Keynote Speakers

Jeremy Forman
Vice President
Research & Development AI, Data, and Analytics
Pfizer Inc.
View Bio

Robert Califf, M.D., MACC
Former Commissioner
Food and Drug Administration
Professor of Medicine
Duke University School of Medicine
Co-Chairs

David Madigan, Ph.D.

Demissie Alemayehu, Ph.D.
Steering Committee

Asieh Golozar, Ph.D

Kannan Natarajan, Ph.D.

Ron Wasserstein, Ph.D.
Speakers

Matt Austin, M.S.

Charmaine
Demanuele, Ph.D.
AI/ML Quantitative and Digital Sciences
Global Biometrics and Data Management

Tala H. Fakhouri, Ph.D., MPH

Usama Fayyad, Ph.D.
The Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence

Andy Houseman, Ph.D.

Pandurang Kulkarni, Ph.D.
Chief Analytics Officer – R&D
Senior Vice President – Statistics, Data and Analytics (SDnA), of Eli Lilly and Company
CEO of Aparito LLC

Subha Madhavan, Ph.D.

Tommaso Mansi, Ph.D.

Scott McClain, Ph.D.

Surya Mohanty, Ph.D.

Annie Qu, Ph.D.

Aaditya Ramdas, Ph.D.
Machine Learning Department

Malaikannan Sankarasubbu

Suchi Saria, Ph.D.
John Hopkins University

Mark Van Der Laan, Ph.D.
Biostatistics and Statistics
View Bio

Ajay Yekkirala, Ph.D.

Bingzhi Zhang, Ph.D.

Maoxia Zheng, Ph.D.
Tutorial Instructors, Poster Coordinators, and Poster Presenters


Javier Cabrera, Ph.D.

Yiorgos Christakis, M.S.

Yuzheng Dun
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins University

Cindy Fang,
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Biostatistics
John Hopkins University

Susan Gruber, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.

Larry Han, Ph.D.

Nareen Katta, M.B.A, M.S.


Bonnie Smith
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biostatistics
John Hopkins University

Janmejay Vyas
Ph.D. Candidate
Khoury College of Computer Sciences
Northeastern University

Lukas Adamowicz, MS
Lukas Adamowicz has a MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Vermont. He has been with Pfizer for approximately 5 years and works with wearable inertial sensor data, implementing and improving algorithms for extracting novel digital endpoints, as well as the deployment of those algorithms at scale. He published the open-source SciKit Digital Health package, a collection of these algorithms. In his spare time he enjoys biking, running, and skiing outside in Vermont.

Matt Austin, M.S.
Matt Austin currently leads a Data Science team in Clinical Development at Amgen. He has over 25 years of industry experience including time in biostatistics before forming his current team. He enjoys collaborating with groups across Clinical Development to identify key issues and find solutions to help optimize our performance. His team mixes engineering and data science roles to effectively move from prototypes to production and has projects in production using advanced statistical techniques, AI/ML, and GenAI approaches.

Demissie Alemayehu, Ph.D.
Demissie Alemayehu, Ph.D., is Vice of Biostatistics and Head of Statistical Research and Data Sciences (SRDC) in Global Biometrics and Data Management (GBDM) at Pfizer Inc. Demissie has over 25 years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has supported projects in almost all therapeutic areas. Demissie has also been influential externally, with decades of research and teaching experience at major institutions. He has co-authored three monographs and published numerous manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, he has held important offices at key professional societies, and has served on editorial boards of major journals. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and holds a Ph.D. degree in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Javier Cabrera, Ph.D.
Javier Cabrera, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Medicine, Rutgers University, and a member of the Cardiovascular Institute of New Jersey and the Institute of Quantitative Biomedicine. He is a winner of the 2010 SPAIG award of the American Statistical Association, a Fulbright fellow, and a Henry Rutgers fellow. He was Director of the Institute of Biostatistics at Rutgers University and the chief co-editor of the journal, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis. Professor Cabrera has numerous publications and books in Statistics and Biostatistics on diverse topics, including, Big Data for medical research, functional genomics, analysis of genomic data, statistical computing, graphics, and computer vision. He received his PhD from Princeton University.

