R&D Archives - Proventa International

Morpho | Alfasigma – Driving Speed and Quality in Pharma Manufacturing: Strategies for Flexible, Data-Driven Development

Bryan — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 18:47:25 +0000

25
February

10:00 AM CET

Driving Speed and Quality in Pharma Manufacturing: Strategies for Flexible, Data-Driven Development

Alfasigma Pomezia Site, Italy

All Orders

A MEETING EXPERIENCE UNLIKE ANY OTHER

Inside Alfasigma’s Integrated CDMO Model Accelerating Pharma & Biotech Development

Pharma and biotech companies face increasing pressure to accelerate development timelines, maintain regulatory compliance, and deliver high-quality, patient-centric therapies. Achieving this requires scalable, efficient, and flexible manufacturing processes, along with innovative approaches to drug delivery.

This exclusive facility tour and strategic engagement day at Alfasigma provides an inside look at a fully integrated CDMO model designed to tackle these challenges. Attendees will explore how advanced process control, automation, and data-driven decision-making to optimize pre-clinical and clinical production on R&D Facility, while flexible formulation strategies, like softgel technologies, enable tailored therapies with improved bioavailability.

Participants will gain practical insights into creating robust, end-to-end development workflows, reducing time to market, and building operational resilience, with real-world examples of how integrated CDMO services can create measurable value for pharma and biotech partners.

Why you should attend

Connect with fellow Morpho and Alfasigma customers who share your passion.

Our Agenda

Our Speakers

Rocco Paracchini

VP and BU Director – Morpho Alfasigma

Jurgen Mensch

Head Drug Product Development Alfasigma

Giuseppe Massa

Operations Process Technology Specialist Alfasigma

Giovanni Berducci

Head of Operations Alfasigma

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Rocco	Paracchini	VP and BU Director – Morpho	Alfasigma	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Rocco-Paracchini.jpg	Rocco Paracchini is a pharma executive with over 18 years of international leadership experience across Europe and North America. Currently VP and BU Director at Morpho Alfasigma, he brings deep expertise in business development, commercial strategy, and operational leadership. His career includes key roles at Doppel Farmaceutici, Indena, Adare, Santen, and Aptalis, with a strong focus on licensing, supply, and codevelopment partnerships. Rocco holds an MBA from SDA Bocconi and a Master’s in Biology from Università degli Studi di Milano. He is fluent in Italian, English, and Spanish, and is passionate about advancing scientific innovation to improve health outcomes.
Jurgen	Mensch	Head Drug Product Development	Alfasigma	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Jurgen-Mensch-1.jpg	Jurgen Mensch holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and is an accomplished Industrial Engineer with 28 years of end-to-end drug development experience. As Global Head of Drug Product Development and CMC Leader at Alfasigma, he drives innovation and strategy across formulation, process development, and commercialization. Throughout his career, Jurgen has led global teams, established robust development frameworks, and advanced complex drug products from concept to market. Renowned for his technical expertise and strategic leadership, he is dedicated to integrating science and operations to accelerate development timelines, ensure quality, and deliver transformative therapies to patients worldwide.
Giuseppe	Massa	Operations Process Technology Specialist	Alfasigma	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Giuseppe-Massa.jpg	Giuseppe Messa holds a Master’s in Methods of Pharmaceutical Industry from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and brings a decade of experience driving innovation in drug product development and manufacturing excellence. At Catalent, he advanced through R&D leadership roles, pioneering softgel formulation strategies and scaling high-performance processes. Now at Alfasigma as Product Steward Leader, he oversees oral product lifecycle management, leveraging scientific insight and operational strategy to enhance quality, efficiency, and sustainability. Passionate about bridging R&D and production, Giuseppe champions data-driven process optimization and cross-functional collaboration to accelerate product innovation and deliver consistent patient value.
Giovanni	Berducci	Head of Operations	Alfasigma	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Giovanni-Berducci.jpg	Giovanni Berducci is a Molecular Biologist with over 20 years of experience spanning the Medical Devices and Pharmaceutical industries. Since 2009, he has focused on Production and Maintenance Management, leading initiatives that enhance manufacturing capacity, optimize operations, and ensure regulatory excellence. Giovanni brings deep expertise in strategic planning, quality systems, EHS, and continuous improvement, with a proven track record of driving efficiency and leading transformative change. Passionate about operational excellence, he is dedicated to advancing pharmaceutical manufacturing through innovation, teamwork, and a commitment to delivering high-quality healthcare solutions.

