Automation, Digital Lab, and Robotics

Design the Lab of the Future

May 17 - 18, 2023 ALL TIMES EDT

The Automation, Digital Lab, and Robotics track will explore the Lab of the Future. Speakers will share best practices of physical lab automation (devices/device integration) and data automation, data workflows, and pipelines. Other themes that will be covered include standards for interoperability, vendors, and trends, and how this is all coming together for the Lab of the Future, and proper data management techniques to make FAIR possible.

Monday, May 15

– 6:00 pm Hackathon*8:00 am

*Separate Complimentary Registration Required, see Hackathon page to submit your project OR register to participate

– 5:00 PM Registration Open – Come Early and Avoid the Lines2:00 pm

Tuesday, May 16

Registration Open7:00 am

Recommended Pre-Conference Workshops and Symposia*8:00 am

On Tuesday, May 16, 2023 Cambridge Healthtech Institute is pleased to offer nine pre-conference workshops scheduled across three time slots (8:00-10:00 am, 10:30 am-12:30 pm, and 1:45-3:45 pm) and two Symposia from 8:25 am-3:45 pm. All are designed to be instructional, interactive and provide in-depth information on a specific topic. They allow for one-on-one interaction and provide a great way to explain more technical aspects that would otherwise not be covered during the main conference tracks that take place Wednesday-Thursday.

*Separate registration required. For details, see Workshop agendas, FAIR Data Symposium agenda, and Knowledge Graphs Symposium agenda.

– 3:45 pm Hackathon*8:00 am

*Separate Complimentary Registration Required, see Hackathon page to submit your project OR register to participate

Refreshment Break and Transition to Plenary Keynote3:45 pm

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

4:00 pm

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

4:05 pm

Innovative Practices Awards

Joseph Cerro, Independent Consultant

Chris Dwan, Independent Consultant, Dwan, LLC

Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

The Innovative Practices Awards recognizes and celebrates innovation that advances life sciences research. Bio-IT World is currently accepting entries for the 2023 Innovative Practices Awards, a competition designed to recognize partnerships and projects pushing our industry forward. Winners will be announced in mid-April 2023, recognized during the Tuesday May 16 Plenary Keynote Program, and scheduled to give a 30-minute podium presentation about their project during the conference. The deadline for entry is March 3, 2023. For more details about the Awards and to submit an application, visit the official Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Awards page: https://www.bio-itworld.com/Award/.

4:20 pm Plenary Keynote Introduction

David Gosalvez, PhD, Executive Director, Strategy & Informatics Portfolio, Revvity Signals

4:30 pm PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:

The Promise of Data, Analytics, and Technology: Fueling Scientific and Medical Breakthroughs

Anastasia Christianson, PhD, Vice President, Global Head of AI, ML, Analytics, and Data, Pfizer Inc.

Edward Cox, Head & General Manager, Digital Health & Medicines (DHM), Pfizer Inc.

The 21st century has been referred to as the Century of Biology. With 90% of the world’s 97 zettabytes of data generated in the past 2 years and 30% of today’s data being healthcare related, how are we using data technology and advanced analytics (artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning) to advance our understanding of disease and deliver “breakthroughs that change patients' lives?”

Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing5:45 pm

Close of Day7:00 pm

Wednesday, May 17

Registration and Morning Coffee7:00 am

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

8:00 am

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

8:05 am PLENARY KEYNOTE INTRODUCTION:

Life Science Automation Opportunities – So Many Options, So Little Time

Santanu Sen, Vice President, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Virtusa

The COVID pandemic has demonstrated that therapies and vaccines can be developed in 18 months with a high degree of safety and efficacy. Pioneering work done by companies involved has shed light to archaic processes that have been in existence for decades with little need for change.  In this presentation, we will discuss collaborative efforts, enabling technologies, regulation, and workflow to automate these processes to advance personalized medicine initiatives.

8:15 am PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:

Federated Futures: How the Largest Federated Learning Effort in Medicine Will Inform Our Next Steps

Spyridon Bakas, PhD, Assistant Professor, Radiology & Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Raymond Y. Huang, MD, PhD, Division Chief, Neuroradiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Jason Martin, Principal Engineer AI Research Science, Security Solutions Lab, Intel Labs

Is a federated learning model sufficient to handle data from 71 institutions and more than 6,000 patients located on six continents? Researchers from Penn Medicine and Intel Labs say yes. An interdisciplinary team created the largest to-date global federated learning effort to develop an accurate and generalizable machine learning model for detecting glioblastoma borders. We will share what we learned about creating and maintaining such a federation, how the software infrastructure evolved over the course of the study, and how this work will empower the future of high-quality, precision clinical care worldwide.

Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing9:30 am

Organizer's Welcome Remarks10:15 am

DATA AUTOMATION, WORKFLOWS, AND PIPELINES

10:20 am

Chairperson's Remarks

Hong Ky Vo, Senior Software Engineer, gRED Research Informatics & Software Engineering, Genentech, Inc.

10:25 am

Lab-of-the-Future Vision at Generate Biomedicines

Dimitris K. Agrafiotis, PhD, Chief Digital Officer, Generate Biomedicines

As a company driven by AI and designed to be intrinsically digital, Generate Biomedicines has worked towards its lab-of-the-future vision since its inception. Our platform combines aggressive automation to realize the promise of de novo protein design, synthesis, and optimization, with the necessary configurability to accommodate emerging scientific and technological innovations. Our software and hardware systems are designed to close the design-make-test-analyze loop with as much flexibility and as little friction as possible. In this loop, lab automation enables data to become matter during synthesis, and then converted back to data during measurement. Our informatics toolset is anchored on a FAIR database that enables all measurements and metadata collected throughout the entire process to be easily captured, recorded, and retrieved to drive informed and timely decision-making at all levels. Fit-for-purpose metrics, KPIs, and trends delivered through interactive data visualizations enable monitoring the effectiveness and efficiency of our end-to-end discovery process, and the iterative training of AI/ML models to drive both protein design and operational improvements, thus allowing us to optimize drug candidates better, faster, and cheaper than any competing platform. Our embodiment of the lab-of-the-future is supported by a cross-disciplinary team of robotics, software, and data engineers and data scientists working hand-in-hand with R&D scientists in a highly collaborative and dynamic environment fueled by an empowering culture and a shared, audaciously ambitious vision.

10:55 am

Digital Transformation Journey for a Faster and Data-Driven Pharma Product Development

Christian Airiau, PhD, Global Head, Data Sciences Biologics Development, Sanofi

Mark Schatz, PhD, Global CMC Digital Transformation Leader, MSAT GenMed, Sanofi

Pharma CMC development is facing multiple challenges from the increasing number of projects to higher agility, cost reductions, data integrity & accelerated development timelines. The generated data during drug development is only partially leveraged to further improve our processes or use it for predictive modeling. We are convinced that a substantial productivity increase will be gained through the implementation of a comprehensive digital transformation program with digital lab workflows, a strong architecture with clear data governance/model & leveraging data through advanced analytics.

11:25 am

Elements of Style in Workflow Creation and Maintenance

Anne Deslattes Mays, PhD, Senior DATA Strategist, Office of Data Science and Sharing, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health

With the emergence of Platforms-as-a-Service such as Lifebit's CloudOS, DNANexus St. Jude Cloud, Broad's Terra, Velsera's Cavatica, and others, we have the opportunity to focus on more science. Modern Workflow languages (Nextflow, CWL, and WDL) and containerization at the process level, along with the use of these PaaS's, makes cloud-based data and cloud compute accessible for everyone.

11:55 am The Journey of Data in a Lab - Challenges and Solutions

Aishwarya Balajee, Head of Digital Services, North America, Zifo Technologies, Inc.

Data in the lab is exploding. So is our desire to make the most of it. The numerous data sources, such as instruments, applications, systems, tools all contribute to disparate data, making it impossible to get to the answers we need, when we need it. Data exploration, making meaningful insights and increasing efficiency in the lab, have been the primary goals in this space. Making the best-use of data will greatly impact delivering life-changing medicines to patients. In this talk, let us explore the challenges in the journey of data in a lab and potential solutions to make the most of it.

12:10 pm Managing Risk in the Digital Age: Digitizing Clinical Risk Assessment and Management

Joshua Dhanpat, Strategy Insights & Planning Consultant, ZS

Satish Jha, Associate Principal, ZS

In today's rapidly changing environment, pharma needs to adopt digital technologies to effectively manage and mitigate risks. In this session, ZS shares how digitizing risk management and mitigation processes can improve an enterprise’s ability to identify, assess and respond to potential risks while also increasing operational efficiency. 

Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)12:25 pm

Session Break and Transition to Luncheon Presentation12:55 pm

Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own1:05 pm

Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing1:50 pm

DATA AUTOMATION, WORKFLOWS, AND PIPELINES

2:35 pm

Chairperson's Remarks

Mike Tarselli, PhD, CSO, TetraScience, Inc.

2:40 pm

Intelligent Knowledge Management for Early Feasibility of Clinical Trials

Anamika Sarkar, PhD, Intelligent Automation Lead, Global Development Solutions, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

3:10 pm

Evolution of Laboratory Services at the Brigham and Women's Hospital

Milenko Jovan Tanasijevic, MD, MBA, Former Vice Chair, Clinical Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

The presentation will trace the evolution of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Clinical Laboratories over the past two decades, including the provision of HIS-embedded, physician order-entry based clinical decision support tools, core laboratory automation, and growth of advanced diagnostics capabilities and programs.

3:40 pm

Structural Biology Data Processing Workflow Pipeline Automation Using AI/ML

Deven Atnoor, PhD, Vice President, Scientific Strategy, Clovertex Inc.

Vinod Kasam, PhD, Vice President, Scientific Computing, Clovertex Grp LLC

Toshio Moriya, PhD, Associate Professor, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)

Structure determination using single-particle cryo-EM is now an established method in structural biology. Cryo-EM provides a protein structure with near-atomic resolution. The present cryo-EM atomic model building has limitations when the protein structure resolution is low (> 3-5 Angstrom). We are describing a combination of data ingestion automation, workflow and pipeline automation process using AI/ML for the cryo-EM data analysis for building a better protein structure and atomic model from medium to low resolution cryo-EM maps.

Best of Show Awards Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing4:40 pm

Close of Day6:00 pm

Thursday, May 18

Registration and Morning Coffee7:30 am

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

8:00 am

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

Plenary Keynote Sponsor Introduction (Opportunity Available)8:05 am

8:15 am PLENARY PANEL DISCUSSION:

Assessing Innovation: How Pharma Makes Tech Investment Decisions

PANEL MODERATOR:

Aaron Mann, CEO, Clinical Research Data Sharing Alliance

This panel session will assemble senior leaders who evaluate new technology adoption. We will hold an interactive discussion to help provide transparency in the evaluation and decision-making process for assessing and investing in new technologies. Themes we will cover include: 1) process for evaluating, piloting, and scaling new technologies and technology approaches; 2) how an organization evaluates an emerging technology vendor landscape; 3) when and how a formal buying process becomes required, and 4) identifying key stakeholders, decision-makers, and gatekeepers. 

PANELISTS:

April Bingham, Executive Director, Global Medical Compliance and Governance Chapter, Roche

Peter Mesenbrink, PhD, Executive Director, Biostatistics, Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Maria Palombini, Global Practice Leader, Healthcare & Life Sciences, IEEE Standards Association

Laszlo Vasko, Senior Director, Clinical Innovation R&D IT, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing9:30 am

Organizer's Remarks10:15 am

DEVICES AND INSTRUMENTS TO STREAMLINE DATA CAPTURE FOR INFORMED DECISION-MAKING

Chairperson’s Remarks10:20 am

10:25 am

Instrument Digital Twin

Paul Whitehead, PhD, Head, Scientific Data Engineering, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.

The Instrument Digital Twin has been designed as a virtual representation of all R&ED instruments at BMS, spanning their lifecycle, updated with real-time data, including instrument operational state and all raw data generated on the physical instrument. The Digital Twin is physically implemented as a cloud-based data store; it has an instrument ontology, a composable architecture, data ingestion capabilities, and exposes its content via a set of APIs. The Digital Twin is generic, extensible, vendor-neutral, and enables integration into various downstream applications. BioBright DarwinSync is the core laboratory data acquisition and analysis platform that feeds into the Digital Twin. The Instrument Portal is a user-centric front-end to the Digital Twin and enables viewing and consuming the content of the Digital Twin via the APIs and is the one-stop shop for Digital Twin capabilities. The Digital Twin replaces the legacy approach to laboratory data acquisition and analysis.