Robert Califf, M.D., MACC
Former Commissioner
Food and Drug Administration
Professor of Medicine
Duke University School of Medicine
Robert M. Califf, MD, MACC, was the Commissioner of Food and Drugs from February 2016 to January 2017 and from February 2022 to January 2025. He is currently Instructor in Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine.
Between his 2 stints at FDA, Dr. Califf was the head of medical policy and strategy for Alphabet’s subsidiaries Verily and Google Health.
Previously, Dr. Califf served as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco from February 2015 until his appointment as Commissioner in February 2016.
Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Califf was a professor of medicine and vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University. He also served as director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute and founding director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. A nationally and internationally recognized expert in cardiovascular medicine, health outcomes research, healthcare quality, and clinical research, Dr. Califf has led many landmark clinical trials and is one of the most frequently cited authors in biomedical science, with more than 1,200 publications in the peer-reviewed literature.
Dr. Califf became a Member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM)) in 2016, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Dr. Califf has served on numerous IOM committees, and he has served as a member of the FDA Cardiorenal Advisory Panel and FDA Science Board’s Subcommittee on Science and Technology. Dr. Califf has also served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Library of Medicine, as well as on advisory committees for the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Council of the National Institute on Aging.
While at Duke, Dr. Califf led major initiatives aimed at improving methods and infrastructure for clinical research, including the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public-private partnership co-founded by the FDA and Duke. He also served as the principal investigator for Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Award and the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory coordinating center.
Dr. Califf is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a fellowship in cardiology at Duke.

Charmaine
Demanuele, Ph.D.
AI/ML Quantitative and Digital Sciences
Global Biometrics and Data Management
Dr. Charmaine Demanuele is an Executive Director in the AI/ML Quantitative and Digital Sciences group within Global Biometrics and Data Management, Pfizer Research & Development. She leads a team of statisticians and data scientists that bring end-to-end clinical trial innovation with digital health technologies, imaging and statistical, AI/ML methodologies. Her group works across Pfizer’s portfolio to develop novel digital endpoints, and leverages models such as Bring-Your-Own-Device and Decentralized Clinical Trials to enable efficient, patient-centric trials and faster breakthroughs for patients. Prior to joining Pfizer, Charmaine was as a neuroscience research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston specialized in multimodal neuroimaging for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

Tala H. Fakhouri, Ph.D., MPH
Associate Director
Policy Analysis at the Food and Drug Administration
CDER, Office of Medical Policy
Tala H. Fakhouri, Ph.D., MPH, is the Associate Director for Policy Analysis at the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Fakhouri manages a team tasked with developing, coordinating, and implementing medical policy with a focus on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in drug development. She also contributes to the development of medical policy related to real-world evidence (RWE) for medical product development. In 2023, She was selected by the Office of Management and Budget to serve on the Federal Committee for Statistical Methodology for her expertise in statistical methods.
Prior to joining FDA, Dr. Fakhouri served as Chief Statistician for the CDC’s flagship population survey, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is recognized as the premier source of nationally representative data on the health of the nation. Prior to NHANES, she served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the CDC, and deputy lead for health surveys at ICF-Macro International. Dr. Fakhouri published over 30 government reports, peer-reviewed papers, and book chapters.
Dr. Fakhouri earned a Ph.D. in Oncological Sciences from The Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, an MPH in Epidemiologic and Biostatistical Methods from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology and genetics from Harvard University, and holds a BSc Medical Technology form the Jordan University of Science and Technology.

