PANDA 2026 PAN - Asia Data and AI Collaboration in Biomedicine

The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex | The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong
168 Victoria Road
Mount Davis, Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong SAR

The Opportunity

Biomedical discovery and AI-enabled medicine are now inseparable from data — and from the cross-border collaboration needed to make that data representative, secure, and trustworthy. Asian biomedical data remains underrepresented in the datasets that train today's AI models, propagating bias and limiting clinical relevance for the region's population.

No single hospital, biobank, or country can independently accumulate enough patient samples to reach statistical significance. This data is precious, non-renewable, and held across a limited number of entities — making cross-border, privacy-preserving collaboration not an option but a necessity.

The Inaugural Pan-Asian Biomedical AI Symposium convenes leading biobanks, academic medical centers, AI governance experts, and industry partners to build a durable, multinational framework supporting responsible, scalable, privacy-preserving biomedical research, anchored at the UChicago Hong Kong Campus. Five threads run through the symposium: federated learning, secure data sharing, data harmonization standards, ethical AI governance, and collaborative frameworks for rare disease and other precious, limited-entity data.

Organizing Committee

Symposium Chairs

• Dr. Siwei Chen, Assistant Professor, Human Genetics, the University of Chicago
• Dr. Xinge Yu, Professor, Associate Vice President, City University of Hong Kong
• Dr. Junhan Zhao, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Biomedical Informatics, the University of Chicago

Honorary Advisors

• Dr. Le Lu (吕乐) — Vice President, Ant Group Technology Research Institute; Director, Medical AI Lab, Health Business Group, Ant Group; IEEE Fellow; AIMBE Fellow
• Dr. Samuel Volchenboum, M.D., Ph.D. — Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Dean, Director of Data for the Common Good, the University of Chicago
• Ms. Elizabeth O’Neill — Executive Director (Interim) of The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex | The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong; Associate Dean for Booth Global Degree Programs and Executive Director of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Robert Rothman, ’77, London Campus

Arrangements Chairs

• Angela Siu, Senior Assistant Director, UChicago Faculty and Campus Events
• Lauren Chan, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Chicago

Founding Academic Partners

National University of Singapore (Singapore), National Research Institute for Child Health and Development (Japan), Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (UAE), Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University (Taiwan Biobank).

Sponsors

• The University of Chicago Provost's Global Faculty Award
• Ant Group
• True Health Medical Technology (Macau)

Topical Panels

2-Day Program

*Kindly note that no parking spaces are available on campus.

SUBMIT REGISTRATION
* Please note that submitting your RSVP does NOT guarantee entry. You will receive your ticket link as soon as your registration is confirmed.

Research Fireside Chat with Editors

A moderated conversation on what it takes for Pan-Asian biomedical AI research to reach top-tier publication and global impact, featuring:

• Professor Xinge Yu, Associate Editor, Science Advances
• Dr. Le Lu, Associate Editor, IEEE TPAMI
• Zhou Hongling, Executive Editor, GigaScience
• Dr. Steve Mao, Editor-in-Chief, Cancer Cell (Cell Press) (proposed)
• Mimi Mononen, Senior Editor, Nature Communications (proposed)

Young Investigator Panel & Poster Session

Early-career researchers — postdocs, junior faculty, and advanced PhD students — from across partner institutions present short talks and posters on emerging work in biomedical AI, genomics, and data science. The Day 1 reception that follows gives sponsors informal, high-value access to the region's rising research talent.

Featured Pilot Projects

1. Pan-Asian Epilepsy Genomics Pilot

Led by Dr. Siwei Chen (UChicago, Human Genetics), this pilot studies how epilepsy polygenic risk varies across Pan-Asian populations, partnering with the Taiwan Biobank (National Taiwan University), Singapore, and UAE cohorts. It builds directly on Dr. Chen's leadership of the Epi25 Collaborative, a global effort of 200+ partners that has sequenced more than 30,000 exomes — the largest genetic study of epilepsy to date — and serves as the founding case study for the Rare Diseases & Precious, Limited-Entity Data panel.

2. Pan-Asian Pathology-Imaging-Genomics Multimodal AI Pilot

Led jointly by Dr. Le Lu (Vice President, Ant Group Technology Research Institute) and Dr. Junhan Zhao (Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Biomedical Informatics, University of Chicago), together with a multi-disciplinary group of co-investigators (including Fudan University, Southern Medical University, and others), this pilot uses colorectal cancer as its starting point, integrating pathology, imaging, and genomic data to develop multimodal AI models for cancer prognosis and treatment-response prediction. The project applies federated learning and privacy-preserving computation so participating sites' data never leaves home, enabling joint cross-institutional, cross-modal modeling, and serves as the founding case study for the Diagnostics & Therapeutics panel.