Professor Mihaela van der Schaar, FRS will deliver a State-of-the-Art Lecture at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress 2026 taking place in Barcelona 27-30 May 2026.
EASL Congress is Europe’s largest meeting dedicated to liver health, bringing together more than 8,000 clinicians, scientists, allied health professionals, patients, and industry partners from across the field of hepatology.
Her keynote, titled “The next genomics frontier: from risk prediction to digital twins”, will focus on cutting-edge machine learning for liver health and, in particular, how we move beyond static prediction toward AI systems that can reason about mechanisms, disease progression, treatment response, patient heterogeneity, donor–recipient matching in organ transplantation, and the many clinical decisions involved.
“In hepatology, this matters deeply,” said Professor van der Schaar. “Liver disease is dynamic, heterogeneous, and shaped by biology, behaviour, comorbidities, interventions, and time.”
The keynote will explore why the next generation of machine learning should not only predict risk, but also help clinicians understand trajectories, simulate possible futures, support better trial design, and ultimately enable more personalised and actionable care.
Professor van der Schaar will also discuss what cutting-edge ML can realistically do for hepatology today, where the most exciting frontiers are emerging, and what is still needed to make these systems trustworthy, useful, and clinically meaningful in practice.
She added: “Most of all, I am excited to discuss these ideas with hepatologists and learn from their clinical perspective, so that the ML we develop is shaped by the real problems, constraints, and opportunities in liver health.”
Read more about the EASL Congress 2026 here.