel method creation for Psivant's drug discovery projects. Prior to his current role, Woody served as Chief Executive Officer at Psivant, Chief Computational Scientist at Roivant Sciences, Chief Scientific Officer at Silicon Therapeutics, and Vice President and Global Head of Applications Science at Schrödinger, Inc. Learn more

Jean-Philippe Vert is co-founder and CEO of Bioptimus, a pioneering AI-first biotech building foundation models to transform biology and accelerate biomedical innovation. He also serves as Chief R&D Officer at Owkin, where he has driven the application of AI to drug discovery and clinical research since 2022. With over 20 years of experience at the forefront of machine learning and life sciences, Jean-Philippe is a leading figure in AI for biology. Prior to his current roles, he was a research scientist at Google Brain, leading efforts in core machine learning and computational biology. He has authored over 190 publications and is globally recognized for his contributions to AI, biomedical data modeling, and translational research. Learn more.