Check in, get breakfast, and connect with your peers before the Digital Day begins

Alexandra Hoegberg, Journalist, Nordic Life Science

Sajith Wickramasekara, Founder & CEO, Benchling
Few people sit at the intersection of frontier AI development, pharma’s shifting workflows, and what works in practice in biotech R&D.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ In this keynote, Benchling CEO and co-founder Sajith Wickramasekara cuts through the noise with a candid view from inside the labs of 1,300+ companies, from large pharma to AI-native biotechs. Sajith will share where AI is delivering in R&D today and why scientific agents haven't taken off like AI coding agents have in software. He'll make the case for an AI Scientist built at the seam between the digital and physical worlds — and why biopharma, of all industries, has the most to gain from AI by acting now.

Mikkel Bülow Skovborg, Vice President, Novo Nordisk Foundation
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is committed to supporting research, innovation and competitiveness across the life science value chain. In line with a strategic vision that includes the Nordics and Europe, the NNF is strengthening an innovation ecosystem that pairs unique data resources and ambitious computing infrastructure with a full spectrum of research, translation, incubation/acceleration and scaling initiatives. Mikkel will present NNF-supported resources and opportunities available to the Nordic/EU biotech and life science community that enable and expand possibilities in data-driven R&D and innovation.

Kick off Nordic Day with a panoramic view of the Nordic life-science ecosystem. Experts and industry veterans present the latest on innovation trends, cross-country collaborations, regulatory shifts, and what makes the Nordics a cradle of biotech innovation — setting the context before diving deeper.

10:10 — 10:30
AI-Ready R&D: Building the Foundations for Future Scientific Excellence

Shannara Taylor Parkins, Senior Consultant - Life Sciences, ADC Consulting

Discover the essential elements for preparing life science R&D departments for AI integration. Uncover how establishing robust data foundations, ensuring seamless data interoperability, and facilitating cultural shifts are all crucial for AI readiness, illustrated through a digital transformation use case. Explore how these strategies not only pave the way for innovative breakthroughs but also foster a collaborative Nordic ecosystem, redefining competitive advantage in the ever-evolving landscape of scientific research.

10:35 — 10:55
GEFION – How Access to AI Supercomputing Capabilities Drive Innovation
Ulrik Nicolai de Lichtenberg, Director, Scientific Projects, Danish Center for AI Innovation
Discover Gefion, Denmark’s premier AI supercomputer and one of Europe’s most powerful systems optimized for life science workloads. Uncover how this public-private partnership between the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Danish state is democratizing access to massive NVIDIA H100 GPU capabilities. Through early-user case stories, explore how Gefion’s position as a sovereign, secure and compliant infrastructure, combined with its flexible access model, is removing the infrastructure bottlenecks that hinder discovery and unlock breakthroughs across the Nordic R&D ecosystem.

From bench to clinic — this segment focuses on next-gen biologics and antibody therapeutics. Hear from biotech and biopharma leaders about real project case studies, lessons learned in development pipelines, and how digital tools and data management accelerate discovery, characterization, and regulatory readiness for antibody and protein therapeutics.

11:00 — 11:20
Reasoning Models for Combination Therapy: From Zero-shot Target Discovery to Safety Signals
Bogumil Zimon, CEO & Founder, PharosBio
Explore how reasoning models are transforming the manual bottleneck of combination therapy discovery. This session breaks down a three-step workflow: using LLMs for zero-shot synthetic lethal target nomination, automating translational evidence review, and flagging additive toxicity risks through clinical literature synthesis. Illustrated by a TNBC case study, discover how shifting the burden of synthesis to AI allows scientists to evaluate broader hypothesis spaces and catch critical safety signals earlier. Join us to discuss what works, what doesn't, and the future of human-in-the-loop target discovery.


11:25 — 11:45
A Digital Strategy for Scalable Cell Therapy Manufacturing
Shanti Chari, Chief Information Officer, Cellerator
Cell therapy manufacturing continues to face variability, limited reproducibility, and poor scalability. Small scale processes often fail to translate into clinical and commercial environments, limiting efficiency and patient access. Cellerator is addressing this by establishing a unified digital foundation for seamless therapeutic translation.

