Panel session 1
AI in Medicine: Breakthroughs and Boundaries
Industry Section: Digital Health & AI
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for protein structure prediction highlights the growing impact of AI across drug discovery and disease research. But where is AI truly driving transformational breakthroughs, and where does it still encounter significant hurdles? In this panel, we delve into these questions with three leading experts from data-driven biotechs that leverage AI as a foundational component of their therapeutic discovery and development processes.
Panelists
Pat walters, ph.d. | chief data officer, relay therapeutics
Pat Walters is Chief Data Officer at Relay Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Prior to joining Relay, he spent more than 20 years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where he was Global Head of Modeling & Informatics. Pat is the 2023 recipient of the Herman Skolnik Award for Chemical Information Science from the American Chemical Society. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards for the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling and Artificial Intelligence in the Life Sciences, and previously held a similar role with the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Pat is co-author of the book “Deep Learning for the Life Sciences”, published in 2019 by O’Reilly and Associates. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Arizona where he studied the application of artificial intelligence in conformational analysis. Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., Pat worked at Varian Instruments as both a chemist and a software developer. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
lamya shihabuddin, ph.d. | chief scientific officer, montai
Lamya Shihabuddin is the CSO of Montai Health. Lamya brings over 23 years of leadership and executive expertise across private biotech, large biotech, and pharmaceutical companies.
Prior to Montai, she was the CSO at a stealth-stage startup launched from 5AM Ventures and led the development of the scientific strategy and execution of the plan to bring products to the clinic in inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Lamya also spent many years in R&D leadership at Genzyme, which was later acquired by Sanofi. During her tenure, she drove multiple therapies from discovery through to early clinical development in Rare Disease Therapeutic Area. Most notably, she was part of the team that developed Spinraza, the first approved therapy for spinal muscular atrophy. She designed and directed research programs and teams focused on genetics, disease mechanisms, target discovery/validation and translational research for neuro-inflammatory diseases amongst others. She developed targeted treatment strategies and robust pipeline of innovative solutions using multiple therapeutic platforms including small molecules, oligonucleotides, cell therapy and gene therapy. She also built and integrated translational biomarkers discovery team to support preclinical and clinical studies.
Lamya holds a M.Sc. in Neurophysiology from the American University of Beirut and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Miami. She also trained as a postdoctoral neuroscience fellow at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA.
Lamya has authored more than 70 scientific articles and book chapters and is an author/co-author of 50+ patents. Lamya also served as a scientific adviser for granting agencies and advisory boards.
parul doshi, mba | chief data officer, cellarity
Parul Doshi is Chief Data Officer at Cellarity, a biotechnology company founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017 with a proprietary AI platform focused on uncovering novel actionable biology for drug discovery. She has more than twenty years of experience in information technology and software engineering. Prior to Cellarity, Ms. Doshi was most recently Head of Technology & Digital for Takeda’s Vaccine division and served in roles of increasing seniority across several divisions of the company. Prior to Takeda, Ms. Doshi worked as a developer at Patni Computer Systems, servicing major companies such as Fidelity Investments and LEGO. Ms. Doshi graduated with an MBA in information technology and finance from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, and a bachelor’s in economics and applied statistics from the University of Rajasthan.
