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Artificial intelligence in life sciences and medicine – conference in Tianjin, China
Professor David Lilley addressed 500 people at a conference on application of supercomputing at Nankai university in Tianjin, PR China.
Published on 23 September 2025
Professor Lilley presenting his key note lecture to the conference at Nankai University
The theme of the conference was to examine the interface between artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with the life sciences and medicine. The entire conference was in Chinese, and Prof Lilley delivered his 30 minute talk in Chinese. His was one of two key-note lectures from academicians. One was from a Chinese oncologist, discussing how AI could assist in the treatment of cancer patients. Prof Lilley discussed the structure of RNA (particular species called riboswitches that are involved in regulating the expression of genes in living cells) and the potential for artificial intelligence to extract some general principles of the RNA structure and the binding of small molecules to these species.
Nankai University (where Prof Lilley holds the post of visiting professor) is one of the top universities in China. It is home to one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, called 天河, meaning the Milky Way. At the end of the conference Prof Lilley visited the computer.