Sander Timmer, PhD, is the Global Senior Director (M2) of AI/ML & Decision Sciences at GSK, leading an international AI/ML engineering organization across the US, UK, EU, Poland, India, and Singapore. He develops innovative AI solutions for GSK’s medicine and vaccines business, including Process and Network Digital Twins, AI Agents, Copilots, MLOps/LLMOps, and foundation models. With over 20 years of experience in Data Science, ranging from building neural nets to leading teams of data scientists and data engineers delivering production AI systems, Sander has been instrumental in driving innovation in the field. Before joining GSK, Sander served as Senior Industry Solutions Manager for AI & Health in Microsoft’s worldwide Health and Life Sciences team, where he helped strategic accounts leverage cloud-based AI, from simple Machine Learning models to Deep Learning architectures and Genomics solutions.

Education

Sander obtained my PhD from the University of Cambridge and EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute specialising in Big Data Biology. Sander is also a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge (since 2015).

Work at GSK: Building Physical AI and Agentic Systems

 

At GSK, I’m pioneering the application of Physical AI—combining foundation models with digital twins to optimize pharmaceutical manufacturing. Our AIGA and TwinOps platform represents sophisticated pharmaceutical AI operations system, using agentic workflows to orchestrate complex decision networks across 37 global manufacturing sites. My teams build Process Digital Twins, Network Digital Twins, AI Agents, Copilots, MLOps/LLMOps platforms, and foundation model solutions for clinical trial predictions, process mining, and smart manufacturing. Our AI solutions include innovative feedback loops to measure business performance and are driving GSK toward serving 2.5 billion patients annually by 2031. This work is reshaping pharma beyond imagination and unlocking unprecedented business value through transparent, auditable, and continuously improving AI systems.

My work at Microsoft

 

As Senior Industry Solutions Manager for AI & Health at Microsoft (2018-2019), I provided thought leadership and strategy for AI/ML solutions in pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations across EMEA. Key focus areas included: digital biomarkers, AI-driven diagnostic tools, precision medicine using EHR and omics data, pharmacogenomics, and Real World Evidence. Prior to this role, I served as Lead Data Scientist in Microsoft’s CTO office (2016-2018), designing solutions featuring Bots, AI, IoT, and Deep Learning on Azure. Below are some press releases from my key projects.

Develop AI-enabled digital health tool for early leprosy detection with Novartis Foundation

Press release by Novartis Foundation.

Digital Transformation at Tetra Pak

Press release by Microsoft.

Aviation Analytics at Rolls-Royce

For Rolls-Royce and Singapore Airlines focusing on Fuel Analytics and Predictive Maintenance.

Press release by Rolls-Royce and Microsoft.

Predictive Maintenance at Otis Elevators

Press release by Otis Elevators.

My PhD

In Ewan Birney‘ team, I worked on understanding genetic variation on both molecular and whole body phenotypes. My PhD thesis has been published under the title understanding the human epigenome using system genetics.  To this extent, I have been working on the following project:

• With Richard Durbin and Vishy Iyer working on heritable transcription factor binding measured using CTCF-seq. My part mainly focuses on CTCF to CTCF interactions and CTCF on the X-Chromosome.
  • Published in PLOS Genetics: Quantitative Genetics of CTCF Binding Reveal Local Sequence Effects and Different Modes of X-Chromosome Association.
• With the Molecular Cardiology MRC department at London to obtain robust measurements of the Human skeleton phenotypes and Human heart phenotypes from MRI scans using Machine Learning approaches.
• With several labs from the ENCODE scale-up group (Jason Lieb, Greg Crawford and Vishy Iyer) working on genome-wide associations on heritable chromatin signatures (cQTL) measured using FAIRE-chip. The reconstruction of the Human Epigenome by integrating the chromatin status, transcription factor binding information and gene expression. Using System Genetics to determine the effect of genotypes on the epigenome.

Key Projects at Microsoft

 

 

Professional interests