Built an AI function from the ground up
Founded and scaled KWS's Knowledge Discovery & AI function, including strategy, roadmap, operating model and a multidisciplinary team of 5 AI and data science specialists.
AI & Knowledge Discovery Leader
Bjoern Oest Hansen
AI and Knowledge Discovery leader with 10+ years building scientific AI capabilities, discovery platforms and decision-support systems for research-intensive organisations. Founder and lead of KWS's Knowledge Discovery & AI function.
About
Turning fragmented scientific knowledge into discovery capability
Bjoern Oest Hansen, also written as Björn Oest Hansen or Bjørn Øst Hansen, is an AI and Knowledge Discovery leader with 10+ years of experience building scientific AI capabilities, discovery platforms and decision-support systems for research-intensive organisations. He founded and leads KWS's Knowledge Discovery & AI function, including team leadership, strategy, roadmap development, platform delivery and stakeholder adoption across R&D.
His work focuses on turning fragmented scientific knowledge into scalable discovery capabilities, using knowledge graphs, machine learning, biological networks, information extraction and generative AI to support target discovery, hypothesis generation and better research decisions.
Leadership impact
Selected achievements
Delivered a portfolio of scientific AI capabilities
Shipped 4 AI solutions and 6 machine-learning methods supporting biological target discovery and prioritisation.
Built an end-to-end discovery platform
Integrated knowledge graphs, scientific literature, biological data, machine learning and AI-assisted hypothesis generation into a single discovery platform.
Drove adoption across R&D
Aligned scientists, breeders, data science, digital, IT and leadership around practical AI-enabled discovery workflows.
Advanced responsible AI & governance
Helped translate emerging AI capabilities into usable, compliant and trusted research applications.
Career
Professional experience
Senior Research Lead / Research Lead, Knowledge Discovery
Leads KWS's Knowledge Discovery & AI function, applying scientific AI, knowledge integration and analytics to candidate-gene discovery, hypothesis generation and research decision-making.
- Defined the initial vision, stakeholder alignment and organisational foundation for the function.
- Set strategic priorities and delivery roadmaps for AI-enabled discovery capabilities with research, breeding, digital and IT stakeholders.
- Oversaw discovery workflows combining literature-derived evidence, knowledge graphs, TWAS, biological networks, experimental data and machine-learning predictions.
- Introduced LLM and RAG capabilities into research workflows, including AWS Bedrock solutions integrated with Microsoft Teams.
Data Scientist / Senior Data Scientist, Advanced Analytics
Focused on computational approaches for candidate-gene discovery and biological target prioritisation.
- Developed machine-learning and data-integration approaches for in-silico candidate-gene identification.
- Built gene-trait extraction systems, biological knowledge graph capabilities and graph-based prediction methods.
- Integrated TWAS, biological networks, literature-derived knowledge and experimental evidence into target prioritisation workflows.
Founder
Founded and developed a knowledge graph platform integrating biological networks and scientific knowledge across more than 200 species.
- Designed and built a graph-based platform for knowledge exploration and gene-function prediction in Neo4j.
- Managed product design, technical development and user engagement.
Earlier experience
Scientific Employee, Medical Informatics — Medical Research Centre Göttingen (2017–2018): research data management and biomedical information systems.
Scientific Employee — Humboldt University Berlin / TOPOI (2016–2017): database and API solutions for archaeological research data.
Technical expertise
Skills & platforms
Scientific AI
Machine learning, generative AI, large language models, NLP, RAG, recommendation systems.
Knowledge & discovery
Knowledge graphs, information extraction, semantic search, evidence integration, hypothesis generation, target prioritisation.
Computational biology
Candidate gene discovery, gene function prediction, biological networks, multi-omics integration, TWAS.
Platforms & engineering
AWS Bedrock, AWS, Azure, Neo4j, MLOps, data engineering, Python, SQL, PHP.
Writing
Patent & selected publications
Method for Identifying a Candidate, Namely a Gene Location and/or a Sequence Variant, Indicative for at Least One Phenotypic Trait
Inventor. US Patent US 12,451,215 B2 — computational methods to accelerate candidate gene and trait discovery in plant breeding.
The Use of Data Integration and Knowledge Graphs in Modern Molecular Plant Breeding
Hansen, B.O., Taubert, J. & Thiel, T. (2022). Book chapter in Integrative Bioinformatics (Springer), on workflow-driven data integration and knowledge graphs applied in industrial molecular plant breeding.
Ensemble Gene Function Prediction Database Reveals Genes Important for Complex I Formation in Arabidopsis thaliana
Hansen, B.O., Meyer, E.H., Ferrari, C. et al. (2018). New Phytologist.
See the full list on Google Scholar.
Talks and videos
Selected presentations
Knowledge graphs in life sciences
Talk on using knowledge graphs to connect scientific literature and biological data.
Ontologies
Talk on ontologies and their role in structuring biological knowledge.
Education
Academic background
PhD Research, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (not submitted)
Research topic: integrative transcriptomic analysis of co-expression networks.
MSc, Biology-Biotechnology
University of Copenhagen
BSc, Biology-Biotechnology
University of Copenhagen
Search identity
Name variants
The standard spelling used on this website is Bjoern Oest Hansen. His name is also written, spelled or transliterated in the following ways across LinkedIn, Google Scholar, ORCID, publication databases and systems that don't support Danish or German special characters:
- Björn Oest Hansen
- Bjørn Øst Hansen
- Bjorn Oest Hansen
- Bjorn Ost Hansen
- Björn Öst Hansen
These variants are also included in the structured data of this page using Schema.org
alternateName properties and in the page's meta keywords, so search engines can match
any spelling to this profile.
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