Schedule of Events

All times listed are CDT.

7:30 AM - 8:30 AM
Registration & Breakfast
 

Registration & Breakfast

8:30 AM - 8:45 AM
Opening Remarks
Hamid Tizhoosh, PhD
 
8:45 AM - 9:15 AM
Opening Keynote
Cui Tao, PhD

The Scientific Foundations of AI-Enabled Discovery
AI is changing more than the tools of biomedical research—it is changing the way discovery itself is done. This keynote will examine the scientific foundations needed to make AI-enabled discovery rigorous, reproducible, and translatable, with a focus on methods, infrastructure, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The talk will highlight how stronger systems for research design and validation can help move AI from promising innovation to meaningful clinical and scientific impact.
 

9:15 AM - 9:45 AM
Keynote 2
Micky Tripathi, PhD

Scaling AI in Healthcare: Governance, Trust, and Adoption
AI holds enormous promise to improve patient care—but only if it moves beyond research and into everyday clinical practice. Today, the greatest challenge is not developing AI, but ensuring it is safely implemented, trusted by clinicians, and meaningfully integrated into care delivery. This session will explore how healthcare organizations can accelerate the adoption of clinical AI while maintaining a focus on safety, trust, and the human connection to deliver better patient outcomes.

9:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Panel Discussion
 

Panel Discussion
Moderator: Dr. Vijay Shah
Panelists: Dr. Cui Tao, Dr. Micky Tripathi, Matt Redlon, Dr. Cheryl Willman

From Discovery to Deployment: How AI Creates Enterprise Impact
This panel will explore how AI delivers value when discovery, translation, and deployment are treated as parts of a connected enterprise system rather than isolated activities. The discussion will examine how research priorities, governance structures, and operational alignment influence whether promising ideas advance from early investigation into scalable clinical and organizational use. Panelists will address common points where AI efforts stall and discuss what distinguishes exploratory work from solutions that are ready for enterprise adoption. The session will highlight governance not as a barrier, but as a mechanism for speed, trust, and consistency. Together, the conversation will offer a practical view of how integrated AI ecosystems help turn innovation into measurable impact.

10:15 AM - 11:15 AM
Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners
 

Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners

11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Keynote 3
Peter Lee, PhD

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited
About three years ago, while ChatGPT and, later, the GPT-4 AI model were still in secret development at OpenAI, a group of Researchers at Microsoft Research started investigating the potential impact of this new technology on healthcare delivery and medical research. One result of this investigation was the publication of the book in early 2023, "The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond," coauthored with Carey Goldberg and Isaac Kohane. But since the book was written while GPT-4 was still a secret to the world, it was largely a work of speculation. So now, with a bit more than two years of real-world observation and experience, what is actually happening, and what is likely to happen next in the world of healthcare? This talk will go into what we had predicted, and what we got right, what we missed, as a way to help us see a bit into the future.

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM
Reactive Panel Discussion
 

Reactive Panel Discussion
Moderator: Jared Staal
Panelists: Dr. Peter Lee, Dr. Anjali Bhagra, Dr. Chuck Howe, Dr. Eric Klee, Dr. Rory Smoot

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Lunch
 

Lunch

1:30 PM - 2:15 PM
Keynote 4
Yi Qian, PhD

From Promise to Impact: The Intelligent Evolution of Evidence for Confident Clinical and Regulatory Decisions
The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine is vast, yet its translation into trusted, decision-grade evidence for clinical development and regulatory submission remains a fundamental challenge. We must move beyond theoretical promise to develop a practical blueprint for building an AI-powered evidence engine.

Drawing on real-world case studies, we will demonstrate how integrated, multimodal approaches are actively de-risking programs and accelerating regulatory decisions. We will explore the application of AI-driven disease progression models to enhance trial design, the development of purpose-built AI tools that democratize advanced analytics, and the strategic use of patient digital twins to guide development decisions. The discussion will extend to critical regulatory partnerships, including an FDA research collaboration to address RW disease outcome measurement, and the practical implications of emerging FDA guidance on AI.

The true evolution lies not in any single model, but in systematically integrating advanced patient modeling, causal reasoning, and pragmatic AI to create a new tier of evidence. This integrated approach ultimately builds clinical and regulatory confidence for us to deliver better, faster decisions for patients.

