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Jonathan Gallion smiles and celebrates his 2024 Early Career Award.

Early Career Award winner leverages AI to revolutionize the life sciences industry

By Kaitlyn Hornbuckle

Surrounded by plates and pipettes in the lab, life scientist Jonathan Gallion envisioned a future that combined biology with technology. With only one year left until graduation, he landed an internship at SIGA Technologies — a global pharmaceutical leader in health security — where he discovered the power of automation.

At SIGA, Gallion programmed robots to screen a library of chemical compounds, helping his team find medicines for viral infections and defenses against bioterrorism threats. After graduating from Oregon State University in 2012 with dual Honors bachelor degrees in biochemistry and biophysics and microbiology, he pursued graduate school before launching a people-centered career at the forefront of innovation.

Now, Gallion is vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for OmniScience, a leading AI organization focused in life sciences and clinical research.

By harnessing the power of large language models in the biopharmaceutical (biopharma) industry, he and his team are changing the game. The objective isn’t to replace humans, but to create an industry-wide vision of how AI/ML can modernize human health, improve clinical trial outcomes, accelerate the decision-making process, and revolutionize data analysis for teams guiding biotech, medtech, pharmaceutical and preclinical innovations.

After driving major breakthroughs in life sciences for only a little more than a decade, the College of Science is proud to honor Gallion with the 2024 Early Career Award.

Jonathan Gallion at a table speaking with other industry leaders.

In 2023, Gallion discusses challenges in modern clinical trials with industry leaders in San Diego.

Building solutions from the ground up for the big data challenge

As biopharma data explodes in complexity, companies like OmniScience are stepping in to create AI powered solutions that meet diverse client needs and use cases. According to RBC Capital Markets, approximately 30% of the world’s data today was generated by the healthcare industry — a figure that’s expected to keep climbing.

In response, Gallion made strategic connections by networking and forming partnerships with leading life science innovators. These industry leaders develop new health technologies and manage vast data collections at biotech, medtech and therapeutic companies.

“Being a scientist, I never expected to be so client-facing when I first started, or that I would like it as much as I do. It’s funny how your career can evolve.”

The irony of innovation is that each new developed piece of technology generates more data, including wearables like Fitbits, new imaging techniques, health care app data and omic biomarkers (genes, proteins or metabolites).

And for clinical trials, capturing information on drug efficacy, safety, and tolerability, and understanding individual genetics, demographics, lifestyle and preferences is crucial to the impact of new pharmaceutical treatments. These processes tend to create sophisticated data sets that are difficult to analyze.

As noted by Gallion, drawing insights from these overwhelming, ever increasing, complex data sets within biopharma is impossible without the help of AI/ML automation. At the same time, he must consider how these models will eventually be deployed in the real world, where business objectives, data security and regulatory approval matter.

“Being a scientist, I never expected to be so client-facing when I first started, or that I would like it as much as I do,” Gallion said. “It’s funny how your career can evolve. The advice I always give when I'm talking to someone in undergraduate or graduate school is that you can't be afraid to explore new things in your career, you never know what you might discover.”

The best part of the job, according to Gallion, is tackling some of the most interesting problems facing mankind. The ability to build an equally passionate team of peers from scratch and collectively pursue change in real time makes the job more than worth it.

“I’ve really enjoyed the journey at OmniScience. As part of the founding team, I’ve seen us grow from just a few people around a coffee table to an abundance of people focused on revolutionizing the clinical trial industry,” he said. “And I get to help shape it with people I really respect, it’s incredible.”

Jonathan Gallion and the OmniScience team smiling and celebrating their successes in 2023.

Gallion (back right) celebrates making a difference with his team at OmniScience in 2023.

Gallion’s game-changing professional journey

Gallion’s career journey was not a straight line.

After working in a warehouse and mulling over the acceptance letters, he landed on the university far enough from home to give him some independence: Oregon State.

He hit the ground running by applying the pragmatic engineering mindset he learned initially to the biochemistry and biophysics and microbiology programs offered by the College of Science.

“I love the idea of borrowing ideas from nature: seeing how bats fly, how gecko's feet work, the tens of thousands of different proteins in jellyfish venom and then saying, ‘Oh, you could do something with that,’” he said.

From there, he dived deep into the microbial world of virology, where he learned how tiny virus structures interact with and affect the cells of living organisms. In one of his science courses, he met a representative from SIGA Technologies at their guest lecture.

Jonathan Gallion in a lab coat operating an Hamilton Microlab STAR.

Gallion smiles in the SIGA Technologies lab while operating the Hamilton Microlab STAR, an automated liquid handling system that handles processes including shaking solutions, DNA/RNA extraction and PCR setup.

Gallion coincidentally landed a part-time position that transformed into a full-time position as research associate at the same company, discovering a passion for computational sciences when he programmed his first liquid-handling robot for chemical screenings.

He is very thankful for the guidance and mentorship of Robbie Allen, the associate director of antiviral discovery in 2011. His time at SIGA taught him that science doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Successful scientific innovation requires the economic, societal and regulatory forces within industry.

At Oregon State, one of the most influential figures in his undergraduate experience was his thesis advisor Theo Dreher from the microbiology department. Dreher’s mentorship equipped Gallion with the skills to pursue strong, reliable research, preparing him for graduate school.

In his free time, Gallion learns about ant colonies for fun and is already a registered ant seller. He also embarks on hiking trips, produces watercolor and acrylic paintings and builds his own wooden furniture.

Despite the high stakes in biopharma, he’s not afraid to boldly tackle global health challenges early in his career. The College of Science is thrilled to honor Gallion at the Alumni Awards Ceremony at Oregon State in November for his unique and impactful contributions to global science.