📅 Date: Monday, 24 November 2025

📍 Location: Adelaide Oval, Adelaide, SA

🧠 Presented by: ABACBS Professional Bioinformatics Community (APBC)

🤝 In partnership with: ABACBS Annual Conference

About the Symposium

The Symposium on Bioinformatics and Engineered Intelligence (SBEI2025) brings together researchers, technologists, and industry leaders to explore the transformative impact of generative AI and engineered intelligence across health, biotechnology, agriculture, and scientific discovery.

Held just before the main ABACBS conference (25 - 26 Nov), SBEI2025 offers a focused, high-impact program designed to foster collaboration, spark innovation, and address the ethical and technical frontiers of AI in bioinformatics.

Registration

SBEI2025 is open to all ABACBS conference attendees and can be added during registration. Limited seats available — early registration is recommended.

👉 Register via ABACBS Conference Portal

SBEI2025 is possible thanks to our generous sponsors:

Program Highlights

🔬 GenAI in Client and Product-Facing Applications

Explore real-world deployments of generative AI in diagnostics, therapeutics, crop science, and personalized medicine. Learn how AI is reshaping client engagement and product innovation.

🧪 GenAI in Scientific Research, Interpretation & Discovery

Dive into how GenAI is accelerating hypothesis generation, literature synthesis, and data interpretation. A panel of experts will discuss the implications for reproducibility, creativity, and scientific rigor.

⚙️ GenAI in Tools, Infrastructure & Workflows

Discover how AI is optimizing bioinformatics workflows, automating pipelines, and enhancing infrastructure scalability. Topics include workflow orchestration, model integration, and tool interoperability.

🛡️ Ethical Frontiers in Genomic AI

Engage with thought leaders on the ethical, legal, and technical challenges of deploying AI in genomics. Discussions will cover data governance, bias mitigation, and regulatory compliance.

Who Should Attend?

• Bioinformaticians, Computational Biologists, and Data Scientists applying (or thinking about applying) AI to genomics and biomedical data

• Engineers and developers building AI-powered workflows, platforms, and infrastructure for biological data

• Health Tech and Biotech professionals integrating GenAI into patient-facing tools

• Agritech and Biotech professionals leveraging AI for corp, animal, and microbial innovation

• Policy makers, ethics, compliance, and data governance experts shaping policy and practice around AI in genomics and life science

• Students and Early-Career professionals seeking exposure to real-world GenAI applications in life science

INVITED Speakers

Speaker BIOs

Milica Ng (CSL)

Dr Milica Ng is a strategic leader in AI, data science, and biotechnology with international experience across defence, pharma, consulting, and technology on four continents. At CSL, she leads Biomedical Data Science in R&D, overseeing bioinformatics, biostatistics, image analytics, systems modelling, data management, and AI.

A systems thinker and advocate for ethical, inclusive innovation, Milica is also an experienced mentor committed to developing future leaders. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne’s Medical Faculty and a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Adelaide.

Anshika Singh (Outread.ai)

Anshika Singh is the COO and Co-Founder of Outread.ai, an AI-powered research intelligence platform. Through Outread, she works with industry leaders, researchers, and organisations in biotech, climate, and other science-driven sectors to accelerate R&D and evidence-based decision-making.

Tackling one of the biggest challenges in science today, the overwhelming difficulty of finding and interpreting relevant research by using GenAI to simplify access to over 250 million peer-reviewed papers. Anshika is passionate about making cutting-edge science actionable, helping teams move faster from research to implementation, and shaping how GenAI supports discovery and innovation.

Dhruv Sirohi (Outread.ai)
Dhruv Sirohi is the CTO and Co-Founder of Outread.ai, an AI-powered research intelligence platform. He is currently pursuing a combined degree in Computer Science and Law at the University of Adelaide, where he has excelled in AI, backend systems, and data architecture. Dhruv has a strong track record in entrepreneurship and technical innovation, winning UNIHACK and placing as runner-up in GovHack. Previously, he co-built ventures including MyEbookClub and Feel the Beatz. At Outread, Dhruv leads the technical vision, developing advanced algorithms that make academic research faster, smarter, and more accessible for global teams.

