COMPAYL 2024
Keynote speakers
Dr. Joe Yeong’s main research focus is to understand and overcome the resistance of cancer immunotherapy. As an immunopathologist, his key vision is to bridge between immunologists and pathologists to better harness the advances of immunotherapy and further beyond. He is the pioneer in automation of quantitative multiplex immunohistochemistry, using clinical autostainers to study and quantitate tumour immune microenvironment in clinical samples, and has published > 100 papers and translated several assays to clinical in this field. His works on cancer immunology are included in multiple National funded studies as well as pharmaceutical industry sponsored projects (>15 million dollars since 2017). He also served as a committee member in the World Immunotherapy Council, Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and is one of the organizers for its 2019 & 2023 WIC Global Symposium as well as multiplex IF expert consensus meeting 2022. He also serves as Program Chair of one of the largest AI medical Imaging conferences, CLINICCAI-MICCAI. He is also having editorial role of Nature Springer (Scientific Report), Elsevier (Immunoinformatics), SLAS Technology (Journal), Frontiers, World Scientific (Chief Editor) and Pathogens. He serves as a Secretary (Executive) in Singapore Society of Oncology – Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium, Co-lead in Education/Diagnostic of Singhealth Duke-NUS Cell Therapy Centre as well as Advisor (Spatial Technology), Cancer Discovery Hub, National Cancer Centre. In 2023, he co-founded World Immunotherapy Council Asia for promoting tumor immunology and advancing cancer immunotherapy education, information and research across Asia.
Dr. Heather D. Couture is a Computer Vision Consultant and Founder of Pixel Scientia Labs. She has two decades of experience in computer vision and machine learning, half of those with applications to pathology. She completed an MS at Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, where her research focused on developing deep learning methods to predict breast cancer molecular biomarkers from H&E. She has published in top-tier computer vision and medical imaging venues, writes regularly on LinkedIn, for her newsletter Computer Vision Insights, and hosts the Impact AI Podcast.
As a consultant, Heather works with startups to reduce the trial-and-error of model development. She makes use of the latest machine learning research to amplify their results and support their in-house team for the long term. Her mission is to fight cancer and climate change with AI – and she does that by strengthening the machine learning component of her clients’ most impactful projects.