Health Talks: Rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Mod­ern Drug Dis­cov­ery, online

Wel­come to the next event from the Health Talks series — health, life sci­ences and entre­pre­neur­ship talks organ­ised by Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty, Busi­ness Turku, Cen­tria Health Hub, Health Design, Health­Hub Fin­land EDIH, Healthtech Fin­land, HiLIFE, Kuo­pio Health, OuluHealth, Tam­pere Health, Terkko Health Hub.

Time: 12 Decem­ber 2024, 9:00–11:00 EET

Place: ZOOM, the link will be sent after the reg­is­tra­tion

Reg­is­tra­tion

The event brings togeth­er lead­ing experts and inno­va­tors to explore how cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies such as super­com­put­ing and quan­tum com­put­ing are trans­form­ing the drug dis­cov­ery land­scape. Dur­ing the talk, par­tic­i­pants will dive deep into the tech­nolo­gies dri­ving unprece­dent­ed break­throughs in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. Through pre­sen­ta­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tive dis­cus­sions, atten­dees will gain insights into how com­put­ing can accel­er­ate the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of poten­tial drug can­di­dates, how super­com­put­ing enables the sim­u­la­tion of com­plex bio­log­i­cal process­es, and how quan­tum com­put­ing is poised to solve pre­vi­ous­ly intractable prob­lems in drug dis­cov­ery and design. Whether you’re a researcher, data sci­en­tist, or indus­try pro­fes­sion­al, this event offers a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay ahead of the curve in drug dis­cov­ery inno­va­tion.

Agen­da

9:00 — 9:05 Open­ing words and intro­duc­tion of Health­Hub Fin­land EDIH/ Health­Turku, High-Per­for­mance com­put­ing, Hen­rik Honka­nen

9:05 — 9:20 Intro­duc­tion to High-Per­for­mance Com­put­ing, Ras­mus Kro­n­berg, Appli­ca­tion Spe­cial­ist, IT Cen­ter for Sci­ence

9:20 — 9:45 Uti­liz­ing vHTS for drug dis­cov­ery, Aurlide, Elmeri Joki­nen, Project Man­ag­er, Aurlide

9:45 — 10:10 Engi­neer­ing Pre­ci­sion Phar­ma­col­o­gy with AI, Har­mon­ic Dis­cov­ery Anna Cichońs­ka, Direc­tor of Data Sci­ence and Head of Euro­pean Oper­a­tions, Har­mon­ic Dis­cov­ery

10:10 — 10:35 Intro to quan­tum com­put­ing, Kon­s­ta Rönkkö, CTO, IBM Fin­land

10:35 — 11:00 Uti­liz­ing Quan­tum com­put­ing for drug dis­cov­ery, Boris Sokolov, Lead Researcher and Co-founder, Algo­rith­miq

11:00 Clos­ing words

Speak­ers:

Ras­mus Kro­n­berg is an appli­ca­tion spe­cial­ist at CSC – IT Cen­ter for Sci­ence Ltd., the host­ing orga­ni­za­tion of the fastest super­com­put­er in Europe, LUMI. Ras­mus focus­es on sup­port­ing sci­en­tists and R&D pro­fes­sion­als to har­ness the poten­tial of high-per­for­mance com­put­ing for research and inno­va­tion. Ras­mus has a PhD in com­pu­ta­tion­al quan­tum chem­istry from Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty and has co-authored sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles with­in the areas of com­pu­ta­tion­al elec­tro­chem­istry and catal­y­sis.

Elmeri Joki­nen is an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al in the field of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy and phar­ma­col­o­gy. Cur­rent­ly serv­ing as a Project Man­ag­er at Aurlide Ltd. in Turku, Fin­land, since 2020, he has a strong back­ground in com­put­er-aid­ed drug dis­cov­ery. Elmeri com­plet­ed his PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turku, focus­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics and vir­tu­al screen­ing approach­es in drug dis­cov­ery. He also has expe­ri­ence as a Vis­it­ing Schol­ar at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, where he spe­cial­ized in mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics sim­u­la­tions. With a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Cell and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Jyväskylä, Elmeri has a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic foun­da­tion and exten­sive research expe­ri­ence, includ­ing mul­ti­ple research assis­tant roles.