11:50 — 12:10
Benchling Biologics: AI Infrastructure for Modern Antibody Discovery
Vaibhav Bhardwaj, Solution Consultant - R&D, Benchling
Most data infrastructure wasn't built for modern antibody discovery; systems can't keep pace with novel formats, making it hard to query, analyze, or train models on antibody data. To solve this problem, we're introducing Benchling Biologics: a purpose-built system for capturing antibodies with full structural awareness. We'll show you how teams can rapidly design custom formats, from mAbs to complex multispecifics, and register proteins with built-in annotation and validation. Because Biologics is native to Benchling, sequence data and experimental context stay connected across the design-build-test-learn cycle.

12-30 - 13:00 - Roundtable Discussions (sign up onsite)

Roundtable 1: Two Labs, One Problem: A Wet Lab Scientist's View on the Data Divide
Data scientists need clean, structured outputs. But what does that demand mean for the scientists actually generating the data? Join this roundtable to share experiences from the bench — the workarounds, the pressures, and what it would actually take to bridge the gap between wet lab reality and data team expectations

Roundtable 2: IT & Digital Strategy: Tackling Infrastructure & Data Challenges
Are you in IT or Digital Innovation? Connect with fellow IT leaders to discuss architecture, data integration, security, and the technical hurdles of modernizing life science environments.

Roundtable 3: Benchling Power Users: Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices
Are you an active Benchling user? Gather with other Benchling users to exchange user insights, share configuration best practices, and discuss how you are overcoming daily adoption or workflow challenges.

12:30 - 13:10 - Interactive AI for Scientist Workshop (limited to 35 seats)

AI is already delivering real results in biotech R&D. The challenge for many teams is not whether it works, it is knowing where to start. Using examples and prompts from the Benchling AI team, this workshop will show how scientists are applying AI across their day-to-day workflows, without compromising scientific quality.

In this session we will cover:
• Turning hours of data entry into minutes
• Generating reports and experiment documentation automatically
• Surfacing insights hidden across years of institutional knowledge
• Data conversion, literature synthesis, internal knowledge search, and report generation

You will walk away with practical, copy-paste prompts you can use the same day, a clear understanding of how teams are enabling confident, scalable AI adoption, and the tools to spend less time on busywork and more time on science.

TRACK 1:  Trusting the Data - Bioanalysis & Quality

This segment dives into the analytical and quality backbone of modern biotech — from assay development and bioanalysis to early QC, comparability, and audit readiness. Through real-world examples, speakers will show how connected data systems, standardization, and built-in compliance are critical to ensuring accuracy, reproducibility, and regulatory confidence from discovery through commercialization.

13:30 - 13:50
Trusting the Data: Building AI-Ready, Audit-Ready, and Decision-Ready Scientific Data Ecosystems
Aref Rafat, Senior Consultant, Data & AI Lead, Zifo
Life sciences teams invest significant time and effort to trust data for critical regulatory decisions and reporting which keeps these processes stubbornly slow. Through bioanalysis and quality use cases, Zifo demonstrates how to operationalize trust using connected platforms like Benchling. Attendees will leave with a practical framework to build AI-ready, audit-ready ecosystems that eliminate data fragmentation and accelerate outcomes.

13:55 - 14:20
Fireside Chat with MinervaX: Scaling Regulated Bioanalysis
Tina Biehl, VP Bioanalysis & Analytical Quality, MinervaX
Jason Boyd, Head of Regulated Labs Market Strategy, Benchling (moderator)
The steady progress towards clinical trials creates organizational excitement for the milestones within the company mission and also appropriate concern for scaling operations while meeting regulatory expectations. Tina Biehl, VP of Bioanalysis and Analytical Quality joins Jason Boyd, Head of Regulatory Market Strategy to transparently discuss the MinervaX journey.

14:25 - 14:45
Faster from Method to Milestone: How Benchling Manages the Full Bioanalysis Lifecycle
Jason Boyd, Head of Regulated Labs Market Strategy, Benchling
Bioanalytical and analytical teams work across too many disconnected systems. The cost shows up in slower validation timelines and data integrity risk at every handoff. This session shows how Benchling consolidates the full bioanalysis and analytical workflow into a single platform as both a LIMS and LES. See how teams handle manifest ingestion, test execution, and analysis in one place, with direct instrument integrations, workflow-embedded QC, and a centralized data foundation that supports method development and clinical trials.

TRACK 2:  The Living Factory: Fermentation & Biosolutions

This segment explores how teams design, optimize, and scale living systems with confidence, from early strain development to large-scale bioprocesses. Speakers will share how data integrity, experimental traceability, and digital continuity across R&D and process development enable faster iteration, stronger tech transfer, and more predictable scale-up in complex biological manufacturing.

