Industry Speaker Series
Industry Speaker Series
Step into the future of data science with the DSI Industry Speaker Series.
This dynamic series brings leaders from across industries to the University of Toronto’s Data Sciences Institute to share real-world challenges, innovative applications, and bold ideas shaping the data-driven world. Each session opens a window into how data science transforms sectors—from healthcare and finance to technology and beyond—while creating space for conversation, learning, and collaboration between industry and academia. Explore upcoming talks below and join us to connect, discover, and be inspired.
Melissa Miller
Senior Director of Human Genetics, Internal Medicine Research Unit, Pfizer
Bio
Melissa R. Miller, PhD, is a Senior Director of Human Genetics in the Internal Medicine Research Unit at Pfizer. Melissa and her team use human genetics and statistical genetics methods to help identify and prioritize targets to support the discovery of new medicines to address unmet medical needs in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Melissa leads or has been involved in several pre-competitive consortia including co-founding the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Consortium, the UK Biobank whole exome sequencing consortium, co-chair of the AMP Common Metabolic diseases program, and member of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). Melissa joined Pfizer in 2014. Prior to joining Pfizer, Melissa completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Colorado and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Join us on April 27 for an interactive afternoon with our Industry Partner AstraZeneca Canada.
Learn how AstraZeneca uses real-world health data to generate insights, address evidence gaps, and navigate challenges in accessing and connecting health data across Canada. Speakers will share perspectives on medical evidence, synthetic data, and health equity.
Following the talk, a panel of experts from the University of Toronto and affiliated hospital partners will discuss implementation challenges, data access realities, and opportunities for collaboration between industry and the research community.
Don’t miss this afternoon of networking, dialogue and industry insights.
Jay Alammar
Director, Engineering Fellow (NLP), Cohere
From LLMs to AI Agents: From Words to Action
This talk explores how large language models evolve from static text generators into dynamic, autonomous agents. We’ll trace the shift from simple input–output behavior to multi-turn systems that reason, use tools, and act in the world. Through intuitive visuals and real-world examples, we’ll examine how memory, planning, and code-driven execution enable agents to automate complex tasks—and what this transition means for the future of AI beyond next-word prediction.
Bio
Jay Alammar is Director and Engineering Fellow at Cohere (The Security-first Enterprise AI Company). In this role, he conducts applied research on improving LLM-backed agents for code generation and multi-step tool use. Through his popular AI/ML blog, Jay has helped millions of researchers and engineers visually understand machine learning concepts from Transformers to reasoning LLMs. Jay is also a co-creator of popular machine learning and natural language processing courses on Deeplearning.ai and Udacity. Jay is the co-author of the bestselling “Hands-On Large Language Models” book.
Registration will open soon!
Stay tuned for updates
AstraZeneca
Talk Title: TBC
Bio