10:55 am

Leveraging XR Devices, Virtual Lab Assistant, and Other Leading-Edge Technology to Benefit Research within the Biotech Industry

Kristian Kolakowski, Scientific Business Analyst, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Patrick Leblanc, Director Business Relationship Management, Research & Preclinical Development IT, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Wasim Sadar, Senior Project Manager, Research and Development IT, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Research methods to capture information can be outdated, resulting in research inefficiency, repetitive manual tasks, ineffective data management, error-prone transcription, minimal access to resources, and wasted time – hindering the ability to make data-driven decisions for scientific discovery. We’ve assessed how novel technologies such as virtual lab assistants, XR devices, and automated animal identification, can be leveraged to streamline data capture and expedite a scientist’s ability to make informed decisions.

11:55 am

TIME CHANGE (from 12:25-12:55pm to 11:55am-12:25pm):
Regeneron Optimization of Instruments (ROI) (Innovative Practices Awards Winner)

Vinay C. Desai, PhD, MBA, Senior Director Regeneron IT, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Regeneron's Research and Preclinical Development organization invests millions of dollars each year to acquire and operate specialized lab instruments that support scientists in the discovery of potential new medicines. To optimize the usage of these instruments across finite lab space, a project was undertaken to measure instrument utilization. We sought to answer questions like: Are there opportunities to better utilize existing instruments? and Could we plan and budget more effectively if we better understood existing instrument usage? Additionally, this data enables new opportunities to optimize instrument maintenance and other lab processes to increase the likelihood Regeneron is achieving the most value from its investments. Regeneron is now measuring utilization across 600 of the most expensive and/or lab space constrained instruments and using this data to make informed decisions to change processes or defer capital purchases that optimize utilization of a given instrument.

12:25 pm

TIME CHANGE (from 11:55am-12:25pm to 12:25-12:55pm):
DOE-Led Media Optimization for Porcine Stem Cell Lines (Innovative Practices Awards Winner)

Markus Gershater, PhD, CSO, Synthace Ltd

HigherSteaks is a lab-grown meat company on a mission to reduce traditional meat consumption by having a 5% share of the global pork market by 2030. HigherSteaks is ushering in a new era of sustainable food production through lab-grown meat and is doing so through design of experiments (DOE) to accelerate media optimization, and by running factor screens based on different cell lines of porcine stem cells. Synthace, a life sciences SaaS platform, and HigherSteaks’ core experimental solution, allows them to use DOE and fractional factorials—screening 22 factors, as well as interaction profiles, in only 320 experimental runs. Synthace saved HigherSteaks 6-9 months of work and delivered an optimized media for pig stem cells 15x cheaper compared to commercial media. This experiment proves the concept, and demonstrates the viability, of DOE methodologies for the cultured meat sector, without additional lab investment.

Session Break and Transition to Luncheon Presentation12:55 pm

Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own1:05 pm

Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing1:50 pm

FAIRIFICATION AND DIGITIZATION OF LAB DATA

2:35 pm

Chairperson's Remarks

Angelika Fuchs, Chapter Lead Data Products and Platforms, pRED Data & Analytics, Roche Diagnostics GmbH

2:40 pm

Moving Towards the Fully Digital Lab in Pharma Research – A Story of Tenacity and Ingenuity

Angelika Fuchs, Chapter Lead Data Products and Platforms, pRED Data & Analytics, Roche Diagnostics GmbH

Digitalization is recognized as a key enabler in pharmaceutical R&D, yet the fully digital lab is in most places still a vision on paper and slides. The talk will summarize key digital capabilities most labs still need to evolve further, discuss realistic timelines to reach fully digital ways of working within and across labs, and present opportunities to speed up the path towards the vision of a fully digital lab on the example of R&D labs in Roche Pharma Research and Development.

3:10 pm

Laboratory IT: Raw Data Movement Modalities

Christopher Perkins, Director, Labs IT, Flagship Pioneering

Data escape from the wet lab via different modalities, ranging from sneakernet to automated data capture systems. We will present a decision tree to help wet lab scientists and IT decide how to get raw data from the laboratory into computational spaces in ways that support FAIR principles.

3:40 pm

Practical Challenges of In-Lab Data Management

Robin Brouwer, Digital Lab Capability Leader, R&D IT, AstraZeneca R&D

Successful FAIRification of lab data presents well-known challenges due to the nature of experimental workflows. We will present recent efforts in AstraZeneca early research to Digitize in lab workflows. We will discuss our work from policy, software selection, and solution implementation including obstacles we have faced.

Close of Conference4:10 pm






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