Dr. Al-Lazikani is a data scientist and drug discovery expert who applies data science and machine learning to tackle key challenges in cancer drug discovery and development. She is formally trained in both Molecular Biology and Computer Science. After obtaining her PhD from the University of Cambridge, she became a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. With experience in both academia and the biotechnology industry, Dr. Al-Lazikani has faced numerous hurdles in the drug discovery and development pipelines.
Her research focuses on harnessing the power of data and artificial intelligence to overcome these challenges, accelerate drug discovery, and mitigate risks associated with innovation. Specifically, she uses data science methods to integrate multi-disciplinary and multi-modal data to inform all aspects of cancer translational research. Additionally, she develops novel machine learning algorithms that learn from this integrated data, aiding decision-making and experimental design throughout the drug discovery process.
Dr. Al-Lazikani led the development of canSAR.ai, the world’s largest public cancer drug discovery platform, which helps inform target selection and prioritization for drug discovery. Currently, she leads the Therapeutics Data Science Initiative at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where her goal is to maximize the use of AI to enhance the entire drug discovery and development pathway. She is also a co-lead at MD Anderson’s Institute for Data Science in Oncology, where she is developing Digital Twins to optimize treatment options for patients.
Dr. Al-Lazikani is a recipient of numerous awards including being Elected Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology and the Royal Society of Biology.