Subgroup initiatives

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2026 SMB Annual Meeting

More information coming soon.

Upcoming webinars

Continuing on our Fall Series, the SMB Subgroup on Pharmacometrics is launching a webinar series this Spring which will take place the second Tuesday of each month, February through April, 12pm-1pm ET. Presentations will cover both career guidance and scientific content.

Date/time: Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 at 12:00-1:00pm ET

Speaker: Blerta Shtylla (Sr. Director, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Group Lead, Pfizer)

Title: Current progress and future opportunities for innovation for Quantitative Systems Pharmacology modeling

Abstract: Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) is growing area of multi-scale mechanism- based modeling which couples drug pharmacokinetics with mathematical modeling of biological processes implicated in diseases. QSP models seek to address a diverse set of problems in the discovery and development of therapies and are being leveraged with growing success in both pharmaceutical companies and academic settings. Virtual populations are an important tool for sampling uncertainty and potential variability in QSP model predictions, but many clinical efficacy endpoints can be difficult to capture with QSP models that typically rely on mechanistic biomarkers. In this talk, I will give an overview of key components of quantitative systems pharmacology and its use in pharma with specific considerations to design and simulation of virtual trials with applications in several modalities and key clinical endpoints in oncology.

Blerta Shtylla, PhD is Senior Director at Pfizer. She serves as group lead for the Quantitative Systems Pharmacology team supporting the oncology portfolio within the Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology department. Prior to Pfizer, Dr. Shtylla held multiple academic appointments, the most recent being Associate Professor of Mathematics. Her academic research focused on development and analysis of mathematical models applied to cancer therapies, autoimmune disease, bio-mechanical circuits involved in cell division, as well as control mechanisms involved in early development/morphogenesis. Her areas of expertise also include development of mathematical techniques for model uncertainty quantification and data assimilation applied to differential equation models. She is author of several publications in quantitative systems pharmacology, mathematical biology, as well as editor of two books on mathematical modeling of complex biological processes.

Date/time: Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 at 12:00-1:00pm ET

Speaker: Chris Rackauckas (JuliaHub, Pumas-AI, MIT)

Title: The Bitter Lesson for the Bitter Lesson: The Role of Human Engineers in the Age of AI

Abstract: With the ever increasing role of AI it is pertinent to ask the question: what will be the role of engineers and domain experts? In this talk we outline two approaches that incorporate the expertise of engineers into the latest techniques of AI and machine learning. First we showcase scientific machine learning, in particular universal differential equations, where machine learning architectures are mixed with traditional simulation techniques in order to discover higher order physical corrections and generate hypotheses for previously unknown governing laws. Then we dive into growing techniques for agentic AI in modeling and simulation, highlighting the recent empirical results around the tools and techniques which lead to improved accuracy of code generation in the context of nonlinear controls synthesis and analysis. Building on these results, we showcase the new Dyad platform for agentic AI which combines a new statically-analyzable acausal equation-based DAE modeling system with built-in scientific machine learning capabilities and demonstrate the real-world applications this is seeing in industrial applications from aerospace and automotive all the way to chemical process modeling and pharmacometrics. This talk will span the details from low level mathematical theorems to high level software demonstrations in applications, highlighting the elements of the new stack which have successfully translated into practice but also the areas which need further academic work to complete the transition.

Bio: Dr. Chris Rackauckas is the VP of Modeling and Simulation at JuliaHub, the Director of Scientific Research at Pumas-AI, Co-PI of the Julia Lab at MIT, and the lead developer of the SciML Open Source Software Organization. For his work in mechanistic machine learning, his work is credited for the 15,000x acceleration of NASA Launch Services simulations and recently demonstrated a 60x-570x acceleration over Modelica tools in HVAC simulation, earning Chris the US Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator Scientific Excellence Award. See more at https://chrisrackauckas.com/. He was the original architect of Pumas and has received an award at every ACoP from 2019-2021 for improving methods for uncertainty quantification, automated GPU acceleration of nonlinear mixed effects modeling (NLME), and machine learning assisted construction of NLME models with DeepNLME. For these achievements, Chris received the Emerging Scientist award from ISoP, the highest early career award in pharmacometrics.

Calendar

Past events

Past webinars

See our webinar page here.

2025 SMB Annual Meeting

Networking Social

The SMB Pharmacometrics Subgroup will be hosting a networking social on the evening of Sunday, July 13, 2025, 6-10pm, at Little Brick Cafe (https://littlebrick.ca/). We will be providing hors d'oeuvres and a s'mores station, and there will be a cash bar. We hope you can join us!

If you plan on attending, please RSVP here. We have booked the space to accommodate 60 people.

Mini-symposium

The subgroup will also be sponsoring a two part mini-symposium featuring six technical talks and an industry panel discussion.

Title: Quantitative Systems Pharmacology: Linking mathematical biology to model informed drug development (MIDD)

Description: Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) combines mathematical and computational modeling tools with mechanistic understanding of biology and pharmacology to guide drug discovery and development. QSP is used in the pharmaceutical industry to accelerate and de-risk drug discovery and development across multiple stages, from target discovery/validation to clinical trial design to lifecycle management. In recent years, QSP has been increasingly used in regulatory submissions for clinical trials across many therapeutic areas (PMID:34734497). In this session, speakers will present recent advances and perspectives in the field of QSP. This minisymposia will have two sessions. The first session will consist of four technical talks. The second session will be comprised of two technical talks and an industry panel discussion with prepared and audience-driven questions.

Organizers: Marissa Renardy (GSK), Kathryn Link (Pfizer)

Speakers and panelists: Olivia Walch (Arcascope), Christian Michael (University of Michigan), Kathryn Link (Pfizer), Farrah Sadre-Marandi (qPharmetra), Sarah Minucci (Certara), Morgan Craig (Universite de Montreal), Marissa Renardy (GSK)

For more information, see the conference listing here: Part 1, Part 2

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