Usama Fayyad, PhD.
The Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence
Usama Fayyad, PhD., is the executive director of Northeastern’s Institute for Experiential AI and a professor of the practice in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He continues to serve as chairman of Open Insights, a company he founded as a technology and consulting firm in 2008 to enable enterprises to extract greater value from their data assets. He co-founded OODA Health, Inc., and from 2017 to 2019 served as the company’s chief technology officer. Between 2013 and 2016 he was global chief data officer and group managing director at Barclays Bank in London.
He has published more than 100 technical articles on data science, holds over 20 patents, and is a fellow of both the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. He has also edited two influential books on data science and served as founding editor-in-chief on two key journals. He currently serves on the board advisory committee to Nationwide Building Society in the U.K. and on the advisory board of the WEF Global Center for Cybersecurity. Fayyad is an active angel investor/advisor in many early-stage tech startups across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.

Jeremy Forman
Vice President
Research &Development AI, Data, and Analytics
Pfizer Inc.
Jeremy Forman, is the Vice President of Research & Development AI, Data, and Analytics. Jeremy brings over 25 years of expertise in data-driven innovation and artificial intelligence. His career is marked by strategic leadership roles where he has harnessed the power of AI and data to drive business growth, enhance customer and employee experiences, and foster a culture of innovation and responsible use of technology. Jeremy’s experience extends beyond the corporate world into academia, where he shares his knowledge as an Adjunct Professor at the Tippie School of Business, University of Iowa. His work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Oracle Corporation, and Los Alamos National Laboratory further underscores his global perspective, strategic thinking, and commitment to sustainability and social responsibility.
Jeremy lives in Seattle with his wife, Bernadette, dogs Axel and Piper, and with his two grown children nearby. When not working Jeremy can be found on his bike, playing guitar, or enjoying the food and wine of the Pacific Northwest.

Asieh
Golozar, Ph.D.
Asieh Golozar, Ph.D., is a physician-epidemiologist and biostatistician with more than 20 years of experience in health services research, real-world evidence generation, and evaluation of healthcare interventions within government, academia, and industry. She holds a PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and a Master of Health Sciences in biostatistics from JHU, supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship award with the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. She earned her medical degree from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
After receiving her PhD, Golozar joined the faculty at the JHU Department of Epidemiology, where she focused on cancer and diabetes epidemiology, the application of epidemiologic and statistical methods for robust synthesis of evidence from epidemiologic data, and applying evidence-based findings to strengthen public heath infrastructure and policies. In 2017, she moved into industry roles at Bayer AG, AstraZeneca, and Regeneron, where she led lifecycle management and real-world evidence generation activities in oncology, women’s health, and other therapeutic areas.
As a professor of the practice, Golozar brings a comprehensive knowledge of healthcare systems to Northeastern. She also has the skills in research methodology and statistics required for addressing safety and effectiveness outcomes and risk assessment, and for generating high quality real-world evidence (RWE) from real-world data. She has played leading roles in large-scale private-public partnerships, including the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Big Data for Better Outcomes project and the IMI PIONEER Prostate Cancer Study-a-thon.
Since 2018, Golozar has led the OHDSI Oncology Working Group, endeavoring to extend the OMOP common data model to support oncology use cases and advance oncology real-world evidence research. In 2021, Golozar received an OHDSI Titan Award for Clinical Application. In addition to her role at Northeastern, Golozar is an adjunct faculty member at the JHU School of Public Health and vice president of data science at Odysseus Data Services, a leading RWE technology vendor.

Susan
Gruber, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.
Dr. Susan Gruber, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., is a biostatistician and computer scientist who founded Putnam Data Sciences, a statistical consulting firm specializing in causal inference and predictive modeling and co-founded TL Revolution with Dr. van der Laan. She is the former Director of the Biostatistics Center, Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School, and former Senior Director of the IMEDS Methods program at the Reagan Udall Foundation for the FDA. Dr. Gruber is an expert on targeted learning who developed the first open source R package for TMLE and has an extensive record of publications, presentations, and training sessions on Targeted Learning.

