Dr. Hongtu Zhu, UNC Chapel Hill

Dr. Junshui Ma, Associate VP and Head of Biometrics Research Department, Merck Research Laboratories

Dr. Junshui Ma serves as an Associate VP and Head of the Biometrics Research Department at Merck Research Laboratories, Merck. He obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2001 and joined Merck in 2005. He has navigated the entire spectrum of pharmaceutical R&D, including preclinical discovery, clinical development, regulatory filing and approval, biomarker research, and translational medicine. A key area of his research is integrating AI and Machine Learning into pharmaceutical R&D. Since early 2023, he has spearheaded the development and deployment of generative AI applications in pharmaceutical settings.

Dr. Somnath Sarkar, Global Head of Evidence Generation and Decision Science, Sanofi

Dr. Sarkar has an extensive and distinguished 28+ year career in biostatistics and quantitative sciences. He has provided leadership in both the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry with a wealth of expertise in driving innovative solutions, scientific rigor, and critical decision- making across all stages of drug development. Dr. Sarkar holds Ph.D. in statistics from the university of Florida. He has published in major scientific journals, including JAMA oncology, clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, journal of clinical oncology, and journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism, as well as in various journals of statistical science.

Dr. John Schwarz, BMS

John Schwarz is a Director of Data Sciences leading a team supporting Cardiovascular, Immunology and Neuroscience therapeutic areas at Bristol Myers Squibb. The team is responsible for developing predictive models and exploratory analysis in late stage assets. Prior to BMS, John was leading a team of data scientists and biostatisticians performing REMS and post marketing surveillance epidemiologic studies for CNS active pharmaceutical agents with Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety. He received his PhD in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Ryan Shewcraft, BMS

Ryan is an Associate Director on the Data Science team at Bristol Myers Squibb supporting the neuroscience therapeutic area. Prior to this role, he was a data scientist at Sema4 (now GeneDx) building predictive models from real-world data. He earned a PhD in neuroscience and was a post-doctoral fellow at NYU. He completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics-physics and philosophy from Brown University.

Dr. Patrick Long, IQVIA

Patrick Long leads an AI/ML engineering team at IQVIA, building AI solutions using real‑world data for pharmaceutical and biotech clients. His work focuses on patient outcome prediction, disease detection, and subtype discovery across therapeutic areas, including respiratory, metabolic, CNS, autoimmune and rare disease. Patrick holds a PhD in Neuroscience and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard and the University of Michigan. He has 15+ publications in healthcare AI and neuroscience.

Dr. Yuting Xu, Merck

Dr. Yilong Zhang, Meta

Yilong Zhang, PhD, is the Manager of the Health Quantitative Science team at Meta. He previously worked as a statistician at Merck & Co., Inc. on late-stage clinical trial development. His interests include developing R and Python packages to improve clinical trial analysis, reporting, and regulatory submission. Yilong has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles and holds a PhD in Biostatistics from New York University.

Dr. Albert Man, Servier

Dr. Qi Tang, Sanofi

Qi Tang is Director of AI/ML for R&D at Sanofi, leading data science initiatives in pharmaceutical research and development. With granted AI patents and publications in top-tier AI journals, Qi drives innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and drug discovery, advancing computational approaches to accelerate therapeutic development.

Dr. Alex Goh, BeOne Medicines

Dr. Alex Goh, is an Associate Director of Product Management at BeOne Medicines, where he drives the Protocol Digitalization and Automation Initiative and oversees the AI Platform for Global Statistics and Data Science, using advanced analytics to streamline clinical R&D. Backed by 23 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 11), he pairs deep data-science expertise with strategic product leadership to cut manual workloads, accelerate development timelines, and lead cross-functional teams in delivering AI-enabled innovation products.

Dr. Zhaohua Lu, Daiichi Sankyo

Arlina Shen, Stanford DS Graduate Program

Dr. Qiao Liu, Yale

Dr. Pingye (Eric) Zhang, Eikon Therapeutics

Andrew Semmes, Moderna

Dr. Rebecca Taha, waterworksAI

Dr. Will Ma, HopeAI

Will Ma is the founder and CEO of HopeAI, a Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate company on a mission to bring hope to patients through AI-accelerated clinical development. HopeAI has developed AI assistants that combine clinical insights with statistical innovations, enabling faster and more precise clinical trials. Prior to founding HopeAI, Will had over 10 years of experience in clinical development, including working as a statistician at Sanofi and BMS, and serving as a faculty member at Moffitt Cancer Center.

Dr. Pranava Goundan, ZS

With over 16 years of experience in life sciences analytics and AI consulting, Pranava leads the R&D AI practice at ZS. In his role, Pranava champions the use of AI and analytics to help life sciences R&D and Medical Affairs organizations transform data into insights and enable better decision making across the entire R&D value chain to drive patient impact. Pranava also advises clients on the rapidly evolving AI landscape and approaches to harnessing emerging AI technologies such Generative AI and foundation models.  Pranava holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT. Prior to that, Pranava graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Dr. Dongdong Lin, Sanofi

Dongdong Lin is a Statistical Biomarker Leader at Sanofi, leading precision medicine and biomarker statistical projects in clinical development. His work focuses on implementing advanced statistical and AI/ML methodologies to transform complex biomarker data into actionable insights that accelerate evidence-based drug development. He also integrates diverse data sources—including pre-clinical studies, real-world evidence, and scientific literature—to collaboratively shape biomarker strategies, with specialization in immunology and neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Félix Balazard, Sanofi

Félix Balazard, PhD, is a Statistical Project leader in I&I at Sanofi since 2025. From 2018 to 2025, he worked at Owkin, an AI company for medical research, initially as a data scientist and then in charge of projects for the optimization of clinical development. In particular, he worked on covariate adjustment using deep learning histological covariates that resulted in a publication and a letter of support from the EMA. He also led an effort to apply federated learning to perform external control arms when the data cannot be pooled in a central server.