Anuradha Wickramarachchi (CSIRO)

Dr. Anuradha Wickramarachchi is a senior engineer in Transformational Bioinformatics group at CSIRO. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from The Australian National University and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. His areas of interest are computational biology, algorithm development and extending bioinformatics tools to handle population scale data.

Dale Watkins (Illumina)

Daniel Stojanovski (Microsoft)

Danya Vears (Deakin University/Murdoch Children’s Research Institute)

Danya Vears is an Associate Professor in Ethics and Professionalism in the School of Medicine, Deakin University and an Honorary Principal Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Danya’s work combines empirical and theoretical research methods to explore practical and ethical issues relating to new technologies, particularly related to genomics. She is the Ethics Lead on several MRFF grants, including topics such as AI genomics and automated reanalysis.

Danya is a Director of the Board and President Elect of the Human Genetic Society of Australasia, a member of the European Society of Human Genetics Policy and Ethics Committee and has been an active member of the GA4GH for ten years

Emily Hackett-Jones (SunCorp)

Emily is Principal Data Scientist at Suncorp, with over 15 years of experience bridging academic research and industry innovation. She began her career leading internationally recognised research in string theory, mathematical modelling, and bioinformatics, publishing in top journals before moving into industry. Since then, she has delivered production-ready AI systems in areas including document intelligence, demand forecasting, explainable ML, and model governance. At Suncorp, Emily leads initiatives in generative AI and large language models, from fine-tuning open-source systems to building secure, human-in-the-loop applications.

Jonathan Hall (Qubigen)

Dr. Jonathan Hall, CEO of Qubigen, pioneers Federated AI to conquer global health challenges through innovative drug design. Founder of Life Whisperer (acquired 2024), he revolutionized IVF with AI, earning MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35, TalentUnleashed Global Winner One-to-Watch, and Frost & Sullivan Global Leadership Awards. Featured in Time and Scientific American, he holds Ph.D.s in Particle Physics (Quantum Chromodynamics) and Nanotech/BioPhotonics.

Joshua Ho (Vitome)

Joshua Ho is an academic-entrepreneur who specialises in bioinformatics, digital health and medical AI. Academically, Joshua is the Assistant Dean (Innovation & Technology Transfer), Programme Director of Master of Biomedical Innovation, Deputy Director of EdTech (AI), and an Associate Professor at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). In 2023, he founded Vitome Limited - a digital health start-up company based in Hong Kong which provides AI-enabled software-as-a-medical-devices (SaMDs) for digital phenotyping for cardiovascular health assessment and monitoring. Joshua holds a BSc and PhD from the University of Sydney and previously worked at Harvard Medical School and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute

Mark Taylor (University of Melbourne)

Mark Taylor, PhD is a Professor of Health Law and Regulation at Melbourne Law School and a Co-Director of the University of Melbourne’s Collaborative for Better Health and Regulation and the Health Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) research group. Mark’s own research seeks to develop trustworthy health data governance; able to reconcile individual and community (privacy) interests with a broader (public) interest in access, use and management of health data. Mark chaired the national Confidentiality Advisory Group in England and Wales for 5 years. He was policy advisor to the Health Research Authority in England and a member of the drafting group for the OECD Recommendation on Health Data Governance. He is currently seconded part-time to the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care and chairs the Learning Health System Strategic Advisory Committee.

