Siebel School Speaker Series Master Calendar

COLLOQUIUM: Zhiyong Lu, "From Genes to the Clinic: AI Agents for Biomedical Discovery and Decision Support"

Apr 15, 2026   3:30 pm  
HYBRID: 2405 Siebel Center for Computer Science or online
Sponsor
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science
Views
80
Originating Calendar
Siebel School Colloquium Series

Zoom: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/82252131083?pwd=jq4w17gzAWube9GqDSlxDeJuvcbzwm.1

Refreshments Provided.

Abstract: 
The rapid advancement of large language models is enabling a new generation of domain-specific agents capable of reasoning, retrieving, and acting in complex biomedical contexts. In this talk, we present two representative systems—GeneAgent (Nature Methods 2025), an AI agent for self-verified gene set analysis, and AgentMD (Nature Communications 2025, NeurIPS 2024), a clinical reasoning agent for patient-specific risk calculation. Through real-world use cases, we will discuss the design principles behind these biomedical agents, and how such AI agents can support biomedical discovery and clinical practice, as well as challenges and limitations in medical agentic AI research. 

Bio:
Dr. Zhiyong Lu is a tenured Senior Investigator at the NIH/NLM, leading research in biomedical text/image processing, AI, and machine learning. In addition, Dr. Lu is Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Associate Editor for the journal JAMIA and Bioinformatics. Dr. Lu is a highly cited researcher with over 400 publications, and his AI research has been deployed in real-world systems like PubMed & LitCovid, serving millions each day. Dr. Lu’s research has been frequently featured in major news outlets such as Nature and recognized with numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s Challenge Award, the Clinical Center CEO Award, and the NLM Regents Award. Dr. Lu has been elected to the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI).


Part of the Siebel School Speakers Series
Faculty Host: Jiawei Han


Meeting ID: 822 5213 1083
Passcode: csillinois


If accommodation is required, please email <erink@illinois.edu> or <communications@cs.illinois.edu>. Someone from our staff will contact you to discuss your specific needs

 

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