Rocco Paracchini, Jurgen Mensch, Giuseppe Massa, Giovanni Berducci

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Hosted in person, attendance is limited. We want to make sure your experience with us is relevant. We will confirm each registered guest individually. Please check your inbox for the confirmation e-mail.

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More about Morpho | Alfasigma

More information

Morpho is a multifaceted, full-service Pharma and Nutra CDMO committed to delivering high-quality solutions that support patients globally, driven by innovation, care, and excellence. As part of Alfasigma, we ensure top-level quality through over 60 years of specialised expertise, staying true to our company values and leveraging innovative technologies. www.alfasigma.com

Further Information

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Certara | Chemaxon – From small molecules to sequences: prepare for a new discovery landscape

Bryan — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 13:37:20 +0000

04 -05
November

From Small Molecules to Sequences:
Prepare For a New Discovery Landscape

Design Offices Frankfurt Wiesenhüttenplatz, Germany

What is Certainty Discovery

Join us for the latest Certainty customer summit: Certainty Discovery. This two-day event showcases the combined expertise of Certara, Chemaxon, and their global community of customers, empowering scientists and research informaticians to achieve greater certainty in drug discovery.

Day 1 features a scientific conference with renowned industry speakers discussing the impact of new modalities on therapy discovery.

Day 2 focuses on practical solutions offered by our discovery software suite, including D360, Certara AI, Design Hub, Compound Registration and Marvin. Don’t miss this opportunity to advance your research!

Why you should attend

Learn successful strategies for navigating the informatics challenges posed by sequence-based modalities.

Discover our combined capabilities and future vision, including the application of deep learning to text search, optical structure recognition, property prediction model retraining, and more. Discuss how our experts can support you.

Connect with fellow Certara and Chemaxon customers who share your passion for drug discovery.

Our Agenda

Our Speakers

Filip Miljković
Associate Principal AI Scientist AstraZeneca
Dr. Filip Miljković holds an MPharm degree from the University of Niš, Serbia, and a PhD degree in Computational Life Sciences from the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2020, he joined AstraZeneca, Sweden where he currently works as an Associate Principal AI Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry within the Department of Early Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism. He also maintains a close connection to academia, remaining affiliated with his former academic group at the University of Bonn, Germany, and holds a visiting researcher position at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Claire Bellamy
Senior Manager, Product Management Pfizer
Claire is currently product manager for proteomics related systems at Pfizer and recently led projects in transcriptomics. After gaining an MBA from Loughborough University, Claire led the Pistoia Alliance HELM project which established HELM across the life science community as the preferred representation of complex biomolecules, gaining recognition by ISO and supported the EBI ChEMBL and PubChem teams to add HELM to their public datasets. Prior to this, Claire worked for AstraZeneca for 13 years as project manager or global business analyst for various projects including AZ-wide ELN implem

Nathan Brown
Independent Consultant
Globally recognised as a thought-leader in cheminformatics and computational drug discovery, Nathan is the inventor of the first multi-objective de novo molecular design system, published in 2004, and has published over 50 papers and four books on the field. Nathan is the 2017 recipient of the Corwin Hansch Award – an award given by the Hansch-Fujita Foundation for significant contributions to the field of computer-aided drug design. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Societies of Chemistry, Biology, and The Arts. 

