2026 Pre-Conference Workshops

Bio-IT World is pleased to offer morning and afternoon pre-conference on Tuesday, May 19. They 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 Thursday-Friday.

  • Engage directly with industry experts and thought leaders.

  • Apply new methodologies in interactive, small-group settings.

  • Gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge tools and technologies shaping the future of life sciences.

Separate registration required.






Workshops

Tuesday, May 19, 2026 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

W2: How to Standardize Data Science Ways of Working to Unlock Your Data Science Team’s Creativity

Build high-performing biotech data science teams in an AI-driven world. This interactive workshop covers workflows, delivery models, and hiring strategies that balance best practices with innovation, helping you select team members who thrive alongside AI tools.
Instructors:
Eric Ma, PhD, Principal Data Scientist, Moderna, Inc.

How do you standardize workflows without stifling innovation? How do you hire in an age where AI can write code? This interactive workshop explores strategies for building data science teams in biotech. Through facilitated discussion and examples, we'll examine delivery models, tactics, and hiring approaches that balance standards with creativity. Discover how to make best practices the path of least resistance while selecting members who thrive alongside AI tools.

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:

Photo of Eric Ma, PhD, Principal Data Scientist, Moderna, Inc.
Eric Ma, PhD, Principal Data Scientist, Moderna, Inc.
As Principal Data Scientist at Moderna Eric leads the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Research) team to accelerate science to the speed of thought. Prior to Moderna, he was at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research conducting biomedical data science research with a focus on using Bayesian statistical methods in the service of discovering medicines for patients. Prior to Novartis, he was an Insight Health Data Fellow in the summer of 2017 and defended his doctoral thesis in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT in the spring of 2017. Eric is also an open-source software developer and has led the development of pyjanitor, a clean API for cleaning data in Python, and nxviz, a visualization package for NetworkX. He is also on the core developer team of NetworkX and PyMC. In addition, he gives back to the community through code contributions, blogging, teaching, and writing. His personal life motto is found in the Gospel of Luke 12:48.
Photo of Jackie Valeri, PhD, Data Scientist, Moderna, Inc.
Jackie Valeri, PhD, Data Scientist, Moderna, Inc.
As a senior data scientist at Moderna, I work on machine learning-guided library design for small molecules, RNA sequences, and proteins. I obtained my PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT and have worked on sequence-to-function machine learning models for RNA sequences and on graph neural networks for small molecule antibiotics discovery.

W3: Next-Gen AI for Drug Discovery: From LLMs to Multi-Agent Systems

This workshop explores how artificial intelligence is advancing drug discovery. The focus is on how next-generation, agentic AI frameworks move beyond standalone large language models (LLMs) to connect data, design, and decision-making across the R&D pipeline. Attendees will gain an understanding of how next-generation, agentic AI frameworks integrate predictive modeling, generative design, and experimental validation through connections with knowledge graphs, FAIR data standards, and ELN/LIMS platforms. The session will highlight how agentic AI enables unified, AI-ready workflows spanning molecular design to translational research, driving measurable impact by accelerating discovery, enhancing traceability, and improving decision quality. Through presentations and real-world examples, participants will learn how to assess their organization’s readiness for multi-agent AI and how to apply these technologies to build smarter, reliable, and compliant R&D workflows.
Instructors:Â
Parthiban Srinivasan, PhD, Professor and Director, Centre for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Mission's Research Foundation, India
Petrina Kamya, PhD, Global Head of AI Platforms & Vice President, Insilico Medicine; President, Insilico Medicine Canada

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:

