AI: Advancing Foundational Biology symposium highlights how AI is accelerating biomedical discovery

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how scientists are interrogating biological processes and drawing insights from the expansive datasets emerging from biomedical research. By uncovering hidden patterns and predicting experimental outcomes—among other applications—AI holds the potential to accelerate biomedical discovery. 

This was the theme at AI: Advancing Foundational Biology, a symposium held at Whitehead Institute on April 8. The event featured talks by computational biologists and AI experts from Cambridge, New York, and Toronto, and drew an audience of over 400 researchers and students interested in exploring the intersection of AI and biology.

“Artificial intelligence is changing the future of biomedical research and we’re delighted to have this discussion today,” said Whitehead Institute President and Director Ruth Lehmann in her opening remarks.

Through a generous gift from the Centurion Foundation, Michael and Victoria Chambers provided seed funding to establish the Whitehead Innovation Initiative in 2024. Since its launch, it has sponsored educational programs, research funding opportunities, and computational resources at Whitehead Institute with the aim of empowering researchers and training the next generation of AI experts. The symposium was held as part of broader efforts by the Institute to foster a collaborative research community focused on the application of AI in biomedical research.

“I remember a year ago when we were first talking about this [initiative], you highlighted the importance of building a community,” said Michael Chambers to Lehmann. “It’s remarkable what you’ve done over the last year…thank you for continuing the great legacy of Whitehead by building tools and providing resources to help us better understand genX [the next generation] of molecular biology.”

Using AI to answer biological questions

Whitehead Institute’s inaugural AI Fellow, Na Sun, was among the speakers at the symposium. The AI Fellowship, created under the Whitehead Innovation Initiative, allows a recent PhD and MD to launch their own research program in the area of artificial intelligence, in lieu of traditional postdoctoral training.

Sun, a computational neurobiologist, is developing advanced machine learning models to study cell-cell communication in the context of Alzheimer’s disease, where interactions between immune cell types play an important role in disease progression.

While Sun’s technical expertise is a valuable resource for Whitehead Institute researchers seeking to employ AI and other deep learning techniques to answer biological questions, realizing the vision of the Initiative will require building new collaborations both within the Institute and with outside partners.

“Biology and computer science often exist in silos, where there’s limited interplay across labs and institutions,” said Matteo Di Bernardo, a graduate student in Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman’s lab and a co-organizer of the symposium. “This is why bringing in external speakers who are at the forefront of applying AI to biomedical research is especially valuable.”

The external speakers at the symposium included Caroline Uhler, director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Peter Koo, associate professor at the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Bo Wang, assistant professor in the departments of Computer Science and Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto; and Elham Azizi, Herbert & Florence Irving Associate Professor of Cancer Data Research at the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University. Their talks spanned a broad array of topics, including applying AI to research on gene regulation, neurodegeneration, and cancer.

These presentations were followed by an informal panel discussion in which researchers explored the challenges, ethics, and practical realities of training machine learning models using biological data. The event concluded with a poster session and reception.  

“The partnership between AI and biology promises to deliver revolutionary new insights,” said Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young, who is also the chair of the Whitehead Innovation Initiative advisory committee. “This should produce a more impactful level of innovation in biomedical sciences than we’ve seen before.”

Access the event recording here.