Lars Hulstaert obtained his bachelor’s and masters degree in Computer Science Engineering at Ghent University. He also has a master degree in Advanced Computer Science - Machine Learning from Cambridge University. During his master’s education, Lars performed research on language development, on the intersection of natural language processing, reinforcement learning and linguistics. He won a Google Award for this research work. Before joining J&J, Lars worked as a Data Scientist at Microsoft. In this role, he provided technical consultancy with strategic customers across EMEA and the US to develop data science solutions. Lars has experience working in Engineering and R&D teams to pilot new machine learning approaches. He developed solutions across different industries, from manufacturing to finance and drug development. Lars joined J&J Innovative Medicine in 2022, where he joined Commercial Data Science organization. He works closely with business partners in expanding the EMEA data science platform to support a variety of use cases (omnichannel marketing, salesforce optimization, marketing mix analysis). Lars' team was responsible for the development and technical ownership of data science solutions, from prototyping to operationalization. In 2022, Lars joined the R&D Data Science & Digital Health organization, within the real-world evidence and advanced algorithms group. Much of Lars’ current work is focused on accelerating clinical trials and leveraging data science to support health equity and diversity in drug development. Lars has over 7 year’s experience in data science, from building machine learning pipelines to leading teams of data scientists & data engineers. He is passionate about healthcare & data science.