25
May

08:00 AM EDT

Medicinal Chemistry

Strategy Meeting East Coast USA 2022

The premier meeting for all East Coast USA Medicinal Chemistry professionals

Le Meridien Cambridge

A MEETING EXPERIENCE UNLIKE ANY OTHER

Fresh Medicinal Chemistry Insights

Tired of the same conference experience? Real discussions and genuine networking are often promised, but not always delivered.

Proventa International’s R&D Strategy Meetings are designed to avoid the pitfalls of a typical conference, by providing the right environment to make those important connections through interactive roundtable discussions, exclusive networking and keynote panel debates. Join Medicinal Chemistry professionals from across the East Coast, in Boston MA, to discover new insights and take your company’s mission to the next level.

What makes our strategy meetings unique?

Roundtable Discussions

Intimate discussions led by renowned industry experts. Have your voice heard and debate alongside like-minded life science executives.

Unrivalled Networking

With senior delegation from big pharma and innovative biotech from across the East Coast, you can network with peers from different locations, all in one place.

Personalised Agenda

Choose the topics that matter to you. Reserve your place at the roundtable discussions and ensure your whole day delivers the insights you need to hear.

Solutions to your Problems

We’ve partnered with the best solution providers to solve your biggest challenges. Engage in pre-arranged, private meetings to address your specific needs and find a tangible solution.

Industry Researched Topics

We guarantee our agenda is up-to-date and mission critical because its designed by you. We speak to our extended network of senior decision makers to ensure the most important topics are discussed.

Senior Decision Makers

The entire strategy meeting is specifically tailored to the needs and challenges of senior life science professionals. Discover how your peers are dealing with the same challenges as you.

Become an official strategy meeting partner

Whatever your business needs, we can help. Get in touch for partnering opportunities

I’D LIKE TO PARTNER

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See the full agenda and facilitator line-up

Download the strategy meeting brochure for full details

DOWNLOAD THE BROCHURE

Meet Our 2022 Facilitators

Our panel of facilitators play a key role in shaping the agenda for the day. See who will be bringing their expertise to the table at our Medicinal Chemistry strategy meeting.

Maneesh Pingle

EVP & Head of Discovery Services Sai Life Sciences

Victoria Steadman

Vice President of Business Development and Integrated Partnerships Sai Life Sciences Ltd

Lurong Pan

Founder and CEO Ainnocence

Norman Azoulay

Director – Scientific Products Excelra

Matthew Segall

CEO Optibrium

Tamsin Mansley

Head of North American Operations Optibrium

Tamsin Mansley is Head of North American Operations at Optibrium Limited. She holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of East Anglia in the UK and pursued Postdoctoral studies in the labs of Prof. Philip Magnus at University of Texas, Austin. Tamsin is an experienced drug discovery scientist, having worked as a medicinal chemist at Eli Lilly and UCB Research. 
It was here that she developed her passion for applying computational chemistry and predictive modelling approaches for compound selection and design. Her interests lie in coupling machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques with generative chemistry approaches to explore chemistry space and guide compound design. 
Tamsin joined Optibrium in 2015 to develop new opportunities across North America for Optibrium’s fully integrated, elegant software that guides drug discovery. She also leads the global Application Science team, supporting the company’s existing 
client base.

Whitney Smith

Director of Business Development Collaborative Drug Discovery

Whitney earned a PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996, developing a love for using computational and informatics tools to solve his in-the-lab chemistry challenges. Following roles at a number of Bay Area biotech startups as “the Med Chemist who also did computer stuff”, Whitney became a full-time Cheminformatics Scientist in 2003. A few years later he took a technical position at then-Accelrys (now BIOVIA), experiencing the industry from a new “vendor-side” perspective. In 2007, he transitioned to a sales role and has since held various regional and strategic sales positions at Accelrys, IDBS, Model N, and now Collaborative Dug Discovery. His responsibilities have included the sale and implementation of solutions across such highly diverse domains as cheminformatics, bioinformatics, GLP/GMP systems, business analytics, drug pricing, and revenue management. Whitney routinely engages with biotechs, big pharma, government, academic labs, and everyone in between to help solve their informatics, scientific, and business challenges.

Sandro Belvedere

Vice President, Chemistry Avicenna Biosciences, Inc.