John Cumming
Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry Roche
John is currently Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at Roche pRED in Basel, Switzerland. He has led chemistry teams on multiple projects in several disease areas and played a leading role in the introduction of a next generation informatics environment for medicinal chemists facilitating improved data visualisation and analysis, and prediction-led compound design. He also co-organises international medicinal chemistry conferences as a member of the Fine Chemicals Group committee of the SCI.

Xin Zhang
Senior Director of Cheminfo and Platform Integration Cellarity
Xin Zhang is the Senior Director of Cheminformatics and Platform Integration at Cellarity, where he leads the development of the cheminformatics roadmap and builds platforms to leverage smallmolecule data to support lead optimization research programs. Previously, he played a key role in Scientific Computing at X-Chem, focusing on developing software tools for DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) design and advancing AI/ML strategies for DEL screening hit identification. Before X-Chem, he served as the IT Business Partner at Celgene, where he developed the R&D IT roadmap and spearheaded multiple informatics initiatives to support Celgene’s Cambridge R&D site

Sameh Eid
Associate Scientific Director – Digital, Data, IT Healthcare Merck
Sameh Eid is a trained pharmacist who earned his Ph.D. in computational drug design from the University of Basel. He then joined the BioMed X Innovation Center in Heidelberg, where he developed novel computational methods to optimize protein kinase selectivity. Since 2017, Sameh has been part of the Healthcare Digital, Data & IT team at Merck, focusing on research data systems and the integration of biologics and ADC with processing and analysis tools, including Certara D360.

Shijun Yu
Senior Scientist, Project Lead Roche
With 16+years of experience in the Roche Pharma R&D informatics, Shijun has developed a deep expertise in building end-to-end biological workflows with FAIR principles, establishing information and data models for the emerging areas, and facilitating the data integration, querying and visualization to accelerate the drug discovery. In the last five years, she managed and developed the D360 platform as the key portfolio dashboard to advance the data-driven decision-making in Roche Pharma Early Research and Development (pRED) organization, spanning cross-therapeutic areas and modalities (i.e. small molecule, oligo, biologics, and gene therapy).

Thomas Fox
Principal Scientist Computational Chemistry Boehringer Ingelheim
Thomas Fox studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, where he also completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 1993. His doctoral research focused on solvation effects on UV spectra of small organic molecules. This was followed by a postdoctoral stay at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 1993 to 1996, where he performed molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations and contributed to the AMBER forcefield development. Since 1996, Thomas has been working as a Principal Scientist in the computational chemistry group at Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach, Germany.

Miklos Feher
Senior Director, Computational Chemistry X-Chem
Dr. Miklos Feher is Senior Director of Computational Chemistry at X-Chem Inc., where he focuses on the discovery of novel drugs for challenging biological targets and the advancement of computational tools to support this mission. With over 30 years of experience leading computational chemistry teams in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Dr. Feher has made significant contributions to drug discovery, including 15 patents, several compounds in clinical development, 105 peer-reviewed publications, and two textbooks.

Gian Marco Ghiandoni
Associate Principal AI Engineer | Scaled AI and Chemistry (SAIC) Tech Lead AstraZeneca
Giammy is a cheminformatics and machine learning engineer at AstraZeneca whose role is to bridge science and technology to accelerate drug discovery programs. His platform, named Augmented DMTA, develops and integrates scaled solutions across the discovery pipeline. These include chemistry services, molecular property and retrosynthesis prediction capabilities, and agentic systems.

J. Christian Baber
Chief Portfolio Officer The Pistoia Alliance
Christian Baber, is a chemist by training and holds undergraduate and PhD degrees in computational chemistry with a focus on AI techniques to assess the synthetic accessibility of de novo design compounds. Christian continued this work with a post-doctoral fellowship on the automated design of targeted combinatorial libraries at the Department of Knowledge Engineering, Osaka University, Japan before moving into industry initially as a computational chemist and cheminformatician. Christian has a wide breadth of R&D experience across companies ranging from startups to large pharma with a focus on informatics and predictive modeling for drug discovery but has also managed development systems and lab & automation teams including compound management and high-throughput purification.

