The Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications (CENSAI) will host the next seminar in the series “Accelerating Science with AI,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 15, featuring guest speaker Maria Wendt, vice president and head of Biologics Research US and global head of Digital Biologics Platform, Large Molecule Research, at Sanofi.

Wendt’s talk will focus on using artificial intelligence and advanced computing methods to discover new pharmaceutical drugs. The talk, which will take place online, is free and open to the Penn State community. Advance registration is required.

Wendt’s seminar will provide an overview of Sanofi’s large-molecule research efforts that are aimed at developing innovative pharmaceuticals to improve health for a variety of conditions and diseases. Wendt will also touch on how artificial intelligence and machine learning applications may help overcome some of the challenges of discovering and developing large-molecule drugs.

Wendt has spent the last 20 years at the interface of computation and biology. At Sanofi, she oversees the internal and collaborative biologics discovery programs for multiple therapeutic areas in the U.S., and the platform innovation portfolio including use of ML/AI. Prior to Sanofi, she was head of science at Genedata AG in Basel, Switzerland, where she led the creation of Genedata Biologics and Genedata Bioprocess, both of which are now widely used biopharmaceutical platforms today. In the early part of her career, she focused on big data and was one of the leaders of the EU Framework 6 InnoMed Predictive Toxicology consortium. She earned her doctorate at Iowa State University in Chemical Engineering.