Session Speakers

Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, D.Phil. is a physician, researcher, and author, who serves as Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and as an oncologist at the university’s medical center. Dr. Mukherjee trilogy of books has made a vast contribution to the public discourse on human health, medicine, and science.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer earned the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and The Gene: An Intimate History won international awards and was recognized by The Washington Post and The New York Times as one of the most influential books of 2016. Both books have been adapted into PBS documentaries by the renowned filmmaker Ken Burns. The Emperor of All Maladies was included among Time magazine’s 100 best nonfiction books of the past century.

As a medical scholar, Dr. Mukherjee has conducted innovative research that signals a paradigm shift in cancer pathology and has enabled the development of treatments that disrupt current pharmaceutical models toward new biological and cellular therapies. He was among the first to make cellular therapies available in India, and among the first to begin developing AI-based algorithms to discover human medicines. His groundbreaking research is now being translated into a record number of concurrent clinical trials across the globe, spanning novel therapies for ovarian, breast and endometrial cancer, leukemias and lymphomas, and a variety of other diseases. Only a select few medical scholars have been able to translate their work into human trials of such depth and breadth. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Mukherjee writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He has received numerous awards for his scientific work and has published his original research and opinions in journals such as Nature, Cell, and The New England Journal of Medicine.

A native of India, Dr. Mukherjee received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and was a Rhodes scholar at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. After graduating from Harvard Medical School, he completed his internal medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and his hematology-oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Alisha Kimble, MPH, PhD is a Senior Research Scientist at Ontada, where she leads the design and execution of observational real-world evidence studies across a diverse oncology portfolio spanning solid tumors, hematologic malignancies, and rare cancers. She collaborates with pharmaceutical, government, and academic organizations to generate high-quality evidence that informs clinical research, healthcare decision-making, and patient outcomes.

With 12 years of experience in public health research and more than seven years leading health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) initiatives, Alisha brings extensive expertise in electronic health record and claims data, retrospective study design, outcomes research, and oncology data analytics. She has led numerous studies evaluating treatment patterns, biomarker testing, clinical outcomes, and healthcare resource utilization, helping translate complex real-world data into actionable insights that advance cancer research and improve patient care.

Alisha has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and presented research findings at national scientific conferences. She holds a BA in Management Information Systems from The University of Texas at Austin, an MPH from the University of Miami, and a PhD in Global Health Systems Management and Policy from Tulane University.

Amy K. O’Sullivan, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President and Chief Research Officer at Ontada, where she leads the teams responsible for the delivery of real- world research, real-world data products and analytics, and physician engagement and education to life sciences partners.

Amy is a health economist with over 25 years of experience conducting health economics and outcomes research on medical interventions throughout the product lifecycle. Prior to joining Ontada, she held senior leadership positions at Alkermes, Inc., Vertex Pharmaceuticals, IMS Health, and OptumInsight, where she led research teams and provided scientific expertise on a range of studies in support of product reimbursement in jurisdictions around the world. Amy has authored studies in numerous clinical and health economic peer-reviewed journals, and presented results of her work at scientific congresses across the globe. She holds a BA in Economics and English from Boston College and PhD in Health Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Dr. Ira Zackon is a recently retired Hematologist/Oncologist and past President of New York Oncology Hematology in The US Oncology Network.  He currently serves as a Senior Medical Director with Ontada, focused on Real World Data and Research.  

Dr. Zackon received his medical degree from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill University, Montreal and fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He also completed a research fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Northwestern University Medical Center, Chicago, IL.  

Dr. Zackon most values time with his wife and two children; he enjoys leisure sports and is an active community volunteer. 

Jeremy Kornbluth is a healthcare AI and data science leader with more than 20 years of experience applying advanced analytics, machine learning and natural language processing to address complex healthcare challenges. He serves as Senior Director of Data Science at Ontada, a McKesson business, where he leads the development of AI and NLP solutions that transform unstructured oncology data into research-ready real-world evidence. 

Before joining Ontada, Jeremy spent 15 years at 3M Health Information Systems, leading teams responsible for some of the healthcare industry's early AI applications in revenue cycle management and clinical documentation. His work included auto-suggested medical coding, automated clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and direct-to-bill confidence technologies designed to improve coding accuracy, streamline provider workflows and enhance operational efficiency. 

Today, Jeremy focuses on leveraging large language models, clinical NLP and agentic AI systems to extract clinically meaningful information from oncology records at scale. He has led the design, deployment and validation of AI systems used to generate oncology real-world data that supports research, life sciences organizations and improved patient outcomes. 

Jeremy is passionate about bridging emerging AI technologies with practical healthcare applications. His expertise spans clinical NLP, generative AI, machine learning, healthcare data science, oncology informatics and AI validation. He holds a master's degree in computational linguistics from the University at Buffalo.

Jessica Paulus, ScD, serves as Vice President of Real World Research at Ontada, where she leads scientific strategy and research execution across a broad portfolio of oncology real-world evidence studies. She oversees teams spanning epidemiology, biostatistics, and project management, and partners with biopharmaceutical companies to generate evidence that informs clinical, regulatory, and commercial decision-making.

A recognized leader in real-world evidence, Dr. Paulus has more than two decades of experience designing and leading large-scale observational studies. Prior to Ontada, she held senior research leadership positions in the field, including Vice President of Research at OM1. Before entering industry, she spent over ten years as a faculty member at Tufts Medical School, where she led federally funded research programs in comparative effectiveness, predictive analytics, and healthcare outcomes.

Dr. Paulus received her ScD in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is adjunct faculty at both Tufts University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School.