Alexander Horspool
Associate Director, Innovation, Biotherapeutics Discovery Boehringer Ingelheim
Alexander Horspool, PhD, is Associate Director of Innovation – Biotherapeutics Discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim. He currently leads digital and lab automation teams, focusing on restructuring digital foundations for AI, clean data products, and modernizing lab automation for integrated autonomous systems. His background spans antibody generation, vaccine and monoclonal antibody development, as well as high throughput assay design.
Seminars
AI/ML models are only as powerful as the experimental wet-lab insights that are used as input data to generate feedback. This workshop explores how lab automation, assay standardization, and closed‑loop experimentation are transforming biologic therapeutic discovery by enabling continuous, self‑improving AI workflows.
Participants will explore:
- The role of lab automation in enabling AI‑driven protein discovery at scale
- How to design lab workflows that generate high‑quality, AI‑usable experimental data rather than isolated results
- How to integrate automated wet‑lab experimentation with in silico prediction pipelines to create continuous lab‑in‑the‑loop learning cycles
- Where lab automation delivers the greatest ROI today, such as, binder screening and affinity maturation, developability profiling and high‑throughput functional and biophysical assays
- Variability across automated platforms, assays, and labs, unpacking the implications for AI/ML model performance
- Human‑in‑the‑loop decision‑making, QA and QC, where expert input remains critical despite automation
- Scaling automated discovery workflows while maintaining data reproducibility, QC, and regulatory confidence
