Invited Speakers


Michal Ozery-Flato, PhD
IBM Research – Israel

AI for Drug Discovery

Dr. Michal Ozery-Flato is a research staff member in the AI for Accelerated HC&LS Discovery department in IBM Research-Israel. Since she joined IBM Research in 2009, Michal led various clinical data analysis projects in different disease areas and developed several machine learning and causal AI tools for large-scale biomedical data. Michal holds a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science, and MSc and PhD in Computer Science, all from Tel Aviv University, Israel.

More info at: https://research.ibm.com/people/michal-ozery-flato

Summary: The discovery of new drugs is a laborious, lengthy, and costly process, often hindered by low success rates and the complexity of biological systems. Typically, it takes 10-15 years for a new drug to progress from initial discovery to market approval, with only about 12 percent of drugs entering clinical trials ultimately receiving FDA approval. However, recent advancements in AI technologies and the growing availability of extensive biomedical data are driving significant innovation in drug development. This talk will explore key challenges in drug discovery, including patient and disease heterogeneity and the integration of multi-modality and multidomain data. It will review critical computational research problems in drug discovery and highlight recent AI methodologies designed to address these challenges. Finally, it will presente IBM’s biomedical foundation model technologies, which leverage large-scale omics and chemical data across various modalities to support downstream tasks in drug discovery, such as generating and validating small molecule and biological drug candidates and identifying novel therapeutic targets.


Roy Cecil is a Senior Engineer working with the Data and AI Technical Sales team based out of IBM Ireland. 

Currently he is a Technical Specialist in databases, data replication and data archiving technologies but has held engineering roles in the product development of Db2 and Big SQL in the past. He has joined IBM in 2008 and has 25 years of Industry experience.


Dr András Süle
(Immediate Past President of EAHP)

Dr András Süle is currently the Director of Pharmacy at the South Budapest Central Hospital – National Institute of Hematology and Infectious Diseases & Péterfy Hospital and Outpatient Clinic in Budapest, Hungary. He is a guest lecturer and program lead for the Hospital Pharmacy Specialization Postgraduate Program at Semmelweis University, Budapest.

In 2008, Dr Süle obtained a PhD from Semmelweis University and has since gone on to complete a PharmD Specialisation in Pharmaceutical Technology and a PharmD Specialisation in Clinical Pharmacy. He also holds a BSc in Healthcare Management.

During his service within the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), he held the positions of Director of Professional Development, Director of Finance and President-Elect. In June 2021 he started his 3-year term as EAHP’s President that ended in June 2024. Since then he serves as Immediate Past President beside the EAHP Board of Directors.


Leonidas TZIMIS, PharmD, RPharm, PhD
EAHP representative in IHE Europe & IHE-Pharmacy

IHE Pharmacy Whitepapers and Profiles of Interoperability

Dr Leonidas Tzimis is Hospital Pharmacist, Educator at SAEK, the Schools of Higher Vocational Training, Greece. He served as a Hospital Pharmacist and Director of the Pharmacy Department at Chania General Hospital, Crete (retired 2023). Dr Tzimis is also an EAHP’s representative in IHE Europe & IHE Pharmacy (IHE – Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise), member of the EAHP’s eHealth WG and the EAHP’s SIG on Interoperability in Automation. 

Dr Tzimis studied Pharmacy at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece and became a licensed pharmacist in 1982. In 1998, he obtained a PhD from the Medical School of Crete, Greece, in Social & Preventive Medicine and Nutrition for his work on the prescribed medication, pharmacotherapy and nutrition of social care indigent patients.

Dr Leonidas Tzimis’s research focuses on pharmacoeconomics, eHealth and the integration of information technology into the daily practice.

CV: https://tzileon.blogspot.com


Darija Kuruc Poje
VP of EAHP

Darija Kuruc Poje joined the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists’ Board of Directors in June 2021 and she was elected Vice-president one year later. She is also Head of the hospital pharmacy and the clinical pharmacist specialist at the hospital “dr. Tomislav Bardek” in Koprivnica, Croatia. Her current role as a permanent member of the Medicinal Products’ Safety Committee at the Croatian Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices (HALMED) enables her to share scientific and practical hospital and clinical pharmacy experience. Her field of expertise is infectious disease with focus on antimicrobial stewardship teams and AMR as well as digital health, sustainability, chronic diseases and ageing society. She has several scientific publications, and she actively participates in congresses in the hospital pharmacy and medicine area