
SDSC-Connect: Translating AI to Clinical Practice

Presentation
SDSC-Connect: Translating AI to Clinical Practice
A Program of the Zurich AI Festival
Centered around the pivotal question, 'From Promise to Practice: What do clinicians need from AI?', this edition of SDSC-Connect brings together keynote speakers, thought leaders, and expert panelists to offer diverse insights into current challenges and emerging solutions, supported by focused presentations and real-world case studies. The program explores four critical areas at the intersection of AI and healthcare: Research, Validation, Practice and Trust.
Leveraging the collective expertise of leading voices in the health and biomedical domain, participants will gain deep insights and a distinctive learning experience that connects clinical needs with technological innovation, with the potential to connect with pioneers and peers and initiate conversations around collaboration.
Join the participants in pursuing key learning goals:
· Connect with leaders in clinical research, practice, and AI.
· Explore four essential focus areas: Research, Validation, Practice, and Trust.
· Build meaningful links across Switzerland, Europe, and the global clinical AI community.
Target audience:
Researchers, medical doctors, AI experts, data scientists, industry representatives (pharma, biotech) from the health and biomedical domain.
Confirmed speakers:
· Dr. Nora Toussaint, Head of Biomedical Data Science, Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)
· Prof. Dr. med. Susanne Wegener, Senior Physician, Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich (USZ)
· Prof. Dr. Guillaume Obozinski, Deputy Executive Director and Chief Data Scientist, Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)
· Prof. Dr. Charlotte Bunne, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Life Sciences Department, EPFL
· Prof. Dr. Michael Moor, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich
· Prof. Dr. Gunnar Rätsch, Head of Biomedical Informatics, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich
· Prof. Dr. Annie Hartley, Professor and Director, LiGHT (Laboratory for Intelligent Global Health and Humanitarian Response Technologies), EPFL
· Dr. Anna Fournier, Principal Data Scientist, Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)
· Dr. Jean Louis Raisaro, Head of the Clinical Data Science Group at the Biomedical Data Science Center, Vaud University Hospital (CHUV)
· Dr. Snežana Nektarijevic, Senior Data Scientist, Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)
· Dr. Sabine Goldhahn, Lecturer at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich
· Dr. Jasmin Barman-Aksözen, Scientist and patient advocate for rare diseases, University of Zürich (UZH)
Details
SDSC-Connect: Translating AI to Clinical Practice
Date & Time: Tuesday, 30 September 2025 | 09:30 - 18:00
Location: USZ, Large Lecture Hall EAST (Grosser Hörsaal OST), Schmelzbergstrasse 12, 8091 Zurich
Organized by Swiss Data Science Center
Supported by ETH AI in Medicine Group | Zurich AI Festival


Programme
Agenda:
9:30 Arrivals | Welcome Coffee & Snack
10:00 Welcome Address
10:10 Keynote
· “From Promise to Practice: What do clinicians need from AI?” by Prof. Dr. med. Susanne Wegener, USZ
11:00 Session 1: Research
· Moderation: Prof. Dr. Guillaume Obozinski, SDSC
· "Virtual Cells and Digital Twins: AI in Personalized Oncology” by Prof. Dr. Charlotte Bunne, EPFL
· “Towards tool-using medical reasoning models” by Prof Dr. Michael Moor, ETH Zurich
12:00 Networking Lunch
13:00 Session 2: Validation
· "From Theory to Therapy: Advancing Critical Care with AI" by Prof. Dr. Gunnar Rätsch, ETH Zürich
· Expert talk by Prof. Dr. Annie Hartley, EPFL
14:00 Session 3: Practice
· Moderation: Dr. Anna Fournier, SDSC
· Case study: “Clinical AI journey - from raw data to bedside deployment” by Dr. Jean Louis Raisaro, CHUV, and Dr. Snežana Nektarijevic, SDSC
· Industry expert talk
15:00 Coffee Break
15:30 Session 4: Trust
· Moderation: Dr. Sabine Goldhahn, ETH Zürich
· Expert panel discussion with expert speakers incl. Dr. Jasmin Barman-Aksözen (Patient advocate, UZH), Dr. Jean Louis Raisaro (CHUV) and others
16:15 Wrap up
16:30 Networking Apéro
18:00 End of event
We look forward to welcoming you in Zurich!
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Matthias Galipaud obtained his PhD in evolutionary biology in 2012 from the University of Burgundy in Dijon (France), and held postdoctoral positions as a mathematical biologist at the university of Bielefeld (Germany) and the university of Zurich, where he researched the evolutionary theories of aging and mate choice. In 2020, he became a data scientist, developing machine learning solutions for startups in Switzerland and Australia before joining the SDSC Innovation Team in November 2022.


