THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Keralite who offered his expert advice and assistance during the Nipah days, made it to the list of top 100 Artificial Intelligence Experts in the world in the Drug Discovery and Advanced Healthcare report compiled and published by DeepTech Analytics in the United States. The US-based Shameer Khader, Senior Director, Advanced Analytics, Data Science, Bioinformatics, AstraZeneca is a native of Orumanayur village in Thrissur is ranked 87 in the list.
The AI experts featured in the list come from Academia, Pharmaceutical sector, AI companies, Tech corporations and other related sectors. “It’s a humbling experience to be on the list with the global leaders of AI, drug discovery and healthcare.
I am excited to see what this cohort would be able to do for the field over the next decade. I believe the value of technologies lies in its impact to improve human lives. Applying AI techniques to drug discovery and healthcare is a core theme that will ultimately help humanity to live longer with lower global disease burden,” said Shameer.
Shameer said, “My work is in the broad area of translational bioinformatics. Translational Bioinformatics is a new area that leverages the recent advances in genomic sequencing, data science, machine learning, and AI to accelerate drug development and healthcare delivery. Briefly, we now have computing capabilities and software systems to look at a large amount of data about patients and develop predictive models that can aid in clinical decision making and drug discovery. Such approaches also help to implement personalised medicine.”
Shameer has completed his Bachelor’s degree from the Calicut University and later, Masters from MG University. He did his PhD from National Centre for Biological Sciences and Post-Doctoral training at the Mayo Clinic.To deal with Nipah, Dr Shameer had proposed ‘Drug repositioning’ (also known as drug repurposing, re-profiling, re-tasking or therapeutic switching), the application of known drugs and compounds to treat a different disease.