We hope these thematic monthly sessions will open conversations to inform, inspire, and connect researchers at all levels, on topics within computational biology, AI and bioinformatics. Each session will involve two talks, followed by an interactive discussion and, later, beer and pizza.
April Theme - "Large language models for biomedical data"
Speakers:
Andrew Green (EMBL-EBI)
“Levelling the playing field: using LLMs to bootstrap curation for ncRNA”
Andrew Green studied Physics at the University of Manchester, UK before completing a PhD in accelerator physics focused on computational techniques for proton radiotherapy treatment planning. Andrew spent six years in the radiotherapy related research group in Manchester where he was responsible for developing state of the art image based data mining techniques, and the software to do them. While in the group, he started the Machine Learning focused subgroup, working on image segmentation, generation and registration. Since 2022, Andrew has been at the European Bioinformatics Institute, where he worked as a Bioinformatician on the RNAcentral database before starting an ARISE/Maris Curie fellowship in the same group in 2023. Andrew’s current work focuses on the applications of large language models in non-coding RNA, particularly in augmenting the small amount of dedicated curation time currently available.
and
Kenza Bouzid (Microsoft Research)
“MAIRA-1: A specialised large multimodal for radiology report generation”
Kenza is an Applied Researcher at Microsoft Health Futures in the Biomedical imaging team, based in Cambridge.
She is currently working on project MAIRA (Multimodal AI for Radiology Applications). The goal of the this project is to create innovative multimodal AI technology that assists radiologists in providing effective patient care while empowering them in their work. Prior to project MAIRA, she worked on Esophageal cancer research to enable large scale screening of Barrett’s Esophagus using weakly supervised learning in histopathology in collaboration with Cyted AI. She has been at Microsoft Reasearch for two years now. Before joining Health Futures, she obtained a Master of Science in Machine Learning from the royal institute of technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She also holds a Master of Engineering in Computer Sciences from INSA Lyon. Motivated by her passion to address critical issues in healthcare, Kenza decided to pursue a career in research.
We welcome scientists from across Cambridge to join us on the first Thursday of every month. Events take place in the Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Puddicombe Way, Cambridge CB2 0AW.
No need to register in advance – just turn up!
5.15pm – Doors (and bar)
5:30 – 6:30pm – Talks and panel discussion
6:30pm – Pizza
Upcoming AI Club dates are below. Please check our website for updates: https://www.milner.cam.ac.uk/ai-club/
Thursday 4th April
Theme: Large language models for biomedical data
Speakers: Andrew Green and Kenza Bouzid
Thursday 2nd May
Theme: Feature selection methods
Speakers: Ricard Argelaguet and Irina Mohorianu
Thursday 6th June
Theme: Graph Neutral Network Analysis
Speakers: TBC
Thursday 5th September
Theme: TBC
Speakers: TBC
Thursday 3rd October
Theme: TBC
Speakers: TBC
Thursday 7th November
Theme: TBC
Speakers: TBC
Thursday 5th December
Theme: TBC
Speakers: TBC