Ivan Cornella-Taracido

VP, Translational Chemical Biology Roivant Discovery

Iván Cornella-Taracido is the Vice President of Translational Chemical Biology at Roivant Discovery. His team develops and leverages chemical biology and proteomics methods and workflows to support  the discovery organization and translational assessment of clinical opportunities for target selection,  biomarker identification, and indication expansion. In previous roles, at Cedilla Therapeutics, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi, Iván established and  managed chemical biology and proteomics teams, supporting target and drug discovery initiatives  across disease areas and modalities. Before Sanofi, at Novartis, he was a founding member of the NIBR  target identification and mode of action elucidation (TIDMoA) platform. Throughout his career, Iván has  also acted as consultant on target and drug discovery for a number of start-ups and biotech firms. Iván holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Universidade da Coruña, Spain, and earned an  Executive Certificate in innovation from MIT Sloan School of Management. He completed postdoctoral  work at the Institute of Chemistry & Cell Biology of Harvard Medical School (now the Broad Institute of  MIT and Harvard), as National Cancer Institute Initiative for Chemical Genetics Research Fellow, and at  the Boston College chemistry department. Iván volunteers as committee member for the Chemistry in Cancer Research section of the AACR, and as  ambassador for the non-profit organization SeedingLabs. He has been an invited speaker, organizer and  chair for numerous international conferences on drug discovery, phenotypic screening, target  identification, chemical biology and proteomics.

Paola Castaldi

VP, Chemical Biology & Proteomics LifeMine Therapeutics

Dario Doller

VP, Drug Discovery Lucy Therapeutics

Kenneth Duncan

Former SVP, Chemistry Accent Therapeutics

Scott Edmondson

SVP, Head of Chemistry Nimbus Therapeutics

Dr. Scott Edmondson is Senior Vice President, Head of Chemistry at Nimbus Therapeutics. Before joining Nimbus, he served as the Director and Head of Boston Oncology Chemistry at AstraZeneca, where he led a team of over 45 internal chemists and 25 CRO chemists that executed on drug discovery programs in oncology from target validation through candidate discovery. While at AstraZeneca, Scott also co-led the Global Oncology PROTACs effort to help establish and grow this promising new modality. Dr. Edmondson began his career at Merck Research Laboratories where he worked on projects in the early discovery space through late-stage discovery and beyond. Over the course of his career, Scott has authored/co-authored over 55 publications, over 60 patents/patent applications and has led/contributed to teams that have delivered over a dozen clinical candidates and 2 marketed drugs. Dr. Edmondson received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Cornell University followed by his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1996 with Prof. Leo Paquette. He completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at Columbia University prior to joining Merck.

Ivan Efremov

VP, Head of Medicinal Chemistry Nereid Therapeutics

Adam Gilbert

Senior Scientific Director, Design & Synthesis Sciences Pfizer

Adam Gilbert was born in New York City and raised in Chappaqua, NY in Westchester County. He majored in chemistry at Haverford College and graduated cum laude/with honors with a B.A. in chemistry.  He received his Ph.D. with Professor Thomas Katz at Columbia University in 1992 where he worked on preparing novel helical metallocene conductors and catalysts.  After a postdoc with Professor William Wulff at the University of Chicago where he worked on the total synthesis of the anticancer agent olivin and developing novel synthetic methodologies involving Fischer carbene complexes, he joined the Medical Research Division of American Cyanamid in Pearl River, NY which became Wyeth-Ayerst Research and finally Wyeth Research.
Adam joined the Pfizer in February 2010 as an Associate Research Fellow and a labhead in charge of the Experimental Design Chemistry (EDC) – a group that focused on key portfolio projects with challenging medicinal chemistry design issues including covalent inhibitors, allosteric GPCR modulators, and chemoproteomics. EDC helped drive candidate molecule discovery for programs in Rare Diseases, Neuroscience, and Immunology highlighted by PF-06651600 (ritlecitinib), a covalent JAK3/Tec inhibitor currently in Phase 2b/3 trials for Alopecia Areata.  Adam is currently a Senior Director in charge of Pfizer’s Design and Synthesis Sciences (DSS) Group.  DSS is a platform medchem group located in Pfizer’s Discovery Sciences Department in Groton, CT which helps drive key Pfizer initiatives such as protein degradation, DNA-encoded library chemistry and selection analysis, covalent inhibitor design, vaccine protein design, small molecule purification, and small molecule NMR.