Photo of Parthiban Srinivasan, PhD, Professor and Director, Centre for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Mission's Research Foundation, India
Parthiban Srinivasan, PhD, Professor and Director, Centre for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Mission's Research Foundation, India
Parthiban Srinivasan, an experienced data scientist, earned his PhD from Indian Institute of Science, specializing in Computational Chemistry. After his PhD, he continued the research at NASA Ames Research Center (USA) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). Then he worked at AstraZeneca in the area of Computer Aided Drug Design for Tuberculosis. Later, he headed informatics business units in Jubilant Biosys and then in GvkBio before he floated the company, Parthys Reverse Informatics and later an AI consultancy, Vingyani. Then he returned to academia as a Professor of Data Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. Currently, Parthiban is a Professor and Director at the Center for AI in Medicine, Vinayaka Missions Research Foundation, AV Medical College and Hospital, Puducherry, India
Photo of Petrina Kamya, PhD, Global Head of AI Platforms & Vice President, Insilico Medicine; President, Insilico Medicine Canada
Petrina Kamya, PhD, Global Head of AI Platforms & Vice President, Insilico Medicine; President, Insilico Medicine Canada
Petrina Kamya, PhD, is the Head of AI Platforms and President of Insilico Medicine, Canada an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company. Before joining Insilico, Dr. Kamya spent eight years in various roles at Chemical Computing Group that involved scientific and business-related aspects of preclinical drug discovery. In addition to establishing the corporate strategy for the sales and business development of molecular modeling software for academia, she also played an active role as an application scientist working on real-world discovery projects and finally in a senior role in strategy and business development for pharma and biotech companies. Following her time at CCG, Petrina moved to Certara as a Market Access Manager, where she learned first-hand the challenges of getting drugs to market. Petrina has been with Insilico Medicine since August 2020. She holds a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in computational chemistry) from Concordia University.

Tuesday, May 19, 2026 1:15 PM – 4:15 PM

W4: Making Data AI-Ready

AI is only as good as the data behind it. In R&D, data is often fragmented, inconsistently annotated, and hard to harmonize. This workshop covers practical strategies, tools, and frameworks for improving data readiness, so models perform reliably, ethically, and within regulatory constraints. Through real-world examples and live demos, attendees will learn how to unlock the full value of public and proprietary datasets to accelerate discovery.
Making Data AI-Ready: Building Reliable, Interoperable Foundations for Discovery
Wisdom Akpan, Senior Scientific Consultant, BioTeam


Topics covered include: 

Building Data + AI Foundational Capabilities to Support Discovery

These foundations provide the ontology & knowledge graphs, quality, identity, governance, and orchestration controls needed to reliably build and operate an enterprise AI layer for discovery.

From Raw to Ready: Designing for Data Readiness at Scale

Data preparation isn't just a scripting problem; it's a systems design problem. This session steps back from individual tools and workflows to examine the architectural choices that determine how efficiently a team can move data from raw to ready. Attendees will see how decisions made at the pipeline and infrastructure level directly shape AI performance, reproducibility, and team velocity.

Managing Data at Scale: Hardware Considerations and Practical Approaches

This talk explores the challenges of managing large-scale data in today's evolving hardware landscape. We'll examine current trends in NVMe and memory availability, discuss how these factors shape data management decisions, and walk through a practical approach to handling data at scale. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the tradeoffs involved and concrete strategies they can apply to their own environments.

Unlocking Public Data at Scale and Closing Remarks

An exploration of the challenges in sourcing, cleaning, and harmonizing large public datasets. This session will highlight common pitfalls, such as inconsistent formats, missing metadata, and data quality issues, and introduce an approach using OpenClaude to transform raw public data into structured, digestible datasets with standardized baseline metadata.

Data Representation & the Cost of Standardization

A deep dive into data modeling: the role of standard dictionaries, schemas, and the decisions that shape them. This talk examines the real trade-offs in harmonization: what you gain in interoperability and scalability, and what you lose along the way.