Valerio started his career working for 7 years as a particle-physics researcher at CERN. There, he used state-of-the-art techniques to extract information from data, especially to search for traces of dark matter in particle collisions. Since 2016, he has worked in consulting, applying data science in several industries. First, he joined the Quant team of Ernst & Young in Geneva. Later, he created his own company, SamurAI sàrl, providing consulting services for his clients. He also has a passion for teaching very complex subjects in simple terms. That is why he particularly enjoys offering training programs to private companies and universities. Valerio joined the SDSC in Mai 2022 as a Principal Data Scientist with the mission of accompanying industrial partners and other institutions through their data science journey.

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Guillaume Obozinski graduated with a PhD in Statistics from UC Berkeley in 2009. He did his postdoc and held until 2012 a researcher position in the Willow and Sierra teams at INRIA and Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was then Research Faculty at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech until 2018. Guillaume has broad interests in statistics and machine learning and worked over time on sparse modeling, optimization for large scale learning, graphical models, relational learning and semantic embeddings, with applications in various domains from computational biology to computer vision.

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Dr. Olivier Verscheure is the director and founder of the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC). Olivier also co-leads a joint training program between EPFL and HEC Lausanne, specifically designed for senior executives. Since 2018, Olivier has been a member of the Board of Directors of Lonza, a global leader in the life sciences sector. This company provides products and services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and specialized healthcare industries.Olivier began his career at IBM Research after earning his Ph.D. in computer science from EPFL. He held several research and leadership positions at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York and co-created and co-directed the IBM Research center in Dublin, Ireland, before joining the EPFL in 2016.


Matthias Galipaud obtained his PhD in evolutionary biology in 2012 from the University of Burgundy in Dijon (France), and held postdoctoral positions as a mathematical biologist at the university of Bielefeld (Germany) and the university of Zurich, where he researched the evolutionary theories of aging and mate choice. In 2020, he became a data scientist, developing machine learning solutions for startups in Switzerland and Australia before joining the SDSC Innovation Team in November 2022.


Olivier joined the SDSC as a data scientist focused on industry collaborations in February 2023. He obtained a MSc in Physics (2017) from EPFL with a minor in Mathematics, and a PhD in Astrophysics (2021) from Aix-Marseille University. Before joining the SDSC, he worked in a small start-up, as a data scientist, on a variety of topics, including data wrangling, natural language processing and time series forecasting.


Clément became part of the SDSC team in January 2019, assuming the role of a Data Scientist with an emphasis on industry-oriented projects. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, acquired in 2016 from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Following this, he earned a Master of Science in Computational Science and Engineering in 2018, also from EPFL. Throughout his academic journey, Clément concentrated on leveraging Data Science and Machine Learning techniques to enhance efficiency in industrial processes. Subsequently, he developed a specialized interest in Generative AI, with a particular focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP), especially in the application of Large Language Models for innovation.


Thibaut holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from HEIG-VD. Before joining the SDSC, he worked in startups where he developped a diverse skill set combining cloud infrastructure, database and application development. Thibaut is very enthusiatic about new technologies and best coding practices and he is looking forward to supporting the team and its projects.

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Dr. Olivier Verscheure is the director and founder of the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC). Olivier also co-leads a joint training program between EPFL and HEC Lausanne, specifically designed for senior executives. Since 2018, Olivier has been a member of the Board of Directors of Lonza, a global leader in the life sciences sector. This company provides products and services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and specialized healthcare industries.Olivier began his career at IBM Research after earning his Ph.D. in computer science from EPFL. He held several research and leadership positions at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York and co-created and co-directed the IBM Research center in Dublin, Ireland, before joining the EPFL in 2016.


Silvia holds an MSc in Computer Science from EPFL and a PhD 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 Swiss Data Science Center in 2019 and is currently its Chief Transformation Officer, in charge of the team leading organizations to digital transformation.


Roberto holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Particle Physics from the University of Torino, Italy. He has worked for several years in fundamental research as a senior fellow and data scientist at the CERN Experimental Physics division and on a research project supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). In 2018 he moved to EPFL to work on data mining and Machine Learning techniques for the built environment and renewable energies. He has started and led multiple collaborations with academic and industry partners in the energy domain. Roberto joined the SDSC in September 2021 as a Principal Data Scientist with the mission of accompanying industries, NGOs and international organizations through their data science journey.
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