David Lowis
Executive Director, Scientific Informatics Certara
For more than 15 years, David has spearheaded the design and development of D360, expanding from small molecule discovery into biologics and other sequence-based modalities and pre-clinical research. He is a subject matter expert for D360 deployments examining scientific data workflows for discovery, preclinical, clinical and translational science.

Matthias Gehringer
Tübingen Professor Eberhard Karls University
Matthias studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM; France), and the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He obtained his doctorate from the University of Tübingen (Germany) where he worked in the group of Prof. Stefan Laufer on reversible and irreversible inhibitors of the protein kinase JAK3. As a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich (with Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann), he focused on the total synthesis of complex natural products from the mycolactone family. In 2019, he was appointed as Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tübingen.

Piet van der Graaf
SVP, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Certara
Piet van der Graaf is Senior Vice President and Head of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology at Certara and Professor of Systems Pharmacology at Leiden University. From 2013-2016 he was the Director of Research of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. From 1999-2013 he held various leadership positions at Pfizer in Discovery Biology, Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology from 2012-2018 before becoming Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 

Adrian Stevens
Chief Product Officer Chemaxon
Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Robert Aspbury
President Certara Predictive Technologies
Rob Aspbury, PhD, is the President of Certara’s Predictive Technologies. Prior to this appointment, he served as Simcyp’s Chief Operating Officer. Simcyp provides Population-based Pharmacokinetic Modeling which is used during the drug development process. These software platforms include Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), Quantitative Systems Toxicology and Safety (QSTS) and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) technology. Dr. Aspbury brings more than 17 years’ commercial and scientific leadership experience with Covance to Certara. Dr. Aspbury was appointed Global Finance Director for Covance’s Clinical Pharmacology Services Division in 2003 and was rapidly promoted within the division to Managing Director, then Vice President, Europe, and later Vice President and General Manager, Global.

Papp Ákos
Senior Product Manager Chemaxon
Ákos Papp has 30+ years of experience in cheminformatics. He joined Chemaxon in 2007 to design and lead the development Compound Registration. Today he is the Product Manager of the controlled substance detection and tariff coding systems and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Controlled Substance Compliance and Shipping Community of the Pistoia Alliance.

Richard Jones
Senior Vice President Chemaxon
Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

Michael Hofmann
Research Scientist & System Consultant Merck KGaA
1998 Master of Science in Food Chemistry, University of Hohenheim 1999 – 2001 System Consultant, IBM 2001- Research Scientist & System Consultant, Merck KGaA

Roland Knispel
Senior Product Manager Chemaxon
Roland Knispel is responsible for the Core Cheminformatics product portfolio at Chemaxon, among others including structure representation, descriptor generation/prediction, Naming, and virtual library enumeration tools. Prior to that he worked 10+ years in various product management roles at Chemaxon, leading initiatives in both biologics and small molecule registration. He and his team contributed extensively to the Pistoia Alliance HELM project establishing HELM as a widely adopted representation for complex biomolecules.

William McCoull
Director, Oncology Medicinal Chemistry AstraZeneca
Bill received his D.Phil in organic chemistry working in lab of Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin at the University of Oxford in 1996. After postdoctoral research with Prof Jeff Winkler and Prof Franklin Davis in Philadelphia he returned to the UK and joined AstraZeneca in 2000. He worked first at the Alderley Park, Macclesfield site before moving to Cambridge, UK in 2015 where he is currently a Director in Oncology chemistry.