Paul Greenspan

Senior Director, Discovery Chemistry Takeda

Richard Heidebrecht

Vice President of Research and Development Glycologix

Blaise Lippa

Chief Scientific Officer Morphic Therapeutics

Christine Loh

SVP Biology Nimbus Therapeutics

Jesus Medina

Research Fellow Arvinas

Ingo Mügge

Executive Director, Head of Modeling & Informatics Alkermes

Patrick Riley, PhD

SVP, AI Relay Therapeutics

Nunzio Sciammetta

Director, Discovery Chemistry Merck & Co Inc

Huafeng Xu

CTO Roivant Sciences

Lei Zhang

Head of Design, IM Medicinal Chemistry Pfizer

Lei Zhang received his B.S. in chemistry from Peking University in China and pursued graduate work at Stanford University with a research focus on novel methodology development and total synthesis of natural products.  After receiving his Ph.D. in 2002, Lei joined Pfizer laboratories as a medicinal chemist and worked in multiple therapeutic areas including neuroscience, oncology and internal medicine. He is currently a senior director of medicinal chemistry, leading the molecular design group of internal medicine medicinal chemistry, based at Cambridge, MA. During his tenure at Pfizer, Lei and his team have successfully delivered a number of clinical candidates for disorders with high unmet medical needs in the areas of CNS, immuno-oncology and metabolic diseases. Lei is also a recognized leader in novel positron emission tomography (PET) ligand discovery. He pioneered a set of PET ligand selection criteria and established a unique and effective industry/academic collaboration model, yielding a number of first-in-class PET ligands that have since been successfully validated in the clinic.