Trusted AI Starts with FAIR Data: Why Community, Semantics, and Collaboration Matter

AI in life sciences R&D is increasingly constrained not by models, but by the quality, interoperability, and governance of underlying data. This talk presents a perspective from the Pistoia Alliance, integrating insights from its AI and FAIR Communities of Experts. We show how data readiness, semantic interoperability, and governance are key to scalable AI, and why trusted AI needs FAIR data. We share perspectives from the Pharma General Ontology-Terminology project and the FAIR Personas - including the emerging “Agentic AI” persona -  to illustrate the importance of shared data language for both human and AI. Cross-industry collaboration to establish common semantic assets becomes a strategic necessity in this context. Finally, a virtuous cycle may be emerging: FAIR data enables better AI, and AI increasingly contributes to FAIR data.

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:

Photo of Ari E. Berman, Chief Science Officer, Starfish Storage
Ari E. Berman, Chief Science Officer, Starfish Storage
Ari has spent his career developing deep domain expertise across research-driven environments, including life sciences, data science, and High-Performance Computing (HPC), combined with a strong understanding of how technology translates into real-world scientific and commercial impact. Ari received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology with a focus on neuroscience in 2005, from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. His research focused on neurodegenerative diseases of aging and utilized a combination of laboratory science, animal models, bioinformatics, and computational biology. Ari has also been designing, building, and operating HPC systems for science for 30 years. Prior to joining Starfish as the Chief Science Officer, Ari served as the CEO of BioTeam, a scientific computing life sciences consultancy. His combined expertise in computing technology, science, and executive leadership makes him uniquely suited to help accelerate science by making analytics easier for scientists.
Photo of Brian Osborne, PhD, Senior Principal Consultant, BioTeam, LLC
Brian Osborne, PhD, Senior Principal Consultant, BioTeam, LLC
At BioTeam, Brian brings over twenty five years of experience working in scientific and technical settings with expertise in bioinformatics and biology. Brian received his Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. focusing on transcriptional control elements in Saccharomyces. Prior to working at BioTeam, he worked in pharma and biotechnology in different technical and leadership roles, with a focus on scientific software application and platform development, either for internal research purposes or for commercial purposes. He is a long-time core contributor to the open-source community, including BioPython and BioPerl. He has provided tactical and strategic consulting on research and clinical data management to the NIH Intramural Program, NIH HEAL Initiative, NHLBI, NHGRI, NIH STRIDES program, and the NIH Clinical Center.
Photo of Fernanda Foertter, MSc, Executive Director, The University of Alabama High Performance Computing and Data Center
Fernanda Foertter, MSc, Executive Director, The University of Alabama High Performance Computing and Data Center
Fernanda Foertter is currently the Executive Director of The University of Alabama High Performance Computing and Data Center. She previously held roles as the Senior Scientific Consultant for BioTeam and GPU Developer Advocate for Bioinformatics at NVIDIA in the Healthcare group where she fostered an emerging community in AI and GPU computing. Before NVIDIA, Foertter held roles as an HPC Data Scientist in the Biomedical Sciences and Engineering group and was an HPC Programmer and Training Coordinator at the Oak Ridge National Lab's Leadership Computing Facility. She participated in the CORAL project that selected Summit as the next supercomputer to replace Titan, was co-PI of Kokkos Exascale Computing Project, served in OpenACC and OpenMP language standards, and is the “inventor” of the GPU Hackathon training series. Other interests include the intersection of HPC and AI, facilitating data integration workflows, and productivity in scientific application development.
Photo of Giovanni Nisato, PhD, Consultant; Project Manager Pharma General Ontology-Terminology Project, Pistoia Alliance
Giovanni Nisato, PhD, Consultant; Project Manager Pharma General Ontology-Terminology Project, Pistoia Alliance
Giovanni Nisato is a Pistoia Alliance Associate where he currently manages the FAIR implementation project. Giovanni works as a consultant for bio-pharmaceutical organizations, innovation networks and digital health start-ups. He has 25 years’ experience in collaborative innovations in international settings across diverse industries. Affiliate professor at the Grenoble School of Management’s Biopharma Program, Giovanni holds a PhD in physics and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP/PMI).
Photo of Sudeep Regmi, Head Enterprise DM & Innovation, IT, Takeda
Sudeep Regmi, Head Enterprise DM & Innovation, IT, Takeda
Sudeep heads Enterprise data management and Innovation for Takeda and responsible for data strategies, its processes, data products and its solutions. Sudeep understand the importance of “Happy Data” and has been instrumental on developing several healthcare data and AI products and solutions globally. He is ambassador for “Data led AI (Agentic, Gen) transformation”. He leads end to end data lifecycle management including data architecture, data acquisition, data access and privacy, data quality, master data management, data marketplace, data engineering and data products to support AI/Agentic AI admissions.
Photo of Wisdom Akpan, Senior Scientific Consultant, BioTeam
Wisdom Akpan, Senior Scientific Consultant, BioTeam
Wisdom Akpan is a senior scientific consultant at BioTeam specializing in cloud infrastructure, machine learning, and research software development. He brings over 7 years of experience working at the intersection of science and technology, having previously served as an IT consultant at Infosys Ltd. Prior to joining BioTeam, Wisdom developed full-stack solutions and cross-platform applications, following research at Carleton College and Iowa State focused on photopolymers and microfluidics for biosensors. At BioTeam, Wisdom helps organizations construct systems that enable life scientists to innovate.

