Healthcare & AI Cohort: Drug Discovery and AI

Healthcare is entering a new era where artificial intelligence is transforming how drugs are discovered, validated, and brought to market.

This Healthcare & AI Cohort session will focus on the democratization of drug discovery, highlighting how AI models like AlphaFold3 and related computational techniques are enabling researchers to validate potential protein mutations and biological targets before moving into costly and time-intensive bench-based research.

This conversation sits at the intersection of AI, life sciences, and translational research, offering a real-world look at how academic researchers and students are using AI today to accelerate scientific discovery and reduce risk.

Cohort members will help shape the final discussion topics during the upcoming cohort planning meeting.

🎙 Featured Speaker

Dr. Dayanjan Wijesinghe Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science Virginia Commonwealth University

Dr. Wijesinghe works closely with undergraduate researchers exploring AI applications across:

Drug discovery and protein modeling

Pharmaceutical formulation

Clinical trial design

Precision medicine

His work emphasizes practical, accessible AI methods that allow smaller teams and academic labs to participate meaningfully in discovery pipelines traditionally reserved for large pharmaceutical organizations.