Melissa McCraden (Australian Institute for Machine Learning (University of Adelaide))

Rahul Rane (CSIRO)
Rahul Rane leads the Applied Genomics Initiative (AGI) and is Product Owner for Sciansa, CSIRO’s agentic AI platform for science developing an “AI co-scientist”. He integrates generative AI across the research lifecycle from hypothesis generation to multi-omics analysis to deliver scalable, reproducible, collaborative discovery. Sciansa pairs AI reasoning with secure compute to automate literature mining, experimental design, and data analysis while preserving scientific integrity and auditability. Rahul’s team is accelerating genomics, biosecurity, and environmental resilience by reshaping how scientists work with data and tools. AGI and now Sciansa have reduced delivery timelines from months to weeks, supported research teams across dozens of organisations, and are democratising AI-enabled biology. 

Raisa Hashem (AWS)

Raisa Hashem is a Principal Research Technologist at Amazon Web Services Public Sector for Australia & New Zealand. In her role, she collaborates with researchers, IT and research executives to optimise their data, computation and security to accelerate research outcomes using AWS. With a background in BioTechnology and over 15-years experience in Cloud Computing, DevOps security and AI, Raisa thrives in helping institutions securely process, analyse and gain insights from research data at scale. Raisa is passionate about diversity in technology and works with many organizations, high schools and primary schools in Australia to enable and encourage young people to choose a career in technology.

Wei Fan (Nvidia)

Dr. Wei Fang is a Senior Solutions Architect for High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence at NVIDIA based in Sydney, Australia. In this role, he leads NVIDIA’s engagement with the Higher Education & Research and Supercomputing sectors in the ANZ region helping customers build and utilize the most advanced HPC & AI infrastructure. One of his key interests is working with the research community to accelerate their scientific workloads using NVIDIA’s full stack solution. Before joining NVIDIA, Dr. Fang served as an HPC Specialist at Intersect Australia from 2013 to 2021, where he was responsible for Intersect’s HPC operation and consulting services serving many Australian universities and research organizations. He also worked for National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), Geoscience Australia and the private sector developing software and algorithms for scientific and industrial applications. Dr. Fang earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Zhiliang Chen (SOPHiA)

Zhiliang Chen is an experienced Bioinformatics and Genomics Specialist with a PhD in Bioinformatics. She has over a decade of expertise spanning next-generation sequencing (NGS), cloud-based genomics SaaS solutions, and technical sales across healthcare and research sectors in the APAC region. Her research background includes genome and transcriptome assemblies, RNA-Seq analysis, and functional genomics across diverse areas. Zhiliang is passionate about bridging advanced technology with practical applications to accelerate scientific discovery and clinical impact

Tina Hardin (Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health)
Tina Hardin is the inaugural Executive Director of Clinical Informatics at the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health (CEIH). With nearly 25 years in healthcare, she leads a multidisciplinary team driving data-driven innovation to improve patient outcomes.

Her expertise spans health data assets, clinical workflow optimisation, digital design, and strategic change management. Tina has represented South Australia nationally through AIHW and ACSQHC advisory groups, data linkage committees, and currently serves as Chair of the SA branch of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH).

She holds degrees in Science and Business (Management Information Systems) from the University of Adelaide, Monash University, and UniSA.

Fabian Plisson (Ingenie Bio)

Fabien Plisson is the Founder of Ingenie Bio, a new venture applying AI/ML to the discovery and design of therapeutic peptides and proteins. He brings over 18 years of experience in drug discovery and translational biotechnology, spanning academia, startups, and pharma. Fabien has worked with organisations including Pfizer, Protagonist Therapeutics, Pierre Fabre Laboratories, CNRS (France), and Noscira (Spain), leading projects in protein engineering, natural product discovery, and computational drug design. At Ingenie Bio, his focus is on building data-driven tools and workflows that accelerate protein discovery & engineering across health, agriculture, and synthetic biology.

Organising Committee

Belinda Cornes (convenor, Founder and Principal Consultant at Doppledata)

Eva Chan (Senior Bioinformatician at NSW Health Pathology)

Chris Love (Senior Bioinformatician at Geneseq Biosciences)

John Salamon (Bioinformatician at South Australian Genome Centre)

Paul Wang (Senior Research Fellow at WEHI)