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Maneesh	Pingle	EVP & Head of Discovery Services	Sai Life Sciences	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Maneesh.jpg	Maneesh Pingle PhD is Head of Discovery Business Development at Sai Life Sciences. A Pharmacist and Medicinal Chemist by training, he has served on the faculty of Weill Cornell Medicine, co-founded two startups focused on drug discovery platforms and now leads the Business development team at Sai to support innovator companies advance their drug discovery programs. Maneesh received his PhD from Purdue University.
Victoria	Steadman	Vice President of Business Development and Integrated Partnerships	Sai Life Sciences Ltd	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Victoria-Steadman.jpg	Vicky Steadman, PhD is Vice President, Business Development and Integrated Partnerships at Sai Life Sciences. A medicinal chemist by background, Vicky has nearly 20 years industry experience in Big Pharma and within CROs. She is named on over 25 peer reviewed publications and patents including a Nature paper and has worked in the therapeutic areas of anti-virals, antibiotics and neuroscience. Vicky has a BSc in chemistry from Imperial College and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Lurong	Pan	Founder and CEO	Ainnocence	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image003-e1644315075942.jpg	Dr. Lurong Pan is the Founder and CEO of Ainnocence, an AI Powered Next Generation Biotech. She has extensive drug design and precision medicine research experience using structural biology, computational chemistry and artificial intelligence technologies. She was previously a Senior Investigator at Global Health Drug Discovery Institute and a Research Scientist in Structural Biology and Computational Biology at University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Pan received her B.S. in Applied Chemistry from Nanjing University, M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is also an IBM certificated big data architect.
Norman	Azoulay	Director – Scientific Products	Excelra	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/norman.jpg	Norman, a seasoned product leader with degrees in Neuroscience and Biology from Wesleyan University and Harvard University, respectively, leads Excelra’s scientific products team. He focuses on Excelra’s flagship platforms like GOSTAR and GOBIOM, aligning innovation with a user-centric approach. With diverse experience, including key roles at Elsevier and ADP, he has become a vital asset at Excelra. His expertise in data management plays a central role in drug discovery lead generation and optimization, ensuring that scientists across various fields consistently benefit from Excelra’s adaptive product offerings.
Matthew	Segall	CEO	Optibrium	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Matt-Segall2-1-1-e1648136474893.jpg	Matthew Segall is CEO of Optibrium. He has an MSc in Computation from the University of Oxford and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge. Since 2001, Matthew has led teams developing predictive models and intuitive decision-support and visualization tools for drug discovery. In 2009 he led a management buyout of the StarDrop™ business to found Optibrium, which develops novel technologies and ground-breaking AI software and services, including Cerella™ and Inspyra™, that improve the efficiency and productivity of drug discovery.
Tamsin	Mansley	Head of North American Operations	Optibrium	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/tamsim-mansley.jpg	Tamsin Mansley is Head of North American Operations at Optibrium Limited. She holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of East Anglia in the UK and pursued Postdoctoral studies in the labs of Prof. Philip Magnus at University of Texas, Austin. Tamsin is an experienced drug discovery scientist, having worked as a medicinal chemist at Eli Lilly and UCB Research. It was here that she developed her passion for applying computational chemistry and predictive modelling approaches for compound selection and design. Her interests lie in coupling machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques with generative chemistry approaches to explore chemistry space and guide compound design. Tamsin joined Optibrium in 2015 to develop new opportunities across North America for Optibrium’s fully integrated, elegant software that guides drug discovery. She also leads the global Application Science team, supporting the company’s existing client base.
Whitney	Smith	Director of Business Development	Collaborative Drug Discovery	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Whitney-Smith.jpg	Whitney earned a PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996, developing a love for using computational and informatics tools to solve his in-the-lab chemistry challenges. Following roles at a number of Bay Area biotech startups as “the Med Chemist who also did computer stuff”, Whitney became a full-time Cheminformatics Scientist in 2003. A few years later he took a technical position at then-Accelrys (now BIOVIA), experiencing the industry from a new “vendor-side” perspective. In 2007, he transitioned to a sales role and has since held various regional and strategic sales positions at Accelrys, IDBS, Model N, and now Collaborative Dug Discovery. His responsibilities have included the sale and implementation of solutions across such highly diverse domains as cheminformatics, bioinformatics, GLP/GMP systems, business analytics, drug pricing, and revenue management. Whitney routinely engages with biotechs, big pharma, government, academic labs, and everyone in between to help solve their informatics, scientific, and business challenges.
Sandro	Belvedere	Vice President, Chemistry	Avicenna Biosciences, Inc.	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Sandro-Belvedere.jpg	Dr. Belvedere is Vice President of Chemistry at Avicenna Biosciences. Bio. Dr. Belvedere is an experienced research and development leader, having successfully delivered clinical candidates and directed programs across a broad range of therapeutic areas. Dr. Belvedere’s previous drug development experience includes directing discovery, development, and manufacturing programs at Forkhead Biotherapeutics and ARMGO Pharma, and work on central nervous system targets at GlaxoSmithKline. In addition, at Aton Pharma, Dr. Belvedere contributed to the discovery of new histone deacetylase inhibitors, leading to the oncology drug SAHA (Vorinostat). He is a named inventor on twenty-one United States patents. Dr. Belvedere holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University, a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Rochester, and a graduate degree (Laurea) from the University of Rome.