Larry Han, Ph.D.
Larry Han, Ph.D., develops novel statistical and machine learning methodology to synthesize real-world data and integrate information from heterogeneous data sources to improve decision-making in clinical medicine and public health. His research interests include causal inference, conformal prediction, federated learning, transfer learning, surrogate markers, quality measurement, healthcare operations, and sensitivity analysis. His applied interests include clinical trial design and the safe, efficient, and robust use of observational study data such as electronic health records. In addition to his methodological research, he has experience leading epidemiological studies in disease areas such as COVID-19, cardiology, dementia, and infectious diseases (e.g., HIV, STIs, malaria).

Andy
Houseman, Ph.D.
Andy Houseman, Ph.D., is a Senior Project Leader / Team Leader in the Statistical Innovation Hub at Sanofi. He has been at Sanofi for almost three years [as of June 2025], before which he held biomarker statistics positions at GSK. In the more distant past he held faculty positions (research faculty at Harvard and Brown, tenured at Oregon State) before pivoting his career to work in the pharmaceutical industry. He has published extensively in Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and subject matter areas that utilize biostatistical methods.

Nareen
Katta, M.B.A, M.S.
Nareen Katta works as the Head of Data Science and Analytics at AbbVie. Nareen has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. In his current role, Nareen is responsible for building and executing the advanced analytics strategy, that covers both Scientific and Business Operations, across Clinical Development Continuum, Geostrategy and Study start-up, Centralized and Risk Based Monitoring, Site Engagement, Business Performance, Precision Medicine, Patient Safety and R&D. In addition, Nareen is actively engaged in evaluating the opportunities created by the technology trends like big data, automation, machine learning and AI, digital health etc. and strategically instantiating them at AbbVie to drive organizational transformation. Nareen has an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas at Arlington.

Pandurang Kulkarni, Ph.D.
Chief Analytics Officer, R&D
Senior Vice President – Statistics, Data and Analytics (SDnA)
Eli Lilly and Company
Dr. Pandu Kulkarni, Ph.D, is the SVP leading a global organization of ~1500 employees. His organization consists of project statisticians, analytics data experts, and scientists working in the full pharmaceutical research cycle, from discovery to medical clinical development and commercialization for all therapeutic areas. He is also the CEO of Aparito, a fully owned subsidiary of Lilly. He has a Ph.D. in Statistics. He has worked with scientists from NASA and AirForce. He joined Eli Lilly in 2000 and has held numerous leadership positions in technical and management ladder and has championed multiple transformative initiatives. He has published nearly 60 articles in statistics and medical areas in peer reviewed journals, is an ASA Fellow, and mentors colleagues across the industry. He has served on boards for several organizations.

Mark
Van Der Laan, Ph.D.
Biostatistics and Statistics
Mark Van Der Laan is Jiann-Ping Hsu/Karl E. Peace Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at UC Berkeley, co-Director of the Center for Targeted Machine Learning and Causal Inference (CTML) Research Center, Director of the Computational Biology core of the UC Berkeley Superfund Research Program. and co-founder of TL Revolution. He developed Targeted Learning, TMLE, and super learning based on decades of research on causal inference, survival analysis, censored data, multiple testing, machine learning, and semiparametric models. Dr. van der Laan has been awarded numerous research grants and prestigious awards, including the Presidents’ Award of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, the Mortimer Spiegelman Award and the van Dantzig Award.

Hana
Lee, Ph.D., M.S.
Hana Lee, Ph.D., is a Senior Statistical Reviewer of the Office of Biostatistics (OB) in the CDER, FDA. She leads and oversees various FDA-funded projects intended to support development of the agency’s Real World Evidence (RWE) program. She’s been leading the RWE scientific working group of the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section, which is a public private partnership with FDA involving scientists from FDA, academia, and industry to advance the understanding of RWD/E to support regulatory decision-making. Dr. Lee has been recognized for her outstanding contributions to the field with numerous awards from FDA. Most recently, she received the prestigious FDA Scientific Achievement Award, which honors FDA scientists who have made exceptional advancements in regulatory science and contributed significantly to FDA’s mission of protecting public health.

