Trends from the Trenches

At last month’s Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, Eleanor Howe, founder and CEO of Diamond Age Data Science, presented the Trends with the Trenches session based on gathered input from colleagues, clients, and advisors across the life sciences field. Coding agents were the central topic—how they’re speeding up software development, open source maintenance, and analysis workflows while also shifting new types of ...

Your AI plan can’t outrun your data. Adam Marko, life science field CTO at Hammerspace, joins the podcast to unpack the problem almost every biotech, pharma, and biomedical research group runs into: unstructured data that are siloed, fragmented, and scattered across storage systems, sites, and clouds. With host Jessica StLouis, they talk through what “data orchestration” means when building an AI-ready data founda...

AI is now good enough to change how computational biology teams actually work, but most companies are still adopting it like it’s 2023. Sonia Timberlake, R&D strategy consultant for Timberlake & Maclsaac Biopharma Consulting, speaks with host Eleanor Howe about what’s real: agentic coding, high-throughput data workflows, and the practical limits that still slow teams down. Timberlake digs into benchmarks for cap...

Joining Trends from the Trenches is Allissa Dillman, founder and CEO of BioData Sage, and LaFrancis Gibson, manager for health promotion at ORAU, who discuss this year’s Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Hackathon sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE) Training Center. With host Allison Proffitt, they discuss which tools and datasets from CFDE will be part of the Hackathon, who...

Computing resources are no longer just pieces of tech—they're scientific instruments. Moffitt Cancer Center’s Jarett DeAngelis, director of scientific information technology, and Shane Corder, senior HPC engineer, join cohost Jessica StLouis, senior scientific consultant at BioTeam, to discuss new approaches changing access to HPC resources and how platforms like Open OnDemand are simplifying the HPC experience for thos...

As the new year settles in, the industry is anticipating new innovative biotech and learning from past failures. John Keilty, venture partner at Third Rock Ventures, discusses the current trends he sees in biopharma investment, separating the hype from reality of AI (and if the AI bubble will eventually pop), other ventures that should be considered, and how new companies are being built today compared to past years in this episode...

Rare diseases do not receive enough attention for the impact they have on patients and their families. This is what AlphaRose’s founder and CEO Casey McPherson learned after his daughter was diagnosed with a rare condition. In a conversation with host Ari Berman, McPherson shares how he switched from music to founding his own pharmaceutical company, what technologies AlphaRose is developing, and how his company is creating en...

David Hewlett, founder of Tech Bandits, makes learning fun and creates an environment where children—the future generation of scientists—can feel comfortable with curiosity. With host Ari Berman, Hewlett delves into his acting career, which consists of a wide range of scientist roles, and the origins of Tech Bandits. He also shares his thoughts on how science needs to be communicated better (and why scientists need to k...

In this special transition episode of Trends from the Trenches, Ari Berman, CEO of BioTeam, takes the mic as the new host of the Trends from the Trenches podcast and speaks with founding host Stan Gloss, co-founder of BioTeam. During their conversation, they cover Stan’s journey as an entrepreneur, including the valuable lessons learned along the way, words of wisdom for people on similar paths, and what he is most proud of d...

In the first Trends from the Trenches episode of 2025, host Stan Gloss and Dirk Petersen, Director of Supercomputing Center at Oregon State University, talk about the state and role of HPCs in a world that’s focused on AI. Petersen offers his thoughts and insights on working with AI teams, how to converge the traditional HPC user with the AI user, the “Wild West” of AI infrastructure and computing power, and how A...

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss and Renee Iacona, vice president of Oncology Biometrics, Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca, discuss the process of matching patients with the right treatments, data management (particularly around oncology), and the value of knowledge graphs. Iacona mentions the importance of having scientists who understand AI/ML and AI/ML experts who understand science. She also shares wh...

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss discusses high-performance computing and its progress over the years with Rémy Evard, chief digital officer and head of technology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). They delve into the impact of cloud technology, the rapid development of AI (and the overexcitement around it), and the current industry-wide issue of maintaining healthcare quality during a tim...

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with industry veteran Tom Plasterer, managing director of life sciences innovation at XponentL Data. Plasterer shares his journey of how he became an industry leader, how his time at BG Medicine (then known as Beyond Genomics) helped him with his time at AstraZeneca, what graph technology is and its benefits, and why he returned to start-up companies with XponentL ...

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Howard Jacob, vice president of genomics research at AbbVie. They discuss Jacob’s beginnings at AbbVie, data siloing and “my data vs. our data” issues, and the role of funding in plan execution and leadership support. Jacob also delves into the origins of the AbbVie R&D Convergence Hub (ARCH—winner of a 2023 Bio-IT World Innovative ...

Tune into this month’s episode of Trends from the Trenches, where host Stan Gloss and Ruth Marinshaw, CTO of Research Computing at Stanford University, talk about the accomplishments and challenges of supporting a diverse population of researchers in academia. Marinshaw also delves into building a reliable and trustworthy service, computational infrastructure as an essential tool for the lab, what FAIR data means to her at St...

In this special episode of the Trends from the Trenches podcast, listen in on the Trends from the Trenches session at this year’s Bio-IT World Conference & Expo. Ari Berman, PhD, CEO of BioTeam, delivers a candid talk about the technologies driving data-intensive science, from the most worthwhile to the most overhyped to the most relevant. Learn what’s happening now with computing, storage, data transfer, networks, ...

In this month’s episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Joseph La Barge. La Barge trained as an attorney but has spent most of his career building biotech businesses and securing funding. He shepherded Spark Therapeutics through its acquisition by Roche and has since joined Apertura Gene Therapy as CEO. He and Stan talk about the entrepreneurship journey, gene expression and capsid engineering, and Ap...

Change can be scary, but it can also bring new opportunities and lead to growth and innovation. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss from BioTeam and Adama Ibrahim, VP of Digital Strategy & Change Management at Novo Nordisk, delve into a conversation about humanity’s natural resistance to change, why it is important to overcome that resistance, and how change is the key to making progress. Ibrahim ...

It’s no secret that the industry is drowning in data. That’s why data management strategies are needed now more than ever to speed up discoveries and bring new solutions to the market. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss discusses data management strategies with Becky Upton, Ph. D., President of Pistoia Alliance. Dr. Upton shares how her organization is maximizing data management efficiency, suc...