Richard Jones
Senior Vice President Chemaxon
Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Filip Miljković Associate Principal AI Scientist AstraZeneca https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Filip-Miljkovic-1.jpg Dr. Filip Miljković holds an MPharm degree from the University of Niš, Serbia, and a PhD degree in Computational Life Sciences from the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2020, he joined AstraZeneca, Sweden where he currently works as an Associate Principal AI Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry within the Department of Early Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism. He also maintains a close connection to academia, remaining affiliated with his former academic group at the University of Bonn, Germany, and holds a visiting researcher position at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Claire Bellamy Senior Manager, Product Management Pfizer https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Claire-Bellamy.jpg Claire is currently product manager for proteomics related systems at Pfizer and recently led projects in transcriptomics. After gaining an MBA from Loughborough University, Claire led the Pistoia Alliance HELM project which established HELM across the life science community as the preferred representation of complex biomolecules, gaining recognition by ISO and supported the EBI ChEMBL and PubChem teams to add HELM to their public datasets. Prior to this, Claire worked for AstraZeneca for 13 years as project manager or global business analyst for various projects including AZ-wide ELN implem

Nathan Brown Independent Consultant https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Nathan-Brown.jpg Globally recognised as a thought-leader in cheminformatics and computational drug discovery, Nathan is the inventor of the first multi-objective de novo molecular design system, published in 2004, and has published over 50 papers and four books on the field. Nathan is the 2017 recipient of the Corwin Hansch Award – an award given by the Hansch-Fujita Foundation for significant contributions to the field of computer-aided drug design. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Societies of Chemistry, Biology, and The Arts.

John Cumming Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry Roche https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/John-Cumming.jpg John is currently Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at Roche pRED in Basel, Switzerland. He has led chemistry teams on multiple projects in several disease areas and played a leading role in the introduction of a next generation informatics environment for medicinal chemists facilitating improved data visualisation and analysis, and prediction-led compound design. He also co-organises international medicinal chemistry conferences as a member of the Fine Chemicals Group committee of the SCI.

Xin Zhang Senior Director of Cheminfo and Platform Integration Cellarity https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Xin-Zhang.jpg Xin Zhang is the Senior Director of Cheminformatics and Platform Integration at Cellarity, where he leads the development of the cheminformatics roadmap and builds platforms to leverage smallmolecule data to support lead optimization research programs. Previously, he played a key role in Scientific Computing at X-Chem, focusing on developing software tools for DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) design and advancing AI/ML strategies for DEL screening hit identification. Before X-Chem, he served as the IT Business Partner at Celgene, where he developed the R&D IT roadmap and spearheaded multiple informatics initiatives to support Celgene’s Cambridge R&D site

Sameh Eid Associate Scientific Director – Digital, Data, IT Healthcare Merck https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Sameh-Eid.jpg Sameh Eid is a trained pharmacist who earned his Ph.D. in computational drug design from the University of Basel. He then joined the BioMed X Innovation Center in Heidelberg, where he developed novel computational methods to optimize protein kinase selectivity. Since 2017, Sameh has been part of the Healthcare Digital, Data & IT team at Merck, focusing on research data systems and the integration of biologics and ADC with processing and analysis tools, including Certara D360.

Shijun Yu Senior Scientist, Project Lead Roche https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Shijun-Yu.jpg With 16+years of experience in the Roche Pharma R&D informatics, Shijun has developed a deep expertise in building end-to-end biological workflows with FAIR principles, establishing information and data models for the emerging areas, and facilitating the data integration, querying and visualization to accelerate the drug discovery. In the last five years, she managed and developed the D360 platform as the key portfolio dashboard to advance the data-driven decision-making in Roche Pharma Early Research and Development (pRED) organization, spanning cross-therapeutic areas and modalities (i.e. small molecule, oligo, biologics, and gene therapy).

Thomas Fox Principal Scientist Computational Chemistry Boehringer Ingelheim https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Thomas-Fox.jpg Thomas Fox studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, where he also completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 1993. His doctoral research focused on solvation effects on UV spectra of small organic molecules. This was followed by a postdoctoral stay at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 1993 to 1996, where he performed molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations and contributed to the AMBER forcefield development. Since 1996, Thomas has been working as a Principal Scientist in the computational chemistry group at Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach, Germany.