David Madigan, Ph.D.
David Madigan, Ph.D., came to Northeastern from Columbia University, where he served as executive vice president for arts and sciences and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In those roles, he oversaw five schools with 27 departments and some 50 research centers and institutes. He led successful initiatives to expand lifelong learning programs, and to make Columbia’s faculty and student body more diverse. Notably, he spearheaded a program to ensure that Columbia’s first-generation students would have the mentoring and support they needed to succeed in a highly demanding academic environment.
At Columbia and in his previous position as Rutgers University’s Dean of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Madigan developed new interdisciplinary learning and research collaborations, and forged industry partnerships to support student and faculty innovation. Under his leadership as department chair, Columbia’s statistics faculty ascended to the ranks of the nation’s top 10.
A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Madigan has long been a leading researcher at the intersection of Big Data with healthcare innovation. While serving on the statistics faculty at the University of Washington, he was a member of the world-renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Madigan also brings a strong global perspective to Northeastern. A native of Ireland, he has led large-scale global collaborations involving academic and pharmaceutical company researchers and government regulators in the U.S. and Europe. Beyond the halls of academia, he has experience as an entrepreneur, innovation leader, researcher, and consultant, both in the U.S. and Ireland. He earned his BA and PhD from Trinity College Dublin.

Subha Madhavan, Ph.D.
Subha Madhavan, Ph.D., is a dynamic and results-driven leader with a strong track record of excellence in organizations that operate at the nexus of science, technology and business. She has initiated and successfully directed several productive clinical research and development programs at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, MedStar hospital network, FDA, NIH and BioPharma industry. She was co-leader of the FDA’s Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and worked with the oncology and vaccine teams. She was an advisory member to the Biden Foundation’s Cancer Moonshot Program and advised on pre-competitive data sharing initiatives across pharma, health tech companies and research organizations to drive innovation. She has been recognized for her work through several awards including the Service to America award in the Science and Environment category (2005), Research Acceleration Award by AACR and Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (2015), and Women in Tech Global award (2021). She is currently the Head of Clinical AI/ML & Digital Sciences at Pfizer worldwide R&D where she leads a team focused on advancing precision therapies across multiple treatment areas including Anti-Infectives, Oncology, Immunology & Inflammation among others.

Tommaso Mansi, Ph.D.
Tommaso Mansi, Ph.D., is a member of the IEEE received his Ph.D. degree from INRIA Sophia Antipolis in 2010. He is currently serving as the VP of AI and Digital Health at Janssen: Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson. He then worked at Siemens Healthineers, prior to joining Janssen. His research focuses on artificial intelligence, medical imaging, computational physiology, and image-guided therapy, with the goal to develop solutions to enable next generation treatments. He is currently an AIMBE Fellow. He and his team have been honored of multiple awards, in particular the Siemens Inventor of the Year 2020, the MICCAI Young Scientist (2011, 2013, and 2018), and the NJ Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award (2015 and 2019).(Based on document published on 19 January 2022). https://www.tmansi.net/

Scott McClain, Ph.D.
Scott McClain, Ph.D., brings 33 years of experience in toxicology, biotechnology, and product safety risk assessment. His academic background is environmental and molecular toxicology with a focus in quantitative risk assessment. He received his advanced degrees from Miami University of OH. Career industry experience ranges across immunology combined with cellular genetics, disease model research and analytics/statistics. More recently, the focus has been on regulatory safety data communications and analytic process development with global regulatory agencies. He currently serves as strategic advisor to the Health and Life Science practice at SAS Institute, Inc.

Surya Mohanty, Ph.D.
Surya Mohanty, Heads the Translational Medicine and Early Development Statistics (TMEDS) at Johnson & Johnson. He leads a team of statistical scientists who provide strategic and statistical leadership in drug discovery and early-stage research. With a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics from Yale University, his career spans roles at IBM Research and several biopharmaceutical companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson. His work has significantly contributed to drug development, regulatory submissions, and innovative statistical methodologies.

