Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico Medicine

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD is the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, a leader in next-generation artificial intelligence technologies for drug discovery and biomarker development. He is also the founder of Deep Longevity, Inc, a spin-off of Insilico Medicine developing a broad range of artificial intelligence-based biomarkers of aging and longevity servicing healthcare providers and life insurance industry. In 2020, Deep Longevity was acquired by Endurance Longevity (HK: 0575). Beginning in 2015, he invented critical technologies in the field of generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning (RL) for the generation of novel molecular structures with the desired properties and generation of synthetic biological and patient data. He also pioneered applications of deep learning technologies for the prediction of human biological age using multiple data types, and transferred learning from aging into disease, target identification, and signaling pathway modeling. Under his leadership, Insilico has raised over $400 million in multiple rounds from expert investors, opened R&D centers in six countries or regions, and partnered with multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic institutions, nominated 11 preclinical candidates, and has generated positive topline Phase 1 data in human clinical trials with an AI-discovered novel target and AI-designed novel molecule for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis that received Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA and is nearing Phase 2 clinical trials. Insilico also recently announced that its generative AI-designed drug for COVID-19 and related variants was approved for clinical trials.

Prior to founding Insilico, he worked in senior roles at ATI Technologies (a GPU company acquired by AMD in 2006), NeuroGNeuroinformatics, and the Biogerontology Research Foundation. Since 2012, he has published over 150 peer-reviewed research papers, and 2 books including "The Ageless Generation: How Biomedical Advances Will Transform the Global Economy" (Macmillan, 2013). He serves on the advisory or editorial boards of Trends in Molecular Medicine, Aging Research Reviews, Aging, Frontiers in Genetics, and founded and co-chairs the Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference, the world's largest event on aging in the pharmaceutical industry. He is an adjunct professor of artificial intelligence at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.