AI-Revolution in Pharma R&D

Despoina Ioannidou is the CTO of HealthSage AI, where she leads the development of innovative AI-powered healthcare solutions. With experience in healthtech startups and medical AI applications, she combines technical expertise from her PhD in Informatics with practical implementation in clinical contexts.
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Associate Director Computational Chemistry (Data Science) Nils holds a master’s degree and a PhD in Computer Science (with a focus on Bioinformatics and Data Mining) from the University of Marburg. In his current role, he builds, together with a team of computational chemists, data scientists and software engineers, digital tools that support the medicinal chemists at Boehringer Ingelheim in designing molecules with great properties.
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Director Medicinal Chemistry and Computional Solutions Alexander studied at the University of Bonn from 2011 to 2015, where he graduated as a pharmacist in pharmacy. He has worked for three companies since 2013. He started as a pharmacist at Gürzenich Apotheke in 2013 and then worked as a PhD student at the University of Bonn from 2016. In 2020, he joined BioSolveIT as Marketing Director, then as Senior Marketing Manager and finally as Consulting Scientist. .

Manager Dr. Irina Tihaa is a Manager at d-fine and drives AI and digital innovation projects for clients in the Pharma & Healthcare sector, focusing on user-centered application of both emerging and established technologies as well as end-to-end processes. Before joining d-fine, Irina worked at Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University.
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Senior Consultant Pharma & Healthcare Tim Breitenfelder is an expert in AI and knowledge graphs for biomedical data, with a focus on regulatory aspects and interaction-driven software engineering. At d-fine, he drives digital projects in the Pharma & Healthcare sector. During a sabbatical, he conducted research at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo on cutting-edge algorithms, including large language models, agentic AI, and knowledge graph technologies.

In the past, she held, among other things, the position of deputy head from 2015 to 2020 and until 2022 the comm. Head of the German GLP Federal Office at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and was technically responsible for the accredited laboratories of the BfR including the NRLs located there. She has extensive experience from industry, the public sector, research, universities and institutions in Germany and abroad (Germany, Singapore, China). Since August 2022, Dr Hunke has been working as GLP-QA and as a consultant at DiQualis Germany with expertise in ISO and regulatory GxP requirements as well as laboratory-related computerised systems (LIMS, eSignature, ELN, eDMS).
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Expert In Early Drug Discovery and Development Sam is a Senior Postdoctoral Scientist at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, where he develops novel transcription factor inhibitors for rare cancers like chordoma using engineered DARPins. His work has identified new cancer-specific pathways and therapeutic candidates, combining advanced cellular models (including 3D spheroid systems) with precise molecular biology tools. Sam employs a hybrid approach to early drug discovery using multi-omics, AI, structure based drug design, and real-world experiments to validate target engagement.

AI Product Development Team Lead He studied medicine and obtained a PhD in molecular biology. Imre started in academia as postdoc and then senior research scientist in EMBL, Heidelberg, IMBA, Vienna and then MPIB, Munich working on topic related to regulation of transcription. Over the years he drifted from a wetlab scientist to become an computational biologist/bioinformatician. Recently, he transitioned to industry joining Turbine.ai to help in computational modelling of basic cell biology underlying key pathological/pathophysiological conditions such as cancer. Imre have been leading one of the AI/ML engineering teams involved in computational model R&D to simulate perturbation response of biological models, ranging from cell lines towards more complex biological systems, such as organoids, tumour explants and in situ tumours. He is an expert of bioinformatics and computational biology (modelling) bridging the gap between biology and machine learning