Kannan Natarajan, Ph.D.
Kannan Natarajan, Ph.D., is the Head of Global Biometrics and Data Management (GBDM) and is a member of the Pfizer Research & Development Leadership Team at Pfizer Inc. The GBDM organization supports the global clinical development strategy and data sciences across all of Pfizer’s product portfolio. He is also the Chief Statistical Officer at Pfizer, managing statistical functional excellence across all Pfizer business units. Prior to joining Pfizer, Kannan was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Oncology Biometrics and Data Management at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Kannan has been in the pharmaceutical industry for over three decades working across various therapeutic areas. Kannan holds a Ph.D., in Statistics from the University of Florida.

Annie Qu, Ph.D.
Annie Qu, Ph.D., Annie Qu is Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1998. Qu’s research focuses on solving fundamental issues regarding structured and unstructured large-scale data and developing cutting-edge statistical methods and theory in machine learning and algorithms for personalized medicine, text mining, recommender systems, medical imaging data, and network data analyses for complex heterogeneous data. The newly developed methods can extract essential and relevant information from large volumes of intensively collected data, such as mobile health data. Her research impacts many fields, including biomedical studies, genomic research, public health research, social and political sciences. Before joining UC Irvine, Dr. Qu was a Data Science Founder Professor of Statistics and the Director of the Illinois Statistics Office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was awarded the Brad and Karen Smith Professorial Scholar by the College of LAS at UIUC and was a recipient of the NSF Career award from 2004 to 2009. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the American Statistical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a recipient of IMS Medallion Award and Lecturer in 2024. She serves as Journal of the American Statistical Association Theory and Methods Co-Editor from 2023 to 2025 and as IMS Program Secretary from 2021 to 2027.
Qu Lab website: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/qulab/

Aaditya Ramdas, Ph.D
Aaditya Ramdas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science and the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a visiting academic at Amazon Research. His work has been recognized by the Sloan fellowship, the IMS Peter Hall Early Career Prize, the inaugural COPSS Emerging Leader Award, the Bernoulli New Researcher Award, the NSF CAREER Award, faculty research awards from Google and Adobe, and discussion papers at JASA and JRSSB.

Malaikannan Sankarasubbu
Malaikannan Sankarasubbu, is the Chief Technology Officer at Saama Technologies, where he leads initiatives to accelerate clinical trials through advanced artificial intelligence and analytics. With over 15 years in software product development, Malaikannan is dedicated to “bringing certainty to uncertainty” in AI research and life sciences, helping streamline clinical trials for faster, more reliable outcomes. As a seasoned entrepreneur, he has founded companies and built high-performance teams that drive innovation in healthcare.
His research spans Natural Language Understanding, uncertainty bounds, and Explainable AI, contributing to transparent and effective AI applications in precision medicine. With numerous peer-reviewed publications in major conferences, [available on Google Scholar] (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=znWv6tUAAAAJ&hl=en), Malaikannan is a thought leader advancing AI’s role in life sciences, bringing new insights and efficiency to clinical research.

Suchi
Saria, Ph.D.
Suchi Saria, Ph.D. is the founder and president of Bayesian Health, the most scientifically advanced clinical AI platform company that augments care teams by bringing together state of the AI/ML technology combined with responsible AI best practices to dramatically improve quality while saving clinicians’ time. She is also an AI Professor at Johns Hopkins where she holds the John C. Malone endowed chair and is the Director of AI and health lab.
Dr. Saria’s work in AI over the last two decades has led to foundational advances in the technology, best practices around translation, and AI policy. She has written several seminal papers in AI/ML around issues of learning robust models, detecting drifts, monitoring and learning from messy real-world datasets. Her applied research has built on these technical advances to develop novel next generation diagnostic and treatment planning tools that use AI/ML to individualize care. Her work has been funded by leading organizations including the NSF, DARPA, FDA, NIH and CDC and she regularly serves as a scientific advisor to leading Fortune 500 companies.
Dr. Saria completed her PhD in AI at Stanford, her BSc in Physics, Computer Science and Statistics at Mount Holyoke. She’s a Sloan Research Fellow, named by IEEE to “AI’s 10 to Watch”. Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators, World Technology Forum’ Technology Pioneer, and her work was recognized as one of TIME’s Best Inventions in 2023. Her work with Bayesian has also received FDA Breakthrough Designation. She is a co-founder and on the board of directors for Coalition of Health AI (CHAI) and serves on the National Academy of Medicine AI Code of Conduct.

