Trends from the Trenches

Genomics is moving fast, but how do we get biology the hardware and software it deserves? Ben Busby, NVIDIA’s global alliances manager for omics, joins host Eleanor Howe to dig into the practical crossroads of GPU computing, open-source bioinformatics, and the next wave of precision medicine. They get specific about what GPU acceleration changes in day-to-day genomics and single-cell analysis. Faster pipelines can mean lower costs, tighter iteration loops, and newly feasible questions. They also explore the hardest bottleneck—reliable longitudinal multi-omics data—and challenge a popular assumption about AI in biomedicine: bigger isn’t always better. 

Links from this episode:  
Bio-IT World
BioTeam
Diamond Age Data Science
NVIDIA 
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.

AI is moving fast in life sciences, but a confident answer is not the same thing as a correct, reproducible, auditable answer. Knowledge graphs, ontologies, and FAIR data practices are the keys to bridging this gap. Knowledge3's Tom Plasterer, CEO and co-founder, and Eric Little, chief data officer, join host Allison Proffitt to discuss what it takes to turn semantics into something practical: a knowledge product mindset, modular delivery, and “semantic ops” that can better manage data systems. Their conversation challenges the hype cycle around context graphs, explains why life sciences are a natural starting point for regulated, high-stakes AI, and shows how layered models can capture the right level of context without building a giant monolith that never takes off.

Links from this episode:  
Bio-IT World
BioTeam
Bio-IT World Europe
Knowledge3 
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.

At last month’s Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, Eleanor Howe, founder and CEO of Diamond Age Data Science, presented the Trends with the Trenches session based on gathered input from colleagues, clients, and advisors across the life sciences field. Coding agents were the central topic—how they’re speeding up software development, open source maintenance, and analysis workflows while also shifting new types of responsibility to the human reviewer. Now, “just coding” is no longer enough, and Howe provides advice for early-career scientists on how to get hired in a different environment. Plus, she covers why simulating data can backfire, why smaller purpose-built models often win, and why better data curation, active learning, ELN automation, and federation may matter more than another flashy model demo. 
Links from this episode:  
Bio-IT World Conference & Expo
Bio-IT World
BioTeam
Diamond Age Data Science 
 
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.

Your AI plan can’t outrun your data. Adam Marko, life science field CTO at Hammerspace, joins the podcast to unpack the problem almost every biotech, pharma, and biomedical research group runs into: unstructured data that are siloed, fragmented, and scattered across storage systems, sites, and clouds. With host Jessica StLouis, they talk through what “data orchestration” means when building an AI-ready data foundation, infrastructure constraints and the tiered storage patterns that help teams keep AI and HPC workloads moving, and why life sciences are in a uniquely tough spot. Plus, Marko shares a preview of his presentation at Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston.  
If you care about faster discovery, smoother AI workflows, and fewer manual file moves, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and rate or review so more researchers can find the conversation. 
Links from this episode:  
From Data Chaos to Discovery: Building the Data Foundation for AI-Ready Scientific Research
Bio-IT World Conference & Expo
Bio-IT World
BioTeam
Hammerspace 
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.

AI is now good enough to change how computational biology teams actually work, but most companies are still adopting it like it’s 2023. Sonia Timberlake, R&D strategy consultant for Timberlake & Maclsaac Biopharma Consulting, speaks with host Eleanor Howe about what’s real: agentic coding, high-throughput data workflows, and the practical limits that still slow teams down. Timberlake digs into benchmarks for capabilities and end-to-end tasks, as well as multimodal chart understanding, source verification, and where human review remains non-negotiable. The conversation also explores beyond AI to what biopharma risks missing, why novel targets still matter, and where investment interest is clustering right now. Plus, tune in to get a preview of Timberlake’s workshop at Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston next month! 
If this helped you think more clearly about AI in drug development and computational biology, subscribe, share the show with a colleague, and leave a review so more builders can find the conversation. 
Links from this episode:  
Workshop: AI Upskilling for Computational Biology Teams
Bio-IT World
BioTeam
Diamond Age Data Science 
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.