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Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. — VP, Catalyze360 AI/ML and Global Head, Lilly TuneLab, Eli Lilly

Accelerating Promising Biotech Innovation — Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. — Vice President, Catalyze360 AI/ML and Global Head, Lilly TuneLab, Eli Lilly and Company.

Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. is a Vice President of Catalyze360 AI (https://www.lilly.com/science/partners/catalyze-360 and Global Head of Lilly TuneLab (https://tunelab.lilly.com/) at Eli Lilly where she leads the strategy, build and launch of Lilly’s external-facing AI/ML efforts for drug discovery.

Lilly Catalyze360 represents a comprehensive approach to enabling the early-stage biotech ecosystem, agnostic of the therapeutic area, designed to accelerate emerging and promising science, strategically removing barriers to support biotech innovation.

In her previous role at Lilly, Dr. Apple served as the COO and head of Lilly Gateway Labs West Coast, where she supported the local biotech ecosystem through early engagement and providing tailored offerings to meet their needs.

Prior to Lilly, Dr. Apple served as a co-founder at Santa Ana Bio, a venture-backed precision biologics company focused on autoimmune disease, and as an advisor to the founders of Firefly Biologics.

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AI2 Incubator launches $80M fund as it doubles down on real-world AI applications in Seattle and beyond

The Seattle-based startup organization — known for spinning out companies at the intersection of AI and real-world applications — has closed an $80 million third fund to support about 70 new tech ventures over the next four years.

Programmable proteins use logic to improve targeted drug delivery

Targeted drug delivery is a powerful and promising area of medicine. Therapies that pinpoint the exact areas of the body where they’re needed—and nowhere they’re not—can reduce the medicine dosage and avoid potentially harmful off-target effects elsewhere in the body. A targeted immunotherapy, for example, might seek out cancerous tissues and activate immune cells to fight the disease only in those tissues.

The tricky part is making a therapy truly “smart,” where the medicine can move freely through the body and decide which areas to target.

Researchers at the University of Washington have taken a significant step toward that goal by designing proteins with autonomous decision-making capabilities. In a proof-of-principles study published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers demonstrated that by adding smart tail structures to , they could control the proteins’ localization based on the presence of specific environmental cues.

Data-driven fine-grained region discovery in the mouse brain with transformers

Defining the spatial organization of tissues and organs like the brain from large datasets is a major challenge. Here, authors introduce CellTransformer, an AI tool that defines spatial domains in the mouse brain based on spatial transcriptomics, a technology that measures which genes are active in different parts of tissue.

What Leaders Get Wrong About Automation And AI

But the key is to see AI as fundamental, not a feature add. AI moves us from rule-based tasks to intelligent decision-making. When leaders rush to automate without analyzing and redesigning processes first, they implement smart tools on top of outdated workflows, expecting immediate gains.

I’ve seen it happen: When you apply AI to a flawed process, the consequences scale quickly. Instead, redesign workflows with AI at the core. Make sure the process makes sense before applying the technology.

Critically, when redesigning processes, understand that implementation is about leadership, not tools. IT teams often focus too much on tools and infrastructure without aligning automation efforts to clear business outcomes. Without engaging leadership and your workforce early and addressing cultural resistance, adoption stalls—even if the technology works perfectly.

Sam Altman on Zero-Person AI Companies, Sora, AGI Breakthroughs, and more

OpenAI just unveiled HUGE developer updates at DevDay 2025 — Apps in ChatGPT, Agent Builder, Sora API, and Codex updates that can handle day-long tasks.

I sat down with Sam Altman for an exclusive interview about going viral on Sora, zero-person companies, and why he believes early AGI-like breakthroughs are starting to happen NOW.

In this conversation, we unpack:

Sam’s Sora AI deepfakes going viral.
Zero-person billion dollar companies run by agents.
AI starting to make scientific discoveries on Twitter.
ChatGPT’s 800M users and the new distribution platform.

Get 5-minute daily updates on the latest AI news: https://www.therundown.ai/subscribe.

Chapters:

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Novel AI tool opens 3D modeling to blind and low-vision programmers

Blind and low-vision programmers have long been locked out of three-dimensional modeling software, which depends on sighted users dragging, rotating and inspecting shapes on screen.

Now, a multiuniversity research team has developed A11yShape, a new tool designed to help blind and low-vision programmers independently create, inspect and refine three-dimensional models. The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.

The team consists of Anhong Guo, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, and researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas, University of Washington, Purdue University and several partner institutions—including Gene S-H Kim of Stanford University, a member of the blind and low-vision community.

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