Venkatesh Moktali
PhD. Director, Product Management, Knowledge Bases
QIAGEN Digital Insights
Sandeep Menon
Chief Development Officer
Alnylam
Isuru Gajanayake
Head of Clinical Nutrition
Willows Veterinary Centre & Referral Service
Rosa Carbonell
President
FEDIAF
Ashwani Sharma
Co-Founder and Co-CEO
ASTRA Therapeutics
Natacha Gaillard
Co-Founder and Co-CEO
ASTRA Therapeutics
David Champagne
Senior Partner
McKinsey & Company
David Champagne is a Senior Partner at McKinsey and leads McKinsey’s global Scientific AI practice to help clients in the life sciences industry and beyond drive the next frontier of R&D productivity with AI. The practice covers a broad range of AI capabilities across Biology, Chemistry, Materials and Physics. David brings together teams of scientific experts from McKinsey’s industry practices with deep technology expertise from QuantumBlack, to develop strategies, blueprints and roadmaps for the technology-driven transformation of product discovery and development processes in industries where science is at the core of innovation.
Chris Anagnostopoulos
Tech Fellow Partner
McKinsey & Company
Chris Anagnostopoulos is a Technology Fellow Partner at McKinsey, and leads McKinsey/QuantumBlack’s work in Scientific AI. He is a responsible for methodological innovation and solution design, and acts as a catalyst for the adoption of state-of-the-art AI solutions for biopharma R&D. Prior to joining McKinsey/QuantumBlack, he was Founder and CEO of an AI consultancy, and Director of R&D in a 100+ London-based tech company building programming languages for AI. He holds an MSc in AI and a PhD in Statistical Machine Learning, is a Chartered Statistician with the Royal Statistical Society and an Honorary Associate Professor at Imperial College London.
Next-generation AI is transforming research and development by enabling:
- Scalable insights from multi-modal datasets
- In silico experimentation powered by machine learning and foundation models
- Generative AI for novel molecule design
- Automated workflows through agentic systems and robotics
These innovations are already accelerating speed and reducing cost in R&D. But beyond efficiency, AI presents a deeper opportunity: advancing scientific understanding of diseases and drugs. By keeping human scientists actively in the loop, AI can provide oversight, foster discovery, and open entirely new therapeutic avenues.
In this session, we will explore how modern AI tools can “close the knowledge loop”—moving from automation and efficiency toward true scientific insight and discovery.
Chris Anagnostopoulos
Tech Fellow Partner
McKinsey & Company
Chris Anagnostopoulos is a Technology Fellow Partner at McKinsey, and leads McKinsey/QuantumBlack’s work in Scientific AI. He is a responsible for methodological innovation and solution design, and acts as a catalyst for the adoption of state-of-the-art AI solutions for biopharma R&D. Prior to joining McKinsey/QuantumBlack, he was Founder and CEO of an AI consultancy, and Director of R&D in a 100+ London-based tech company building programming languages for AI. He holds an MSc in AI and a PhD in Statistical Machine Learning, is a Chartered Statistician with the Royal Statistical Society and an Honorary Associate Professor at Imperial College London.
McKinsey & Company
Website: http://www.mckinsey.com/
McKinsey is a global management consulting firm committed to helping organizations accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth. We work with clients across the private, public, and social sectors to solve complex problems and create positive change for all their stakeholders. We combine bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organizations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces that will thrive for this generation and the next.