Accelerating in silico medicine innovation: discover activities at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission that provides independent, evidence-based knowledge and science in support of EU policies.

The JRC has intensive research activities in in silico medicine, covering innovative solutions promising to improve human health and bringing innovation in regulatory frameworks. These include supporting the development, standardisation and evaluation of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), including in vitro and in silico solutions, used in biomedical research and regulatory applications, as well as development and evaluation of innovative AI tools for healthcare.

This webinar will give an overview of JRC work in in silico medicine, including digital twins and AI models for clinical decision-making and enabling in silico clinical trials. The focus will be on the key challenges of translating these methods from early research results to commercialisation and adoption. We will also provide insights on how secondary uses of human health data can support biomedical research. Finally, we will explore collaboration opportunities and discuss how to engage with our research priorities and identify translation pathways that can bring new technologies to market.

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Speaker’s bio:

Sara Bridio

Sara Bridio is a Project Officer at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in the Systems Toxicology Unit. She investigates the use of in silico modelling in biomedical research and regulatory applications, with a focus on facilitating the
translation of in silico solutions from research to industrial innovation and clinical practice.
Sara holds a PhD in Bioengineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Her research focused on computational modelling of cardiovascular pathologies and treatments. Her PhD thesis on in silico high-fidelity and surrogate modelling of stroke treatments was awarded as the Best PhD Thesis by the VPH – Society for In Silico Medicine and by the Italian Gruppo Nazionale di Bioingegneria (GNB).

Eleni Petra

Eleni Petra has served, since October 2024, as Scientific Project Officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, where her project focuses on human health data. She investigates the secondary use of health data in biomedical research and supports the implementation of related EU health policy.
With more than ten years of experience in molecular cardiovascular diseases, she holds a PhD in Theoretical Medicine from RWTH Aachen University (Germany), an MSc in Molecular Medicine from Imperial College London (UK) and a BSc (Hons) in Genetic
Immunology from the University of Aberdeen (UK). She has published extensively and presented her findings at international conferences and she is committed to translating data driven insights into improved public health strategies across Europe.

Alexandre Ribeiro

Alexandre Ribeiro is a Project Officer at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in the Systems Toxicology Unit. He investigates the translational landscape of New Approach Methodologies to speed up regulatory and societal acceptance of these technologies as reliable, predictive tools for product safety and efficacy, while focusing on establishing standards and fostering stakeholder engagement. He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and has received training in bio microfabrication and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) at Stanford University and the Gladstone Institutes in the United States. His career has been dedicated to advancing human relevant cellular platforms as drug development tools, including iPSC derived systems, microphysiological systems, organoids and organ-on-achip technologies. With more than 15 years of experience in regulatory science and drug development, he has worked to bridge scientific discovery with real world impact. His contributions span 3D lung models for inhaled drug permeability, cardiac platforms (single cell, 2D and 3D) for disease modelling and adverse effect studies, liver models for toxicity and pharmacology investigations, computational approaches for predicting drug effects, among others.

Mario Ceresa

Mario Ceresa holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Navarra and an MBA from IESE Business School.
Prior to joining the European Commission, he served as Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
With more than 15 years of experience applying artificial intelligence to surgical planning, medical imaging, and graph and temporal data analysis, he has co-authored over 80 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and holds a patent registered
with the European Patent Office on microwave technology for endoscopic applications. He currently serves as Team Leader at JRC.F7, where he leads the Digital Innovation in Life Sciences (DigLife) project and the FactualGPT exploratory research project, and co-leads the AI and Data portfolio.