In the Spotlight -
Meet Elisa Canzani
At AI4ALL we’d like to inspire others by featuring women role models who are making a difference in AI. We aim to empower women who are working in AI by highlighting their success stories. This way we hope to inspire other women and girls to get into STEM-related fields. In our series ‘In the Spotlight’ we shine a light on an expert in the field and today we’d like you to meet Elisa Canzani.
Written by Myrthe van den Berg
Elisa Canzani: Techie with a Heart for Impact
Elisa Canzani describes herself in a way that instantly paints a picture. “Sporty, globetrotter, and friendly,” she said. “I define myself as a techie who doesn’t have a nerd personality. Or a mathematician who never lost contact with reality.”
That balance shows in how she works. She enjoys leading teams while staying involved in the practical work. “I’m a leader but still hands-on,” she explained. “I am very technical but still able to engage a business audience.”
Her passion for data, analytics, and AI always points in one direction. “I care about these topics as long as they create actual impact and business value,” she said. In an era of “wow effects” of what we can call “tech for tech”, she prefers to do “tech for business” towards effective AI solutions. And there’s one principle guiding everything she does: “I strongly believe that to build successful AI teams, emotional intelligence is key.”
From Projects to Purpose: Her Journey to Healthcare AI
Early in her career, Elisa worked in data science for military defense in Germany. After an exciting journey across AI projects in different domains as data science manager at Cognizant Spain, she found where she belonged: AI for healthcare and life sciences. “I can truly say that it feels good when you realize that what you do improves people’s lives,” she reflects.
That realization set her on a new path. “I started to work as a data science lead consultant for GSK Belgium while living in Spain,” she explained. “I then moved to Brussels and built from scratch an AI team within Nipro, a Japanese healthcare company.” Here she worked on clinical risk prediction models and a strategic roadmap on AI applications for dialysis patients, collaborating with hospitals across Belgium.
Elisa leads at multiple levels. “I rejoined Cognizant as Benelux data science community lead, fostering a team of 12+ data scientists and ML engineers within the AI & Analytics delivery practices,” she added, “while being AI tech lead consultant at GSK Belgium.” Her work directly impacted global vaccine production.
“I can truly say that it feels good when you realize that what you do improves people’s lives,”
“At GSK, I was responsible for building and deploying digital twins to optimize vaccine manufacturing while ensuring AI explainability to support FDA approval,” she explained. “I was one of the ideators of TwinOps: an SDK we implemented to accelerate time-to-value towards production-ready digital twins.” This contributed to setting best practices at GSK. Her projects included end-to-end bioprocess twins that optimize yield by up to 10% in cell culture growth bioreactors from R&D to large-scale manufacturing, and quality twins using causal AI to improve the quality of drug products. “I also supervised a master student from KU Leuven on ‘anomaly AI agents’ to avoid batch deviations,” she added.
Beyond her technical work, Elisa has strong academic background and she continuously promotes bridges between academia and industry. “At Cognizant, I led the collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Pharmaceutical Engineering and Manufacturing (CESPE) of Ghent University, as well hosting interns from Dutch universities in our data science community, promoting closer collaboration of academia and industry in the Benelux.”
As a recognized expert, she represented Cognizant across the region as AI expert speaker in multiple events with Microsoft and Google, as well as in workshops for BeNeLux clients to help guide their AI journey. She’s also been committed to community building, always supporting outreach campaigns and women in AI events to inspire and be inspired.
Today, Elisa is Data Science and AI director at Philips Healthcare Innovation in Eindhoven High Tech Campus, providing hands-on technical leadership to leverage the power of data and deliver AI solutions for precision diagnosis, image-guided therapies, personal health, and connected care.
A Vision of Personalized Medicine for All
For Elisa, the promise of AI in healthcare is profound and personal. AI solutions ensure safer and automated workflows, providing actionable decision support that enhances the quality of biomanufacturing and medical devices. But the real transformation goes deeper.
“AI enables early diagnosis and tailored treatments, and technology is moving towards the possibility of having a patient digital twin for each of us,” she explained. What drives her work every day is this vision of personalized medicine that extends and improves lives. From optimizing the end-to-end healthcare journey to mentoring the next generation of AI practitioners, Elisa is building a future where technology serves humanity’s most fundamental need: health.
Through her technical leadership across 6 countries and multicultural settings, her commitment to collaboration, and her focus on emotional intelligence in AI teams, Elisa demonstrates that the most powerful technology is built not just with algorithms, but with heart.
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