Ivan	Cornella-Taracido	VP, Translational Chemical Biology	Roivant Discovery	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Ivan-Cornella-Taracido.jpg	Iván Cornella-Taracido is the Vice President of Translational Chemical Biology at Roivant Discovery. His team develops and leverages chemical biology and proteomics methods and workflows to support the discovery organization and translational assessment of clinical opportunities for target selection, biomarker identification, and indication expansion. In previous roles, at Cedilla Therapeutics, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi, Iván established and managed chemical biology and proteomics teams, supporting target and drug discovery initiatives across disease areas and modalities. Before Sanofi, at Novartis, he was a founding member of the NIBR target identification and mode of action elucidation (TIDMoA) platform. Throughout his career, Iván has also acted as consultant on target and drug discovery for a number of start-ups and biotech firms. Iván holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Universidade da Coruña, Spain, and earned an Executive Certificate in innovation from MIT Sloan School of Management. He completed postdoctoral work at the Institute of Chemistry & Cell Biology of Harvard Medical School (now the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard), as National Cancer Institute Initiative for Chemical Genetics Research Fellow, and at the Boston College chemistry department. Iván volunteers as committee member for the Chemistry in Cancer Research section of the AACR, and as ambassador for the non-profit organization SeedingLabs. He has been an invited speaker, organizer and chair for numerous international conferences on drug discovery, phenotypic screening, target identification, chemical biology and proteomics.
Paola	Castaldi	VP, Chemical Biology & Proteomics	LifeMine Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/paola-castaldi.jpeg
Dario	Doller	VP, Drug Discovery	Lucy Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Dario-Doller.jpeg	Dario Doller is currently VP, Drug Discovery at Lucy Therapeutics, employing mitochondrial biology knowledge to create novel therapeutics. Previously, Dario’s contributions at Sunovion, Sage, Concert, Lundbeck, Neurogen and Schering-Plough, include clinical compounds such as the FDA-approved drug Vorapaxar, and drug candidates CTP-692 (schizophrenia), Lu AF09535 (anxiety), Lu AE00654 and NGD-4715 (obesity). Dario’s interests reside at the chemistry/biology interface, with focus on understanding how drugs elicit a functional response by interacting with cell membrane-bound receptors (GPCRs and ion channels). Dario earned a PhD from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. He conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Derek Barton at Texas A&M University.
Kenneth	Duncan	Former SVP, Chemistry	Accent Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/KEnneth-Duncan.jpeg
Scott	Edmondson	SVP, Head of Chemistry	Nimbus Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Scott-Edmondson-1.jpg	Dr. Scott Edmondson is Senior Vice President, Head of Chemistry at Nimbus Therapeutics. Before joining Nimbus, he served as the Director and Head of Boston Oncology Chemistry at AstraZeneca, where he led a team of over 45 internal chemists and 25 CRO chemists that executed on drug discovery programs in oncology from target validation through candidate discovery. While at AstraZeneca, Scott also co-led the Global Oncology PROTACs effort to help establish and grow this promising new modality. Dr. Edmondson began his career at Merck Research Laboratories where he worked on projects in the early discovery space through late-stage discovery and beyond. Over the course of his career, Scott has authored/co-authored over 55 publications, over 60 patents/patent applications and has led/contributed to teams that have delivered over a dozen clinical candidates and 2 marketed drugs. Dr. Edmondson received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Cornell University followed by his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1996 with Prof. Leo Paquette. He completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at Columbia University prior to joining Merck.
Ivan	Efremov	VP, Head of Medicinal Chemistry	Nereid Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Ivan-Efremov.jpg	Ivan Efremov is a Senior Director, Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Fulcrum Therapeutics. He started his medicinal chemistry career in 2001 when he joined Pfizer after obtaining his PhD with Professor Leo Paquette at The Ohio State University. While at Pfizer, he significantly contributed to multiple projects including delivery of development candidates for CNS, immunology and rare disease indications. He joined Fulcrum Therapeutics in 2017 where he led a chemistry effort culminating in nomination of a development candidate for sickle cell disease. His research interests include structure-based design, fragment-based lead generation, and chemogenomics. He is an author on more than 50 publications and patents.
Adam	Gilbert	Senior Scientific Director, Design & Synthesis Sciences	Pfizer	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/adam-gilbert.jpg	Adam Gilbert was born in New York City and raised in Chappaqua, NY in Westchester County. He majored in chemistry at Haverford College and graduated cum laude/with honors with a B.A. in chemistry. He received his Ph.D. with Professor Thomas Katz at Columbia University in 1992 where he worked on preparing novel helical metallocene conductors and catalysts. After a postdoc with Professor William Wulff at the University of Chicago where he worked on the total synthesis of the anticancer agent olivin and developing novel synthetic methodologies involving Fischer carbene complexes, he joined the Medical Research Division of American Cyanamid in Pearl River, NY which became Wyeth-Ayerst Research and finally Wyeth Research. Adam joined the Pfizer in February 2010 as an Associate Research Fellow and a labhead in charge of the Experimental Design Chemistry (EDC) – a group that focused on key portfolio projects with challenging medicinal chemistry design issues including covalent inhibitors, allosteric GPCR modulators, and chemoproteomics. EDC helped drive candidate molecule discovery for programs in Rare Diseases, Neuroscience, and Immunology highlighted by PF-06651600 (ritlecitinib), a covalent JAK3/Tec inhibitor currently in Phase 2b/3 trials for Alopecia Areata. Adam is currently a Senior Director in charge of Pfizer’s Design and Synthesis Sciences (DSS) Group. DSS is a platform medchem group located in Pfizer’s Discovery Sciences Department in Groton, CT which helps drive key Pfizer initiatives such as protein degradation, DNA-encoded library chemistry and selection analysis, covalent inhibitor design, vaccine protein design, small molecule purification, and small molecule NMR.
Paul	Greenspan	Senior Director, Discovery Chemistry	Takeda	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Paul-Greenspan-scaled-e1631531455910.jpg	Paul Greenspan is senior director of Discovery Chemistry at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. After obtaining his B.S. degree in chemistry from Bucknell University, and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke University, Dr. Greenspan completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the labs of Barry M. Trost at Stanford University. He began his industrial medicinal chemistry career at Novartis in New Jersey, in the areas of arthritis and inflammation. He then moved to Cambridge to join Millennium pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Takeda in 2008. Dr. Greenspan led Takeda’s oncology medicinal chemistry department for several years, and has more recently has been leading several initiatives directed toward the enablement and implementation of emerging chemistry-based therapeutic modalities across the Takeda research organization.
