Advancing Biomedical Innovation: Yale–Boehringer Ingelheim Fellowship Colloquium and Strategy Meeting

On Thursday, September 19, 2025, Yale University welcomed colleagues from academia and industry for the annual Yale–Boehringer Ingelheim Biomedical Data Science Fellowship (BMDS) Colloquium and Joint Steering Committee meeting. Hosted in New Haven, the gathering brought together faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and leaders from Yale and Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) to celebrate progress, showcase research, and chart the fellowship’s future.

This year’s gathering highlighted the fellowship’s distinctive strength: a collaborative academic-industry model, launched in 2021, that places postdoctoral fellows at the center of projects co-mentored by Yale faculty and BI scientists. Now in its fourth cohort, the program continues to train early-career scientists in data-driven drug discovery while producing methods with direct translational impact.

The day began with the Fellowship Colloquium, featuring presentations from past and current fellows that offered insight into the next wave of computational innovation. Their research reflected the fellowship’s mission: rigorous scientific training combined with translational impact.

This year the program introduced a new theme: Leveraging Biomedical Foundation Models to Address Crucial Drug Discovery Challenges. Drawing on Yale's strength in large language models and advanced machine learning, fellows are pursuing projects designed to reshape pharmaceutical pipelines through novel approaches in data integration, predictive modeling, and therapeutic discovery.

Research highlights included strategies to predict therapeutic targets, model immune responses, identify cancer subtypes, and design new approaches to modulate immune activity. Collectively, these efforts underscored the fellowship’s dual role in advancing discovery and accelerating fellows’ professional growth.

Since its launch in 2021, the Yale–BI BMDS Fellowship has demonstrated the power of embedding postdoctoral fellows within a dual mentorship model that bridges academia and industry.

By combining Yale’s academic expertise with BI’s translational focus, the program continues to redefine the fellowship model and set a standard for collaborative innovation. Fellows are embedded in Yale labs, using the university’s computational infrastructure, biomedical data repositories, and faculty expertise, while integrating BI mentors’ guidance on real-world drug discovery.

The dual mentorship model has proven to be highly effective in fostering collaboration and enhancing the research experience for fellows. Manyan Huang, a new fellow and Postdoctoral Associate at Yale School of Medicine, reflected: "I found the JRC discussion was very helpful in keeping all of us aligned and helping to refine my proposal through interaction and constructive feedback. The colloquium gave me the opportunity to learn more about the research of other fellows and their Yale mentors, which broadened my perspective on related fields. I especially appreciated the chance to exchange ideas in person, as it opened the door to possible future collaborations."

This feedback underscores the power of the dual mentorship and collaborative model of this Fellowship, which continues to produce new methods, joint publications, and tools integrated into BI’s discovery pipeline. As Dr. Anthony Koleske, Deputy Dean for Scientific Affairs at the Yale School of Medicine and ex officio member of the committee, noted, “The program stands as a model for how universities and industry can join forces to accelerate progress, foster innovation, and recruit and train the next generation of researchers.”

Following the colloquium, the committee convened in person at Yale—with members traveling from BI’s global headquarters in Germany—to provide strategic guidance on research, professional development, and the long-term Yale–BI partnership.

Committee members reaffirmed their commitment to supporting early-career scientists and to sustaining the fellowship as a model for academic–industry collaboration in the years ahead.

In their closing remarks, Jan Jensen, Head of Global Computational Innovation at Boehringer Ingelheim, and Hongyu Zhao, Ira V. Hiscock Professor of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health, Professor of Genetics and Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, and the Fellowship program’s principal investigator, reflected on the day’s presentations, celebrated the fellows’ achievements, and emphasized the fellowship’s ongoing impact on AI-driven drug discovery.

The day concluded with a unified commitment to long-term collaboration, ensuring Yale and Boehringer Ingelheim remain at the forefront of biomedical innovation while strengthening the bridge between academia and industry.