Machine Learning: A New Approach to Drug Discovery with Daphne Koller

Today we continue our 2019 NeurIPS coverage joined by Daphne Koller, co-Founder and former co-CEO of Coursera and Founder and CEO of Insitro. We caught up with Daphne, who was the general chair at NeurIPS back in 2008 when there were only 1000(!!) people in attendance, to discuss her work at Insitro, a company looking to advance drug discovery and development with machine learning. In our conversation, we discuss her background in machine learning, beginning in ‘93, her work with the Stanford online machine learning courses, and eventually her work at Coursera. We then transition into a conversation of the current landscape of pharmaceutical drug discovery, including the current pricing of drugs and misnomers with why drugs are so expensive, and an overview of Insitro's goal of using ML as a "compass" in drug discovery. Finally, we get into the nitty-gritty of how Insitro functions as a company in this space, including their focus on the biology of drug discovery and the landscape of ML techniques being used, Daphne's thoughts on AutoML, and much more.