I am part of the Product Owner Hub helping develop and execute the Digital Strategy for Pharma Clinical.

The Applied Machine Learning Group (AML) strives for the application of a data-driven approach to drug research and development by developing and utilizing best-in-class machine learning (ML) models to optimize R&D processes. The implementation of ML algorithms accelerates drug discovery and a platform to monitor and self-train models enables portfolio view of our capabilities, allowing us to become more focused. We envision to work in a fast-paced setting, we expect to fail quickly and adapt swiftly, all while expanding your ML capabilities. We also believe in making the right choices not only for our immediate team but decisions to build solutions catered to broader R&D. The success at AML will be measured by bucketing the benefit of the developed capability into one or more of these three buckets, (1) Savings in time (2) Savings in cost (3) Generation of new insights

Given the considerable amount of data that is collected throughout clinical trials, it can be asked if this data can be used to improve our understanding of the trial, regardless of outcome. The radiomics pilot seeks to provide a toolkit that is capable of analyzing the different modalities of information found in clinical trials (genome, gene expression, biomarker, clinical information, and imaging information) to derive insights into why a patient may be responding, or why a clinical trial was unsuccessful. The current efforts have focused on clinical trials in oncology, while collaborating with the RED-ONC function. Overall, the project is in its pilot state, and demonstrating a proof of concept, while documenting many challenges and learnings with the development of such a toolkit. Potential directions that could expand this toolbox include deriving the factors that best predict why a patient would stay in a clinical trial, and providing assistance with patient selection of clinical trials. Other potential directions involve suggesting why a particular trial may have been unsuccessful and providing that information back to the drug development team.

My name is Sandra Ille but I like to be called Sandy instead. I’ve been working for Bayer since November 2013 in the HR department. I’ve been an HRBP since I started and have always worked within the R&D organization since starting with Bayer. Currently I’m on a STA as a Global Talent Lead for the DS&AI organization. I reside in Bergenfield, NJ with my fiancé. I have a 24 year old son who is my greatest achievement and success. I have a BS and MS from West Virginia University.

The Data Assets and Insights Solutions subfunction, DAIS, consists of a team of dedicated computer and data scientists which combine deep R&D process and domain expertise (biology, chemistry, pharmacy, etc) with advanced computational expertise (software engineering, natural language processing, scalable architectures, bio- & chem-informatics, data integration & visualization, etc). We integrate, enrich and harmonize large scientific datasets to build foundational data assets which are used by the R&D organization and our team to build insights solutions. They address key R&D challenges to improve speed, quality and probability of success of our R&D pipeline. Selected business critical tasks within R&D we are focusing on: - Target identification including holistic assessment - Disease understanding including precision medicine - Pipeline evaluation (therapeutic potential and risks) - Modality selection including identification of tool compounds - Identification of collaboration and in-licensing opportunities For more information contact: Wolfgang Thielemann. Artwork: Licensed pictures.