Richard	Heidebrecht	Vice President of Research and Development	Glycologix	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Richard-Heidebrecht-scaled.jpg	Rich Heidebrecht is currently the Vice President of Research and Development at Glycologix. He started his career at Pfizer and Merck before making a transition to Biotech via the Broad Institute. Rich has gained expertise in medicinal, process and analytical chemistry and has worked on diverse therapeutic modalities such as small molecules, cell therapies, medical devices, and polymers including oligonucleotides. Over the course of his career, Rich has contributed to 35 patent/patent applications, 16 papers, two clinical programs and one marketed drug. Doctor Heidebrecht completed his undergraduate work at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and his graduate work at Indiana University with David R. Williams. His postdoc with Stephen Martin at the University of Texas at Austin rounded out two natural product synthesis projects – one total, one formal.
Blaise	Lippa	Chief Scientific Officer	Morphic Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Blaise-Lippa-3.jpg	Blaise Lippa is the SVP of Molecular Discovery at Morphic Therapeutic, joining the company at its inception and helping to build it through IPO, while advancing integrin small molecule projects towards the clinic. Prior to this, Blaise was a Sr. Director of medicinal chemistry at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, where he led teams that advanced multiple acute care compounds to the clinic, and served on a development team that achieved an NDA. Blaise began his industrial career at Pfizer, working in multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, antibacterials, and metabolic diseases. A project he initiated and first led was approved in 2019(Daurismo/ Glasdegib) for leukemia. Blaise obtained his B.Sc. degree from the University of Michigan, and his Ph.D. from Stanford. Blaise is an author of over 70 publications and patents.
Christine	Loh	SVP Biology	Nimbus Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Christine-Loh-New.jpg	Dr. Christine Loh is Senior VP, Head of Biology at Nimbus. Prior to joining Nimbus, she served as VP of Translational Medicine at Kymera Therapeutics, facilitating the transition of pipeline programs into clinical development. Previously, Christine was the Executive Director of Research at Bioverativ, leading a group focused on rare blood disorders, following the Bioverativ spinout from Biogen, where she had directed immunology research. Christine also has drug discovery experience at Sirtris, Pfizer and ICOS Corporation, advancing several programs from concept to IND in autoimmunity, oncology, and metabolic disease. She has a B.S. in biochemistry from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in immunology from Harvard University.
Jesus	Medina	Research Fellow	Arvinas	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Jesus-Medina-e1631532012508.jpg	Jesus completed his Ph.D. with John Soderquist at the University of Puerto Rico and a post-doctoral fellowship with Clayton Heathcock at UC Berkeley. He then spent 16 years in drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline where he led multiple programs in oncology targeting (1) kinases, (2) ubiquitin ligases, (3) deubiquitinating enzymes, (4) epigenetic targets, and (5) transcription factors. During that time, he employed a variety of drug discovery approaches such as fragment-based, structure-based, and phenotypic/cell-based drug discovery. In addition, at GSK he was responsible for managing clinical trial operations for a Phase 1/2 study. In 2019, Jesus joined Arvinas as a Research Fellow to tackle oncology and immune-oncology targets using PROTAC® molecules.
Ingo	Mügge	Executive Director, Head of Modeling & Informatics	Alkermes	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Ingo.jpeg	Ingo Mügge is an Executive Director and Head of Modeling & Informatics at Alkermes in Waltham, Massachusetts. His research interests include drug design, predictive modeling, bioinformatics, and functional genomics. He previously served in several leadership roles in drug discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim, and Bayer Healthcare. He earned a Diploma in Physics at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and a Doctorate in Computational Chemistry at Free University in Berlin, Germany. He completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and Abbott Laboratories in Abbott Park, Illinois. He has published 66 scientific papers and co-organized scientific conferences.
Patrick	Riley, PhD	SVP, AI	Relay Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Pat-Riley.jpg	Patrick Riley leads the artificial intelligence group at Relay Therapeutics, applying learning methods to the discovery process. He has over 15 years of data science and machine learning experience. He came to Relay Therapeutics from Google, where he was a principal software engineer and a lead of the Accelerated Science team. His work spanned areas as diverse as cell imaging, nuclear fusion and materials science. His most important work was on the application of machine learning to small molecules, including foundational work on graph neural networks and their application to DNA encoded small molecule library screening. Patrick holds a Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Nunzio	Sciammetta	Director, Discovery Chemistry	Merck & Co Inc	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Nunzio-Sciammetta.jpg	Nunzio Sciammetta is a Director in the Discovery Chemistry group at the Merck Boston site. He leads a team with a focus enabling synthesis and purification, applying computational design and new chemical technologies to medicinal chemistry projects to enhance the design-make-test-analyze cycle. His current research interests include High Throughput Experimentation; parallel medicinal chemistry; property-based target design; hit-to-lead discovery. He joined Merck Discovery Chemistry in 2012 and prior to this was a medicinal chemist at the Pfizer Sandwich Laboratories, UK, and Leo Pharma, Denmark.
Huafeng	Xu	CTO	Roivant Sciences	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Huafeng-Xu-e1631532442101.png	Huafeng Xu is an international citizen whose beginning has been traced to China. He spent four years in Columbia University, which granted him the doctoral license to practice computational chemistry. After 12 years in D. E. Shaw Research, where he developed the free energy perturbation program that was the foundation of FEP+ and where he familiarized himself with the shapes and doings of proteins, he continued to lead the development of new methods and models for computation-enabled drug discovery in Silicon Therapeutics, now part of Roivant Sciences.
Lei	Zhang	Head of Design, IM Medicinal Chemistry	Pfizer	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Lei-Zhang-e1631532507368.jpg	Lei Zhang received his B.S. in chemistry from Peking University in China and pursued graduate work at Stanford University with a research focus on novel methodology development and total synthesis of natural products. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2002, Lei joined Pfizer laboratories as a medicinal chemist and worked in multiple therapeutic areas including neuroscience, oncology and internal medicine. He is currently a senior director of medicinal chemistry, leading the molecular design group of internal medicine medicinal chemistry, based at Cambridge, MA. During his tenure at Pfizer, Lei and his team have successfully delivered a number of clinical candidates for disorders with high unmet medical needs in the areas of CNS, immuno-oncology and metabolic diseases. Lei is also a recognized leader in novel positron emission tomography (PET) ligand discovery. He pioneered a set of PET ligand selection criteria and established a unique and effective industry/academic collaboration model, yielding a number of first-in-class PET ligands that have since been successfully validated in the clinic.

