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Holly Soutter

Director, Lead Discovery and Profiling
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Former Director, Lead Discovery and Profiling, Center for the Development of Therapeutics, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

 Dr. Holly Soutter is a visionary leader and driving force in the convergence of biotech, pharma, and artificial intelligence, leveraging over two decades of drug discovery expertise.  Holly's innovation lies in her ability to strategically unify structural biology, biochemistry, and biophysics with cutting-edge high-throughput screening to generate the high-quality data essential for fueling next-generation machine learning models.

Holly Soutter

Director, Lead Discovery and Profiling
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Holly Soutter

Director, Lead Discovery and Profiling
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Former Director, Lead Discovery and Profiling, Center for the Development of Therapeutics, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

 Dr. Holly Soutter is a visionary leader and driving force in the convergence of biotech, pharma, and artificial intelligence, leveraging over two decades of drug discovery expertise.  Holly's innovation lies in her ability to strategically unify structural biology, biochemistry, and biophysics with cutting-edge high-throughput screening to generate the high-quality data essential for fueling next-generation machine learning models.

She possesses a clear-eyed vision: that the future of drug discovery is AI-powered, but that success hinges on a "biology-first," hypothesis-driven approach to ML integration. This deep commitment ensures that the technology serves the science, accelerating the path to novel therapies.

 While at the Broad Institute, Holly built a legacy of collaboration, working directly with machine learning experts to seamlessly integrate AI tools into hit finding workflows. These pioneering, integrated systems have democratized small molecule discovery, making it accessible to academic researchers worldwide.  As the founding co-chair of the Machine Learning in Drug Discovery Symposium, she acts as a crucial nexus, fostering vital connections between experimentalists and ML scientists and attracting luminaries who are defining the next era of medicine.

 

At AIDDD 25, Dirk Van Hyfte and Holly Soutter will share insights on reprogramming the entire drug discovery process, presenting the HYFT® breakthrough that enables biology to "compute itself"—making complex biological connections explainable, accessible, and actionable for the first time. This session will explore: 

  • Reprogramming Discovery: How AI-native platforms are reshaping how scientists interact with biological data and design new therapies. 
  • The HYFT® Breakthrough: Unveiling a novel computational approach that decodes universal biosphere patterns, unlocking unprecedented discovery potential. 
  • The Frontier of Explainable AI in Biology: Transcending black-box models to deliver clarity, transparency, and trust in AI-powered biological research.
 

Stanley Fisher

Partner
Williams & Connolly

Stanley Fisher

Partner
Williams & Connolly

Stanley Fisher

Partner
Williams & Connolly

Drug-target interactions occur on second-to-minute timescales, but computational methods only reach microseconds. AI is still grappling with static protein structures. This gap hides the transition states that control drug kinetics, forcing trial-and-error optimization. Enhanced sampling methods for atomistic simulations can bridge this timescale gap, achieving 10,000-fold acceleration while maintaining physical accuracy. Applied to multiple drug discovery programs, we reveal previously invisible transition states that enabled rational optimization of drug residence time and selectivity.

Author:

Dennis Nenno

Chief Executive Officer
Examol

Dennis Nenno is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Examol, an operating system for computational drug discovery focused on small molecules. He led project teams at BASF, developing software solutions to automate chemical plants worldwide. As a research fellow, he simulated the properties of advanced and unrealized materials at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics. Dennis is an advisor on quantum technologies for venture capital.

Dennis Nenno

Chief Executive Officer
Examol

Dennis Nenno is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Examol, an operating system for computational drug discovery focused on small molecules. He led project teams at BASF, developing software solutions to automate chemical plants worldwide. As a research fellow, he simulated the properties of advanced and unrealized materials at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics. Dennis is an advisor on quantum technologies for venture capital.

 

Dennis Nenno

Chief Executive Officer
Examol

Dennis Nenno is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Examol, an operating system for computational drug discovery focused on small molecules. He led project teams at BASF, developing software solutions to automate chemical plants worldwide. As a research fellow, he simulated the properties of advanced and unrealized materials at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics. Dennis is an advisor on quantum technologies for venture capital.

Dennis Nenno

Chief Executive Officer
Examol

Dennis Nenno

Chief Executive Officer
Examol

Dennis Nenno is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Examol, an operating system for computational drug discovery focused on small molecules. He led project teams at BASF, developing software solutions to automate chemical plants worldwide. As a research fellow, he simulated the properties of advanced and unrealized materials at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics. Dennis is an advisor on quantum technologies for venture capital.

AI agents look magical in demos and messy in production. This talk distills how we operationalize AI agents for day-to-day analytics. We cover schema discovery for stable interfaces, structured outputs for evaluation, human-in-the-loop gates for quality, and intentional context hooks for reproducibility. In 10 minutes I will show the shapes that work, the failure modes that recur, and the smallest set of practices that make agents dependable for data science.

 

Andrew Brooked

Chief Technical Officer & Co-Founder
Faculty

Andrew leads Faculty’s technical teams and developed the backbone of Faculty’s AI operating system, Frontier. His accomplishments span building the NHS Covid Early Warning System and mission critical projects for the UK Ministry of Defence. Before Faculty, Andrew led an engineering team at investment management firm BlackRock. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Warwick.

 

Andrew Brooked

Chief Technical Officer & Co-Founder
Faculty

Andrew Brooked

Chief Technical Officer & Co-Founder
Faculty

Andrew leads Faculty’s technical teams and developed the backbone of Faculty’s AI operating system, Frontier. His accomplishments span building the NHS Covid Early Warning System and mission critical projects for the UK Ministry of Defence. Before Faculty, Andrew led an engineering team at investment management firm BlackRock. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Warwick.