Meet the Speakers
Olivier Michielin
Head of the Department of oncology at Geneva University Hospital (HUG)
Prof. Olivier Michielin obtained a Masters of Physics in 1991 at EPFL and a Medical Degree from the University of Lausanne in 1997. He was appointed Group Leader of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in 2002 and became an Assistant Professor at the Medical Faculty of Lausanne in 2004. In parallel, he trained as a medical oncologist and obtained his board certification in 2007 at the Department of oncology of the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) where he is currently heading the melanoma clinic before being appointed full Professor in 2019.
Prof. Michielin is mainly focused on translational oncology, developing new molecularly defined therapeutic approaches based on original bioinformatics techniques developed in his laboratory, as well as melanoma clinical trials at the Lausanne University Hospital.
Jacques Fellay
Professor of genomics and precision medicine at EPFL and CHUV, Chief Scientist at Health2030 Genome Center
Jacques Fellay is a medical doctor and researcher, with expertise in genomics and infectious diseases and strong interest in personalized health. He is the founding director of the Precision Medicine Unit of the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and leads a genomics laboratory at the EPFL School of Life Sciences. The aim of his research is to decipher the genetic basis of inter-individual differences in immunity and responses to infections. His group explores the role of human genetic variation in the host-pathogen battle, in the hope of shedding new light on basic biological mechanisms, and of paving the way toward more personalized approaches to health. He received multiple awards, including the National Latsis Prize in 2011 for his work on the genetic control of HIV and hepatitis C virus infections.
Stavroula Mougiakakou
Group Head, ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, AI in Health and Nutrition Laboratory, University of Bern
Stavroula G. Mougiakakou is an Associate Professor and holds a Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. Since 2008 she has been affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine, University of Bern, and Head of the AI in Health and Nutrition Laboratory at the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research Bern, Switzerland.
Her current research interests include AI, ML, computer vision, and advanced data analysis to improve health by providing solutions for better diagnosis, personalized treatment, and dietary assessment. She has published over 70 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and has served as an Associate Editor in several journals in her field.
Dr. Mougiakakou is a member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and the Swiss Society of Biomedical Engineering.
Nadia Terranova
Head of Quantitative Pharmacology Advanced Data Analytics, Merck
Dr. Nadia Terranova is a Biomedical engineer by training with a Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, currently serving as the Head of Advanced Data Analytics in Quantitative Pharmacology at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt (EMD Serono, US), where she joined in 2013.
Dr. Terranova’s contributions to the scientific community and to Merck’s R&D organization range from impactful systems pharmacology modeling, Pharmacometrics, and applications of advanced Machine Learning techniques to complex and multivariate drug development problems across oncology, immuno-oncology, and multiple sclerosis programs. Dr. Terranova is the leading author of several papers in selected journals and in international conference proceedings. She is PAGE Lewis Sheiner Awardee, the Vice-Chair of the ASCPT Pharmacometrics & Pharmacokinetics Steering Committee, and a member of the CPT Editorial Board and JPKPD Editorial Advisory Board.
Ekaterina Volkova-Volkmar
Principal Scientist at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development, F. Hoffmann - La Roche AG.
Ekaterina’s background is in Computational Linguistics and Neuroscience, having completed her Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Neural & Behavioural Sciences, International Max Planck Research School, in Tübingen, Germany.
With over a decade of experience in data science and machine learning, Ekaterina’s true passion lies in digital health. At Roche, Ekaterina is part of a Digital Biomarker team that develops Digital Health Technology Tools to support clinical trials and observational studies in Parkinson’s Disease.
Jens Selige
Managing Director, The LOOP Zurich
Dr. Jens Selige is the Managing Director of The LOOP Zurich, a medical research center focused on translational research and precision medicine approaches in the areas of oncology, neuroscience, infection/immunology, and metabolism/energy homeostasis. Besides the general research management, Jens has the administrative lead and coordinates the build-up of a cross-institutional Biomedical Informatics Platform.
