news

Eli Lilly appoints Chief AI Officer

The new appointee will create AI and machine learning solutions to support Eli Lilly’s medicines for patients globally.

AI artificial intelligence

Eli Lilly and Company has appointed Dr Thomas Fuchs as its first Chief AI Officer.

He will commence the role on 21 October 2024.

Dr Fuchs will direct and lead artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives across different areas the company, including clinical trials and manufacturing, according to Eli Lilly. The new role also involves work to “identify, build and manage AI and machine learning solutions to help Lilly provide medicines to patients around the world”.

Diogo Rau, Lilly Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer stated that Dr Fuchs will contribute to Eli Lilly’s breakthroughs in AI.

Dr Fuchs commented that he is “tremendously excited”, considering that it is currently “such a pivotal time in technological advancement”.

“Throughout my career, I have focused on leveraging technology to help patients and enhance human health. Joining Lilly will allow me to expand this mission worldwide on an amazing scale. Building AI to benefit millions of patients is profoundly humbling.”

Previous roles

Eli Lilly shared that Dr Fuchs’ prior roles were as Dean and inaugural department chair for AI and Human Health at Mount Sinai in the US, director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, and the endowed Barbara T Murphy Professor for AI and computational pathology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The company added that Dr Fuchs has held positions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. Further to this, Dr Fuchs has also founded three companies.

He holds a doctoral degree in machine learning from ETH Zurich as well as a master’s in technical mathematics from Graz Technical University in Austria.

Integrating AI in manufacturing

Eli Lilly announced a major manufacturing investment in September. Expansion of its Limerick site in Ireland includes plans to integrated advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).