Ron Wasserstein, Ph.D.
Ronald L. (Ron) Wasserstein, Ph.D., is the executive director of the American Statistical Association (ASA). Wasserstein assumed the ASA’s top staff leadership post in August 2007.
In this role, Wasserstein provides executive leadership and management for the association and is responsible for ensuring that the ASA fulfills its mission to promote the practice and profession of statistics. He also is responsible for a staff of 36 at the ASA’s headquarters in Alexandria, Va. As executive director, Wasserstein also is an official ASA spokesperson.
Prior to joining the ASA, Wasserstein was a mathematics and statistics department faculty member and administrator at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., from 1984–2007. During his last seven years at the school, he served as the university’s vice president for academic affairs.
Wasserstein is a longtime member of the ASA, having joined the association in 1983, and prior to becoming Executive Director had been active as a volunteer in the ASA for more than 20 years. He was a member of the ASA Board of Directors from 2001–2003.
Wasserstein is a Fellow of the ASA and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was presented the John Ritchie Alumni Award and Muriel Clarke Student Life Award from Washburn University, the Manning Distinguished Service Award from the North American Association of Summer Schools, and the George Mach Distinguished Service Award from Kappa Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honor Society. For his community service, he received the Champion of Character Award from the Fairfax County Athletic Council and the Administrator of the Year Award from the Virginia Youth Soccer Association.
Ron and his wife, Sherry, live in northern Virginia and enjoy traveling, movies, binge-watching TV series, live theater, audio books, and doting on their children and grandchildren.

Ajay Yekkirala, Ph.D.
Ajay Yekkirala, Ph.D., is an experienced drug hunter who is also a serial entrepreneur and inventor. As Co-founder and Head of Discovery and Development at Superluminal, Ajay directs scientific and experimental efforts across various programs. Prior to Superluminal, Ajay founded Blue Therapeutics to develop non-addictive painkillers and before that had trained with Philip Portoghese at the University of Minnesota for his PhD and completed postdoctoral training with Clifford Woolf at Harvard Medical School. He has authored several papers published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, including book chapters and invited reviews. Ajay is also an expert KOL advising various committees at the NIH – including EPPIC-NET at NINDS and Medication Development Research Committee at NIDA.

Yiorgos Christakis, MS
Yiorgos Christakis, MS, is an Associate Director of Data Science at Pfizer, Inc., where he has been contributing since 2018. With a background in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science, Yiorgos specializes in developing and deploying novel digital endpoints in clinical trials. He also works on developing algorithms for wearable data and building scalable cloud pipelines.
Yiorgos holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and an MSc in Computer Science with a focus on Machine Learning from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Bingzhi Zhang, Ph.D.
Bingzhi Zhang, Ph.D., is the Biostatistical Team Leader at Sanofi. Her work is dedicated to bridging the gaps between project execution and innovative study design and decision-making approaches, making use of emerging sources for evidence generation. Her research interests include study designs utilizing external/historical data, master protocols and AI/ML-powered study design. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Columbia University.

Maoxia Zheng, Ph.D.
Maoxia Zheng is the Deputy Global Head of Data and Statistical Sciences at Genentech/Roche, where she oversees oncology programs. She also leads the Global Statistics Community of Practice within the organization. Maoxia is dedicated to advancing drug development to help patients and passionately advocates for the critical strategic partner role of statisticians in this process, focusing on innovations and robust decision-making. Maoxia holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of Chicago.