13:30 - 13:50
Bridging the Lab Gap: Improving Enzyme Engineering with LIMS and Integrated AI
Malin Lüking, Lead Researcher, Computational Biology, Enginzyme
Enginzyme develops enzymatic processes for large-scale chemical manufacturing. Our enzymes are designed to withstand industrial conditions and are often stabilised by immobilisation to enable catalyst recycling, leading to the creation of complex entities and result tables within our LIMS infrastructure. During a catalyst development cycle, we collect experimental and computational data, which is saved in our warehouse via Benchling and extracted via queries and AI tools like Deep Research to be transformed into actionable models and visualisations. This presentation focuses on how we tackled the challenge of designing, maintaining, and leveraging a data model that serves customer-focused projects and provides a solid base for the development of future, AI-supported technologies, with a focus on applications in enzyme engineering.

13:55 - 14:20
Fireside Chat with AB Enzymes: Boredom Breeds Creativity

Nick Tobias, Team Leader for Digitalization and Bioinformatics, AB Enzymes

Meritxell Orpinell, Head of Customer Experience EMEA, Benchling (moderator)
Three years ago, no one could have imagined how central AI would become to how we work. Today, we can’t really predict how we are going to work 3 years from now. So how do you build a science organization that’s ready for whatever comes? Nick Tobias, Team Leader for Digitalization and Bioinformatics at AB Enzymes, joins Meritxell Orpinell, Head of CX EMEA at Benchling, for a conversation about driving change in a domain where the technology is the easy part. The human part, a bit more complicated. Expect honesty about what worked, what didn’t, and the personal and organizational traits that quietly move things forward.

14:25 - 14:45
From Screening to Scale Up: A Systematic Approach to Fermentation Process Development at Biosyntia
Perikles Sotiris, Senior Fermentation Scientist, Biosyntia ApS
Translating small-scale screening results into reproducible bioreactor performance remains one of the most persistent challenges in fermentation process development. Fundamental differences in temperature, oxygen transfer, and feeding strategy between screening and bioreactor conditions create systematic disconnects that cost teams months of rework. In this talk, we present Biosyntia's end-to-end workflow for bridging this gap from strain selection through lab-scale optimization to scale-up.

This session explores how Nordic biotechs are moving beyond AI pilots to build truly AI-enabled laboratories, where data, automation, and machine learning actively shape discovery, development, and operations. From AI-ready data foundations and closed-loop experimentation to predictive process optimization and GxP-aware analytics, speakers will share what it truly takes to make AI work in regulated, real-world lab environments — where trust, traceability, and ROI matter as much as innovation.

15:15 - 15:35
Scientific AI for Designing Better Molecules
Mihir Trivedi, Head of Scientific AI, Benchling
Join to learn about the history of AI-assisted drug discovery and the advancements that are accelerating change in this space. We'll cover the explosion of recent AI and ML models for drug discovery, and take a look at how Benchling has been integrating these models into the platform, from both a technical and product perspective.

15:40 - 16:00
Six Years of Workflow Automation in a Molecular Biology Laboratory: Lessons Learned
Liam Thompson, Senior Research Scientist, AstraZeneca

What can a molecular biology laboratory learn from six years of gradual workflow automation? In this presentation, the AstraZeneca molecular biology team in Gothenburg shares its experience of adopting, moving away from, and ultimately returning to Benchling, alongside building internal software solutions to meet evolving laboratory needs. The talk will highlight key lessons from this journey, including when commercial platforms work well, where bespoke tools can add value, and how decisions around automation are shaped by cost, functionality, data handling, and team adoption. The presentation will conclude with reflections on where the team is heading next in its automation and informatics strategy.

16:05 - 16:30 
Panel: The Reality of AI's Impact and Transformation Across Academia and Industry
Moderator: Mihir Trivedi, Head of Scientific AI, Benchling
Panelist 1: Ludovic Tranholm Otterbein, SVP, Digital, Data & Technology, Zealand Pharma
Panelist 2: Samir Bhatt, Professor of Machine Learning and Public Health, University of Copenhagen
Join to hear an honest panel discussion about the current impacts of AI on academic research and pharma R&D. Learn how leaders are thinking about the current needs for transformation, and their outlook for the next 3-5 years as the pressure mounts to deliver new research, assets, and efficiency.