Hoifung Poon, General Manager, Microsoft Research

“Towards Virtual Patient: AI for Accelerating Medical Discovery”

Dr. Hoifung Poon joined Microsoft Research in 2011 and now serves as a General Manager, leading Project Hanover to advance machine reading for precision health through applications such as molecular tumor boards, real-world evidence extraction, and clinical trial matching. His research in machine learning and NLP has earned Best Paper Awards at leading conferences including NAACL, EMNLP, and UAI.

Pablo Tamayo, Professor, Division of Genomics and Precision Medicine, UCSD School of Medicine

“Interpretable Multi-Omics at Scale: Advancing Biomarker Discovery and Precision Oncology with Celsus – AI/ML Multi-Omics Framework”

Pablo Tamayo is a professor in the Division of Genomics and Precision Medicine, where he leads the Computational Cancer Analysis Laboratory (CCAL) at the Moores Cancer Center and the Center for Novel Therapeutics. Over the past 25 years at the Whitehead Institute and Broad Institute, he has helped advance cancer genomics and precision medicine, co-developing tools such as Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and publishing more than 200 papers with over 130,000 citations and is co-inventor of 10 U.S. patents.

The AI Biomarker Hackathon will provide an interactive forum for cross-disciplinary collaboration in AI-enabled computational pathology and precision biomarker development. Participants will work in teams to design and present innovative biomarker solutions, exploring AI-driven workflows, validation strategies, implementation pathways, and real-world clinical impact through a fast-paced, collaborative challenge format. 

Join our day one track dedicated to Companion Diagnostics & Regulations, with insights from the following companies on regulatory expectations for AI-derived biomarkers, computational pathology & CDx development

•    Regeneron
•    AbbVie
•    Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine
•    Gilead
•    AstraZeneca
•    Merck

Hear from AstraZeneca across three of our conference programmes to gain the full picture of their AI & Clinical Biomarker strategy:

Biomarkers & CDx - Karen McCullough, Vice President, Oncology Regulatory Strategy 

Multi-Omics, Spatial & Data - Ming (Tommy) Tang, Director of Bioinformatics 

Computational Pathology - Mark Gustavson, Senior Director, Computational Pathology

The AI & Data Zone will serve as the central hub for AI-driven biomarker discovery, computational pathology and next generation multi-omics technologies, bringing together innovators across AI platforms, cloud infrastructure, automation, bioinformatics, digital biology, academic hubs, and strategic pharma tech partners. This interactive space will feature poster presentations, live demos, and short tech talks, alongside an AI Networking Lounge and a coffee cart to foster meaningful connections and collaboration