2:15 PM - 2:45 PM
Reactive Panel Discussion
 

Reactive Panel Discussion
Panel Moderator: Dr. Michelle McGowan 
Panelists: Dr. Yi Qian, Dr. Demilade Adedinsewo, Dr. Imon Banerjee, Dr. Barbara Barry, Dr. Amos Lal

2:45 PM - 3:30 PM
Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners
 

Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Workshops
 
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Lightning Talks
 
7:45 AM - 8:30 AM
Registration & Breakfast
 

Registration & Breakfast

8:30 AM - 9:15 AM
Keynote 5
Yong Chen, PhD

XYZ: Modernizing Drug Development with Real-World Data and AI
We introduce XYZ, a unified framework that advances clinical evidence generation by jointly modeling the treatment (X), outcome (Y), and population (Z) dimensions. This framework is built to support AI-driven drug repurposing, outcome profiling, and multi-dimensional optimization of eligibility criteria using real-world data. By integrating lossless federated target trial emulation for drug discovery, negative control–based debiasing for robust outcome inference, and AI-guided simulation to evaluate alternative inclusion criteria across real-world populations. XYZ enables principled and scalable evidence generation. Applications in repurposing GLP-1 RA, drug identification for AD/ADRD, and trial design for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) illustrate how XYZ enhances generalizability, supports regulatory alignment, and ensures reliable insights generated from distributed research networks.

9:15 AM - 9:45 AM
Reactive Panel Discussion
 

Reactive Panel Discussion
Panel Moderator: Dr. Cheryl Willman
Panelists: Dr. Yong Chen, Dr. Aaron Mansfield, Matt Redlon 

9:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners
 

Break, Posters, and Interactive Tables with Education Partners

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Workshops
 
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Lightning Talks
 
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Lunch
 

Lunch

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM
Keynote 6
Matt Redlon, MBA

The Next Wave of Discovery: Agentic AI from Research to Practice
Agentic AI is poised to reshape how research gets done. This keynote will explore how emerging AI research assistants are already augmenting scientific workflows, what it will take to scale them effectively, and how they could help drive a step change in the speed of medical discovery. The session will pair a practical view of current capabilities with a forward-looking discussion of the people, systems, and strategies needed to realize their full potential.
 

1:45 PM - 2:45 PM
Panel Discussion
 

Panel Discussion
Moderator: Ikram Khan, Health AI Institute
Panelists: Dr. Galin Jones, Vice Provost for AI at the University of Minnesota; Dr. Richard Van Eck, Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS); Dr. David Holmes III, Program Director, Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Program, Mayo Clinic; Ram Mohan Rao Sankaraneni, MD, FAAN, FAES; President, Allina Health Brain and Spine Institute

Training the AI-Ready Health Workforce: Closing the Gap Between What We Teach, What We Need, and What Comes Next
Artificial intelligence is transforming clinical practice, biomedical research, and health system operations faster than academic medicine can adapt its educational infrastructure. This panel brings together leaders from medical education, health systems, industry, and workforce development to explore how organizations including Mayo Clinic can close the gap between AI deployment and workforce readiness through new approaches to training, faculty development, and cross-sector collaboration.
 

2:45 PM - 3:00 PM
Break (Snacks Only)
 

Break (Snacks Only)

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Debate
 

Debate
Moderator: Lacey Hart
Opportunity View: Dr. Ryan Stidham
Risk Outlook: Dr. Hamid Tizhoosh

Helping or Hyping of AI in Healthcare: Promise vs. Reality
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly offering new possibilities for diagnosis, treatment, automation and drug discovery in healthcare.  

Supporters argue that AI is already showing value in healthcare by improving efficiency, supporting diagnostic accuracy, easing administrative and clinical burden, expanding patient access, and opening new possibilities for identifying disease patterns earlier and in ways not feasible through conventional approaches. When carefully developed and validated, AI may become a powerful tool to augment clinician decision-making and transform key aspects of medicine. 

Alternatively, critics highlight that AI in medicine is in its infancy and is premature for use by scientists, clinicians, and the public. Concerns regarding accuracy, reliability, adaptability, bias, and inconsistent reflection of human judgement, values, and contextual awareness raise questions about any immediate adoption. Skeptics argue that AI promise has overshadowed fundamental methodologic limitations and often poor real-world performance insufficient for mission-critical healthcare environments.  

This debate explores both perspectives of AI as imminently ready for deployment or alternatively fundamentally so flawed that more foundational developments are needed before broad adoption. Participants will examine the opportunities, limitations, ethical concerns, and real-world impact of AI in medicine.

 

4:00 PM - 4:15 PM
Closing Remarks & Awards: Dr. Cui Tao, Mayo Clinic
 

Closing Remarks & Awards: Dr. Cui Tao, Mayo Clinic

4:15 PM - 5:00 PM
Posters & Networking (optional)
 

Posters & Networking (optional)