Before taking over the responsibility as COO of The LOOP Zurich, Jens was Scientific Project Manager at the NCCR Kidney and research coordinator at SystemX, the Swiss research initiative for systems biology employed by the ETHZ. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz in the field of Biology/Pharmacology.
Erwan Grasland
Head of Market Modelling & Planning, Lonza
Erwan Grasland is the head of Market Modelling & Planning at Lonza. He is responsible for the development of a novel forecasting model on drug clinical advancement, using data science to generate new market insights about pharmaceutical developments. Erwan graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and completed a Ph.D. in Biophysics before working in strategy for 10 years across various industries. He is passionate about analytics and is relentlessly working towards getting data science and business strategy closer together.
Jurgi Camblong
Co-Founder & CEO, SOPHiA GENETICS
Dr. Jurgi Camblong is an entrepreneur pioneering the Data-Driven Medicine movement around the world. He is a Molecular Biologist (published in Cell, Science & Nature), has a Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the University of Geneva, and an EMBA in Management of Technology from EPFL/HEC Lausanne. In 2011, he founded SOPHiA GENETICS with Dr. Pierre Hutter and Prof. Lars Steinmetz and has since successfully been leading the development of the company, listed by the MIT Technology Review amongst the 50 smartest companies. Dr. Camblong is a member of the Advisory Council on Digital Transformation to the Swiss Federal Government and was personally recognized by EY as Emergent Entrepreneur of the Year.
Antoine Maison
Digital Innovation Lead, Tigen
Antoine Maison is the head of digital innovation at Tigen Pharma, a biotech company in the field of cell & gene therapies based in Lausanne. With over 10 years of experience in the field of data, Antoine Maison has been driving digital transformation and innovation projects in the pharmaceutical industry. With a data science education and background, Antoine Maison is leveraging data-driven strategies to optimize business processes and accelerate research and development.
Antoine Geissbühler
Vice-rector, University of Geneva and chief-physician, division of eHealth and telemedicine, Geneva University Hospitals
Antoine Geissbühler is a Professor of Medicine, Vice-rector in charge of digital transformation and innovation at the University of Geneva, Director of the Division of eHealth and Telemedicine at Geneva University Hospitals and director of the hospitals’ Innovation Center. He also served as President of the International Medical Informatics Association.
His research focuses on the development of innovative, knowledge-enabled information systems and computer-based tools for improving the quality, safety and efficiency of care processes, and on the evaluation of their impact on health outcomes, at the local level of the largest hospital in Switzerland, in the regional patient-centered health information system, at the global level as director of the WHO collaborating center for eHealth, and as director of the RAFT network, an extensive South-South telemedicine network linking hundreds of hospitals in 20+ developing countries.
Silvia Quarteroni
Head of Innovation, SDSC
Silvia holds an MSc in Computer Science from EPFL and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of York, UK. She has been a senior research fellow at the University of Trento and later at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Here, she had the chance to work on Marie Curie and ERC projects relating to natural language processing. From 2012 to 2019, she was a Senior Manager and NLP expert at ELCA Informatique Switzerland, whose AI department she helped create and expand. Silvia joined the SDSC in 2019 and is currently its Head of Innovation, in charge of the team leading organizations to digital transformation.
Raphaël Gottardo
Founding director of the Biomedical Data Science Center at the University Hospital of Lausanne
Raphaël Gottardo is a Full Professor of Biomedical Data Science at the University of Lausanne and the founding director of the Biomedical Data Science Center at the University Hospital of Lausanne. Before that, he was a Full Professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutch, an affiliate Professor of statistics at the University of Washington, and scientific director of the Fred Hutch Translational Data Science Integrated Research Center. Dr. Gottardo’s current research interests center on developing computational and statistical tools for analyzing high-dimensional single-cell and spatial data with applications to immunology, vaccine research, and immunotherapy. He has led a large number of projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, to name a few. In 2018 he received the Mortimer Spiegelman Award, which honors a statistician below 40 who has made outstanding contributions to health statistics.