Miklos Feher Senior Director, Computational Chemistry X-Chem https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Miklos-Feher.jpg Dr. Miklos Feher is Senior Director of Computational Chemistry at X-Chem Inc., where he focuses on the discovery of novel drugs for challenging biological targets and the advancement of computational tools to support this mission. With over 30 years of experience leading computational chemistry teams in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Dr. Feher has made significant contributions to drug discovery, including 15 patents, several compounds in clinical development, 105 peer-reviewed publications, and two textbooks.

Gian Marco Ghiandoni Associate Principal AI Engineer | Scaled AI and Chemistry (SAIC) Tech Lead AstraZeneca https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Gian-Marco-Ghiandon.jpg Giammy is a cheminformatics and machine learning engineer at AstraZeneca whose role is to bridge science and technology to accelerate drug discovery programs. His platform, named Augmented DMTA, develops and integrates scaled solutions across the discovery pipeline. These include chemistry services, molecular property and retrosynthesis prediction capabilities, and agentic systems.

J. Christian Baber Chief Portfolio Officer The Pistoia Alliance https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Christian-Baber.jpg Christian Baber, is a chemist by training and holds undergraduate and PhD degrees in computational chemistry with a focus on AI techniques to assess the synthetic accessibility of de novo design compounds. Christian continued this work with a post-doctoral fellowship on the automated design of targeted combinatorial libraries at the Department of Knowledge Engineering, Osaka University, Japan before moving into industry initially as a computational chemist and cheminformatician. Christian has a wide breadth of R&D experience across companies ranging from startups to large pharma with a focus on informatics and predictive modeling for drug discovery but has also managed development systems and lab & automation teams including compound management and high-throughput purification.

David Lowis Executive Director, Scientific Informatics Certara https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/David-Lowis.jpg For more than 15 years, David has spearheaded the design and development of D360, expanding from small molecule discovery into biologics and other sequence-based modalities and pre-clinical research. He is a subject matter expert for D360 deployments examining scientific data workflows for discovery, preclinical, clinical and translational science.

Matthias Gehringer Tübingen Professor Eberhard Karls University https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Matthias-Gehringer.jpg Matthias studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM; France), and the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He obtained his doctorate from the University of Tübingen (Germany) where he worked in the group of Prof. Stefan Laufer on reversible and irreversible inhibitors of the protein kinase JAK3. As a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich (with Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann), he focused on the total synthesis of complex natural products from the mycolactone family. In 2019, he was appointed as Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tübingen.

Piet van der SVP, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Certara https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Piet-van-der-Graaf.jpg Piet van der Graaf is Senior Vice President and Head of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology at Certara and Professor of Systems Pharmacology at Leiden University. From 2013-2016 he was the Director of Research of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. From 1999-2013 he held various leadership positions at Pfizer in Discovery Biology, Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology from 2012-2018 before becoming Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Adrian Stevens Chief Product Officer Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Robert Aspbury President Certara Predictive Technologies https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Robert-Aspbury.jpg Rob Aspbury, PhD, is the President of Certara’s Predictive Technologies. Prior to this appointment, he served as Simcyp’s Chief Operating Officer. Simcyp provides Population-based Pharmacokinetic Modeling which is used during the drug development process. These software platforms include Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), Quantitative Systems Toxicology and Safety (QSTS) and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) technology. Dr. Aspbury brings more than 17 years’ commercial and scientific leadership experience with Covance to Certara. Dr. Aspbury was appointed Global Finance Director for Covance’s Clinical Pharmacology Services Division in 2003 and was rapidly promoted within the division to Managing Director, then Vice President, Europe, and later Vice President and General Manager, Global.

