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Belgium 21-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

From Victim to Victor: Cyber resilience is a means, providing Business Continuity the goal

In an era where every outage, audit, and cyberattack is a test of organisational survival, resilience has become the new currency of trust. While traditional perimeter security with: firewalls, intrusion detection, and scanners, remains essential, it is no longer a sufficient guarantee against modern threats that bypass these layers to penetrate your core systems. Today, enterprises require security and continuity that are built-in, not bolted-on. This CIONET roundtable focuses on the shift from reactive disaster recovery to proactive Business Continuity. Together with experts from HPE Zerto, we will explore how organisations can transform their recovery strategies into seamless continuity models.

Belgium 23-4-26 Country Members Physical & Virtual english

CIOFEST BELGIUM: Leadership in the Agentic Era

AI is no longer confined to supporting human tasks. We are entering the agentic era, where autonomous systems act on behalf of people and organisations. These agents can gather information, make decisions, negotiate terms, and even complete transactions. The implications extend well beyond technology; they touch the very foundations of business models, governance, and leadership. For CIOs and their peers, the rise of “machine customers” and autonomous partners poses new questions: Market impact: How do you compete and create value when some customers and suppliers are machines? Governance: What trust, compliance, and accountability structures are needed when AI acts independently in financial, procurement, or customer-facing processes? Leadership: How should CIOs guide their organisations in redefining roles, responsibilities, and decision-making when agents take over parts of the value chain?Business strategy: What opportunities emerge for new revenue models, platforms, and ecosystems shaped by autonomous interaction? This session shifts the focus from the mechanics of AI agents to the decisions that will shape leadership in the next decade. It is a call for CIOs to prepare for a future where relationships, markets, and strategies are no longer limited to human-to-human interactions, but also extend to human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions.

Belgium 29-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

Building Future-Ready Application Ecosystems in the Age of Intelligent Automation

This CIONET workshop is a collaborative deep-dive into the practicalities of"rewiring the building" while it’s still occupied. Drawing onKyndryl’s deep heritage in mission-critical infrastructure and their latestresearch, we will dismantle the "hidden costs" of legacyenvironments. The conversation will focus on the transition from static,monolithic structures to composable architectures that allow intelligent agentsto operate seamlessly across hybrid landscapes.

April 2, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual english

Taming the SaaS Sprawl: Tracking spend, ownership, and usage before it slips out of control

SaaS gave business units freedom: quick onboarding, no infrastructure, and instant results. But over time, that freedom turned into fragmentation. Each team now buys, renews, and configures its own stack. HR has one platform, finance has another, and marketing probably has ten. The invoices keep coming, usage keeps dropping, and no one is sure who’s accountable for what.

May 12, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

Product-Centric IT 2.0: Blending product and project thinking

Everyone says they’ve gone product-centric. In reality, most organisations live in a hybrid world where projects, products, and platforms overlap. Teams manage releases while still chasing deadlines, and governance still thinks in milestones rather than outcomes. The shift is underway, but the mindset hasn’t caught up.

May 19, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

AI vs AI in Cybersecurity: When defenders and attackers both use AI

The game has changed, clearly. Attackers have AI, defenders have AI, and both sides are learning faster than anyone expected, or maybe the attackers are just a bit faster. What used to take hours now happens in seconds, and detection windows close before alerts even appear. It’s adaptation beyond automation, and no one gets to sit still.

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Exscientia Uses Generative AI to Reimagine Drug Discovery

Exscientia uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the design-make-test-learn (DMTL) cycle to discover new therapies for patients quickly and relatively inexpensively.

“Using AWS, we reduce bottlenecks and accelerate the pipeline.”

David Hallett
Interim CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, Exscientia

Exscientia uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the design-make-test-learn (DMTL) cycle to discover new therapies for patients quickly and relatively inexpensively. Conventional drug discovery methods can take up to 15 years and cost over 2 billion dollars, with an average failure rate of 90–96 percent because scientists hunt for specific drug candidates among 10⁶⁰ bioavailable small molecules.

Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Exscientia’s innovative DMTL solution incorporates in silico design—using generative AI algorithms to design compounds in the cloud—and automated robots that make drug candidates in a lab. “We use generative AI to solve for efficiency and effectiveness,” says David Hallett, Exscientia’s interim CEO and chief scientific officer. “By predicting the molecular features of a safe and effective drug in silico, we minimize the number of costly experiments. Our platform, built in collaboration with the AWS team, is optimized for speed. We can repeat many DMTL learning loops, improving our drug candidates with every iteration.”

Using Generative AI for More Efficient Drug Discovery at Reduced Cost

Working backward from patient needs, Exscientia defines precise target product profiles (TPPs) that specify the complex combination of properties required by a well-tolerated and effective medicine. AI engineers design algorithms that generate panels of potential drug candidates to meet the TPPs. Active learning algorithms help expert designers to select a short list of drug candidates to synthesize in the lab, because they either move the TPPs forward or refine the models for future DMTL cycles.

Exscientia’s algorithms are trained on publicly available pharmacology data and proprietary in-house data generated from patient tissue samples, genomics, single-cell transcriptomics, and medical literature. By encoding data throughout the process and analyzing experimental results and previous design cycles, Exscientia can optimize upcoming design cycles and promote compound designs that are physically synthesizable. Using this synthesis-aware, iterative approach built on AWS, Exscientia makes 10 times fewer compounds than the industry average. “The idea is to iron out chemical liabilities to make safer and more effective drug candidates before we ever test them in patients,” says Hallett.

Exscientia has accelerated drug design by up to 70 percent while decreasing capital cost by 80 percent, compared with industry benchmarks. Using generative AI with other tools, Exscientia not only developed better drug candidates faster but also identified the right drug combinations to trial with patients in the clinic.

Cutting Time and Costs Using Automated Robotics to Make Better Medicines

Exscientia has incorporated cutting-edge chemistry synthesis and biology assay lab equipment with automation robots to avoid manual handling of lab equipment. Thus, its lab—orchestrated by AWS microservices—can operate 24/7 with minimal human supervision, “When our designs are ready, we can push a button, and within a few days, the robots are making the drug,” says Hallett. Maintaining extremely high levels of security and comprehensive disaster recovery, Exscientia will use this automated robotic capability to reduce the make and test timelines resulting from traditional offshore research contracts used across the industry.

As the company closes the loop with its robotic automation lab, it expects further productivity improvements. Data generated in the lab improves algorithmic predictions and speeds up DMTL cycles.

Introducing AI-Designed Molecules into Clinical Trials

Six molecules that Exscientia designed using AI have entered clinical trials. “Using AWS, we reduce bottlenecks and accelerate the pipeline,” says Hallett. “By switching on this highly integrated and automated DMTL loop, we can make drug candidates faster and more cost-effective.”

Technologies

Amazon Bedrock

CIONET Business Circles

Cyber Circle

CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.

Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.