Maneesh Pingle, Victoria Steadman, Lurong Pan, Norman Azoulay, Matthew Segall, Tamsin Mansley, Whitney Smith, Sandro Belvedere, Ivan Cornella-Taracido, Paola Castaldi, Dario Doller, Kenneth Duncan, Scott Edmondson, Ivan Efremov, Adam Gilbert, Paul Greenspan, Richard Heidebrecht, Blaise Lippa, Christine Loh, Jesus Medina, Ingo Mügge, Patrick Riley, PhD, Nunzio Sciammetta, Huafeng Xu, Lei Zhang

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What makes our strategy meetings unique?

Roundtable Discussions

Unrivalled Networking

Personalised Agenda

Solutions to your Problems

Industry Researched Topics

Senior Decision Makers

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Meet Our 2022 Facilitators

Maneesh Pingle

Victoria Steadman

Lurong Pan

Norman Azoulay

Matthew Segall

Tamsin Mansley

Whitney Smith

Sandro Belvedere

Ivan Cornella-Taracido

Paola Castaldi

Dario Doller

Kenneth Duncan

Scott Edmondson

Ivan Efremov

Adam Gilbert

Paul Greenspan

Richard Heidebrecht

Blaise Lippa

Christine Loh

Jesus Medina

Ingo Mügge

Patrick Riley, PhD

Nunzio Sciammetta

Huafeng Xu

Lei Zhang

Our 2022 Thought Leader

Our 2022 Co-Hosts

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Bone/Osteoporosis

Immunology

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Cardiovascular

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CNS

Inflammation

Psychiatry

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Internal diseases

Respiratory

Diabetes

Metabolic diseases

Rheumatology

Endocrinology

Nephrology

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Le Meridien Cambridge