W6: AI Upskilling for Computational Biology Teams

AI is rapidly transforming how computational biology teams design experiments, analyze data, and generate insights—but most scientists haven’t had the opportunity to build hands-on proficiency with these new tools. This interactive workshop bridges that gap, providing practical guidance on how to apply AI and agentic coding frameworks in real-world research settings. Participants will learn how to build, test, and deploy simple AI agents, connect biological data to large language models, and explore no-code or low-code platforms that accelerate productivity. Designed for computational biologists, bioinformaticians, and data scientists, this session focuses on applied learning to help teams confidently integrate AI into their daily workflows.
1:15 PM AI Upskilling for Computational Biology Teams
Ryan Bellmore, Owner/Founder, Right Bionic

AI is rapidly transforming how computational biology teams can design experiments, analyze data, and generate insights—but most scientists haven’t had the opportunity to build hands-on proficiency with the leading edge tools. This interactive workshop bridges that gap, providing practical guidance on how to apply the latest AI and agentic coding frameworks in real-world research settings.

Participants will learn how to: 
  • Adopt leading edge practices from agentic software dev, including Spec Driven Development and Multi-Agent workflows
  • Adapt frontier LLM models to scientific coding by integrating domain expertise
  • Experience and develop leading edge harnesses to accelerate productivity while managing tech debt
  • Connect biological data to LLM/deep learning models.
Designed for computational biologists, bioinformaticians, and data scientists, this session focuses on applied learning to help teams confidently integrate AI into their daily workflows.

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:

Photo of Ryan Bellmore, Owner/Founder, Right Bionic
Ryan Bellmore, Owner/Founder, Right Bionic
Ryan Bellmore is a freelance data engineer in the Boston area. He has spent the last dozen years helping life-science organizations build data systems responsive to their scientists' needs. Past employers include Pfizer, Finch Therapeutics, and most recently Alltrna, where he led the informatics and IT functions. Ryan holds a BS in clinical biology from Georgetown University.
Photo of Sonia Timberlake, PhD, R&D Strategy Consultant, Timberlake & Maclsaac Biopharma Consulting
Sonia Timberlake, PhD, R&D Strategy Consultant, Timberlake & Maclsaac Biopharma Consulting
Sonia Timberlake has spent the last 15 years building biotech startups, as a head of computational biology and head of Research. Sonia currently consults for biotechs and VC on leveraging novel high throughput technologies and AI to accelerate R&D. As head of translational research at a cell therapy biotech, she built a discovery platform based on a novel beside-to-bench translation of genomic data for target ID and hit ID, and is transitioning it to the clinic. Sonia has a BS from Caltech and a PhD from MIT.

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Conference Tracks

T1: Data Platforms & Storage Infrastructure