Anna Cichońs­ka holds a PhD in Infor­ma­tion and Com­put­er Sci­ence from a joint pro­gram between Aal­to University’s Depart­ment of Com­put­er Sci­ence and the Insti­tute for Mol­e­c­u­lar Med­i­cine Fin­land (FIMM). Her doc­tor­al work focused on devel­op­ing machine learn­ing meth­ods and tools for bio­med­ical research with­in the ‘mul­ti­ple genes — mul­ti­ple dis­eases — mul­ti­ple drugs’ par­a­digm. Anna co-orga­nized the IDG-DREAM Drug-Kinase Bind­ing Pre­dic­tion Chal­lenge, a glob­al com­pe­ti­tion aimed at pre­dict­ing drug-kinase inter­ac­tions. Fol­low­ing her post­doc­tor­al research at FIMM, she worked as a Senior Data Sci­en­tist at Nightin­gale Health, where she led sci­en­tif­ic col­lab­o­ra­tions with some of the world’s largest biobanks. Cur­rent­ly, Anna heads Data Sci­ence at Har­mon­ic Dis­cov­ery, a biotech­nol­o­gy start­up build­ing advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to design nov­el kinase drugs.

Kon­s­ta Rönkkö is a sea­soned tech­nol­o­gy exec­u­tive cur­rent­ly serv­ing as the Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer (CTO) at IBM for Fin­land. In this role, he leads dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives, dri­ves the adop­tion of hybrid cloud tech­nolo­gies, and serves as a trust­ed advi­sor for key clients. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Kon­s­ta was the Coun­try Tech­ni­cal Man­ag­er for IBM’s Infra­struc­ture unit, where he over­saw strate­gic tech­ni­cal projects and man­aged teams across the Infra­struc­ture port­fo­lio in Fin­land. His exper­tise spans hybrid cloud strat­e­gy, Data & AI adop­tion, tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship, and inno­va­tion man­age­ment. With a proven track record in steer­ing com­plex tech­ni­cal pro­grams and man­ag­ing high-per­form­ing teams, Kon­s­ta is rec­og­nized for his abil­i­ty to bridge busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy, ensur­ing impact­ful dig­i­tal out­comes for clients.

Boris Sokolov has more than 8 years of research expe­ri­ence in quan­tum physics. He com­plet­ed a PhD in open quan­tum sys­tems at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turku in 2020, and after that held a post­doc­tor­al posi­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki. His main tech­ni­cal exper­tise is in quan­tum com­put­ing, sim­u­la­tion, and ten­sor net­works. He has also exten­sive expe­ri­ence in high-per­for­mance, sci­en­tif­ic, and cloud com­put­ing. In 2020 he co-found­ed Algo­rith­miq, where he has since been in the role of a Lead Researcher, even­tu­al­ly focus­ing on ten­sor net­work-relat­ed research and devel­op­ment. He has been a board direc­tor since 2024.

Hosts:

The Health Talk will be host­ed by Hen­rik Honka­nen, who is cur­rent­ly the Project Coor­di­na­tor for Health­Hub Fin­land EDIH at Busi­ness Turku. Hen­rik has a bachelor’s degree in Bio­med­i­cine from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turku. Addi­tion­al­ly, he has master’s degrees in health infor­mat­ics (Karolin­s­ka Insti­tutet) and in com­mer­cial­iza­tion of health­care inno­va­tions (Copen­hagen Busi­ness School). Dur­ing his career, he has among oth­er things worked as a health tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tant, cod­ed clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port sys­tems and con­duct­ed pre­clin­i­cal research abroad.

Rashad Ismay­ilza­da — Head of Part­ner­ships at Terkko Health Hub

Notes:

The event will be record­ed and lat­er shared pub­licly. For more info please check Health Talks web­page.

Reg­is­tra­tion data is con­trolled by Terkko.

Source: Terkko Health Hub