[Joint CQSE & NCTS Seminar] AI in drug discovery and development
Title: [Joint CQSE & NCTS Seminar] AI in drug discovery and development
Speaker: 曾宇鳳教授 (國立臺灣大學)
Time: 2025/11/28 (Fri.) 14:20-16:20
Place: Rm. 104, Chin-Pao Yang Lecture Hall, Department of Physics/CCMS, NTU
Online: https://nationaltaiwanuniversity-zbh.my.webex.com/nationaltaiwanuniversity-zbh.my/j.php?MTID=m35c57ceb3c91fd5af3ca30d927e989a1
Abstract
人工智慧（AI）與深度學習近年來成為熱門話題，然而其在藥物發現與藥物開發中的實際應用及貢獻仍是未知。本次曾教授將帶來演說將探討電腦輔助技術的應用，以及真正的AI輔助流程在中樞神經系統（CNS）疾病中的應用。 AI or deep learning is a buzzword in recent years. How it was applied and truly helped remained vague in drug discovery and drug development. This talk is going to cover the use of computer-aided techniques as well as the true AI aided process in the CNS disease.
Biography
Professor Yufeng Jane Tseng received her B.S. degree in Pharmacy from National Taiwan University in 1997. Prof. Tseng then received her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2002 and received the Charles Bell Award for Computational Chemistry in 2001. From 1998 to 2006, Prof. Tseng worked as a Principal Molecular Modeling Software Developer at The Chem21 Group, Inc., in Lake Forest, USA. From 2004 to 2006, Prof. Tseng also worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, USA. Prof. Tseng joined the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU) in 2006 as an Assistant Professor and holds a joint appointment at the School of Pharmacy also at NTU. Prof. Tseng has devoted 19 years of active service in education and is a leader in computational chemistry and computer-aided drug design. Since 2009, she has founded and served as the Principal Investigator of the Metabolomics Core Laboratory at NTU. Since 2010, Prof. Tseng has been organizing and chairing the Drug Discovery Symposium at the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meetings and continues her services at ACS to the present. In 2014, she became a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, with the Department of Computer Science and Information, and at the School of Pharmacy. Prof. Tseng was appointed the Director of the Drug Research Center at NTU, and in 2016, she was appointed the associate Director of the Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center at NTU. In 2019, she was appointed as the associate chair of the Computer Science and Engineering department at NTU and the center scientists at the National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Physics Division (NCTS Physics). In 2020, she was appointed as the Principal Investigator at Stanford-Taiwan Biomedical Fellowship Program, STPI. As an outstanding faculty member, Prof. Tseng received the IBM Faculty Award (USA) in 2015 and the Ching Kang Foundation Young Investigator Award (Taiwan) in 2016. And her continuous efforts in organizing the Drug Discovery Symposiums at America Chemical Society (ACS) National Meetings and leading the Teach-Discovery-Treat (TDT) Initiative for discovering novel treatments for neglected diseases was awarded the ACS Innovation Award (USA) in 2012 and ACS ChemLuminary Award (USA) in 2013. Currently, Prof. Tseng has published: over 102 peer-reviewed papers, 88 conference papers, 7 book chapters, and she holds 32 international patents. She is recognized as a leader in the computer-aided drug design community. Prof. Tseng's AI-assisted drug design and discovery expertise has rapidly progressed and shown promising clinical results in novel CNS and cardiovascular drug developments. Prof. Tseng's extraordinary effort in drug discovery was recognized with at least 30 prestigious awards: the 114th Outstanding Electrical Engineering Professor Award of CIEE (Taiwan, 2025), World’s top 2% Scientists (single-year-impact; within the top 0.5% globally, 2024), Distinguished Leadership Award from SPARK GLOBAL (2024), the Taipei Biotech Awards (2024), the National Bio-Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2023, 2022, 2020), NTU Exceptional Performance Award (Taiwan, 2022), Futuristic Breakthrough Technology Award (Taiwan,2022 and 2019), NTU EECS Academic Merit Award (Taiwan, 2021), NTU EE Alumni Technology Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2021 and 2020), BIO Asia 2020 'Innovation of the year Award' (BioAsia, 2020), National Bio-Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2020), National Bio-Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2019), Novartis Venture Fund Mentorship Grantee (USA, 2016 and 2017), NTU EECS Academic Merit Award (Taiwan, 2017), National Bio-Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2016), Drug Repurposing Innovation Award (Taiwan, 2015), and NTU EECS Outstanding Research Contribution Award (Taiwan, 2013). For this reason, Prof. Tseng was invited to join the SPARK Program, to further her drug discovery and development efforts and to become a leader in pushing the co-development of novel therapies between university and industry experts. In 2017, Prof. Tseng was appointed the Director of SPARK Taiwan, but quickly, she was appointed the Chairman of the Asia SPARK Regional Committee and Global SPARK Executive Committee in 2018. Since then, Prof. Tseng has actively promoted academic-discovered novel therapies for common and neglected diseases and successfully showcased and garnered interest from international venture capitalists and industry experts to co-develop these therapies to improve patient's quality of life worldwide.
