Dr Janna Hastings is Senior Research Scientist and leader of the Human-Centered Health AI Group at the Idiap Research Institute (Martigny, Switzerland). Her interdisciplinary expertise spans computer science, psychology, and bio-, health-, and clinical informatics, with a strong track record in developing AI approaches for scientific and health research that combine data-driven machine learning with logic-based reasoning and structured domain knowledge.

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Her research focuses on augmenting AI models with knowledge graphs and formal representations to improve robustness, generalisability, and interpretability, capabilities that are increasingly essential as AI models grow in scale and complexity. She leads and contributes to several major international projects, including the Wellcome-funded GALENOS project on knowledge-augmented AI for evidence synthesis, the SNF- and DFG-funded StrOntEx project advancing chemical language models for structure-based classification, and the SNF- and ANR-funded MetaboLinkAI project integrating chemical language models with knowledge resources to improve functional interpretation of biomedical metabolomics data.

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Within SATURNA, Dr Hastings brings her long-standing expertise in knowledge-augmented AI to enhance the efficacy, reliability, and interpretability of models for RNA biology, ensuring that advanced AI technologies remain scientifically grounded, transparent, and actionable for biological discovery and clinical translation.