AI For Life: A Catalyst Seminar Series Installation
Leveraging AI in Biomedical Research and in Public Health
École Polytechnique | Sciences Po | Columbia University
Paris, FRA – Spring 2026
Concept
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) hold the promise of revolutionizing medicine and generating a new range of breakthroughs in life sciences, both in biomedical research, and in public health.
In biomedical research, the use of AI technology helps accelerate drug discovery (including for deadly diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis) by predicting the efficacy of new compounds with improved accuracy and speed. AI is also transforming regenerative medicine by advancing the development of stem cell therapies and tissue engineering. It helps optimize clinical trials by using machine learning to identify candidates and predict patient outcomes. Moreover, neural networks and deep learning algorithms can improve genome sequencing by reducing the time and cost required to identify complex patterns and structures within DNA sequences.
In public health, AI can rapidly analyze large and complex datasets (from electronic health records, demographic data, medical sensors, or health journals), extract tailored recommendations, support decision making, and improve the efficiency of many tasks that involve the processing of data, text, or images. AI brings on new challenges, too: data privacy, accountability, and equity are among them. That is why reliable regulatory frameworks need to be put into place, along with investing in systems that can securely process the large volumes of data needed for AI applications, promoting the ethical use of AI, and considering AI's environmental impact.
In order to tackle these critical questions, the Alliance Program (École Polytechnique, Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) proposes a two-day workshop to be hosted by Ecole Polytechnique and Sciences Po in Paris in Spring 2026. The first day of the workshop will be dedicated to AI and biomedical research and will be hosted by École Polytechnique. The second day will focus on AI and public health and will be hosted by Sciences Po.
This two-day seminar is part of the “Alliance Catalyst Seminars on AI”. This series of transatlantic seminars was launched in Fall 2024 to capitalize on the collective knowledge of the four Alliance institutions (École Polytechnique, Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne). These seminars enable faculty members and researchers from our institutions to present their work, benefit from partners’ feedback, and identify complementary areas of research. These encounters are steered toward the creation of joint project proposals which could be funded by Alliance. They would then be amplified into major research projects, to be presented to various corporate, private, and national funders.