Papp Ákos Senior Product Manager Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Papp-Akos.jpg Ákos Papp has 30+ years of experience in cheminformatics. He joined Chemaxon in 2007 to design and lead the development Compound Registration. Today he is the Product Manager of the controlled substance detection and tariff coding systems and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Controlled Substance Compliance and Shipping Community of the Pistoia Alliance.

Richard Jones Senior Vice President Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

Michael Hofmann Research Scientist & System Consultant Merck KGaA https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Michael-Hoffman.jpg 1998 Master of Science in Food Chemistry, University of Hohenheim 1999 – 2001 System Consultant, IBM 2001- Research Scientist & System Consultant, Merck KGaA

Roland Knispel Senior Product Manager Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Roland-Knispel.jpg Roland Knispel is responsible for the Core Cheminformatics product portfolio at Chemaxon, among others including structure representation, descriptor generation/prediction, Naming, and virtual library enumeration tools. Prior to that he worked 10+ years in various product management roles at Chemaxon, leading initiatives in both biologics and small molecule registration. He and his team contributed extensively to the Pistoia Alliance HELM project establishing HELM as a widely adopted representation for complex biomolecules.

William McCoull Director, Oncology Medicinal Chemistry AstraZeneca https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/William-McCoull.jpg Bill received his D.Phil in organic chemistry working in lab of Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin at the University of Oxford in 1996. After postdoctoral research with Prof Jeff Winkler and Prof Franklin Davis in Philadelphia he returned to the UK and joined AstraZeneca in 2000. He worked first at the Alderley Park, Macclesfield site before moving to Cambridge, UK in 2015 where he is currently a Director in Oncology chemistry.

Richard Jones Senior Vice President Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

Filip Miljković, Claire Bellamy, Nathan Brown, John Cumming, Xin Zhang, Sameh Eid, Shijun Yu, Thomas Fox, Miklos Feher, Gian Marco Ghiandoni, J. Christian Baber, David Lowis, Matthias Gehringer, Piet van der Graaf, Adrian Stevens, Robert Aspbury, Papp Ákos, Richard Jones, Michael Hofmann, Roland Knispel, William McCoull, Richard Jones

Register Now

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More about Certara | Chemaxon

More information

We are at the intersection of scientific expertise and IT excellence working alongside our clients for 25 years to deliver products with outstanding performance based on scientific understanding. We joined Certara in 2024 to help increase the success rate of drug development. Our combined capabilities close gaps in the design-make-test-analyze cycle, bring promising leads into biosimulation and speed up the launch of new medicines. www.chemaxon.com

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IDBS – Building Data Foundations Early in Drug Discovery & Preclinical Development 2025

Bryan — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 15:48:59 +0000

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18
November
06:00 PM EST

Building Data Foundations Early in Drug Discovery & Preclinical Development

Boston Chops Downtown, Boston

REGISTER TO ATTEND

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

Test

What You’ll Gain

In early drug discovery and preclinical development, the focus is often on speed and scientific exploration. But delaying process documentation and data integration can create downstream inefficiencies that are costly and difficult to reverse.

Capturing and structuring data early – across target characterization, validation, and safety profiling – not only improves reproducibility but also sets the stage for scalable, efficient development. By embedding digital intelligence into discovery workflows, organizations can:

-Document processes earlier to reduce rework and improve tech transfer

-Strengthen data integrity for confident decision-making

-Enable AI and automation with structured, contextualized data

-Accelerate innovation by connecting experimental and process insights

Join us to explore how early-stage teams can unlock long-term value by investing in data excellence from the start.

Our Agenda

Why you should attend

Join us for an insightful discussion on achieving data excellence in drug development. Together, we can explore strategies to enhance efficiency and innovation with digital intelligence in your organization.

Meet our Speakers

Sean Stowe, PhD
Principal Solutions Consultant IDBS
Sean Stowe is a Solutions Consultant at IDBS. As part of the Solutions team at IDBS, Sean leverages extensive industry experience and product expertise to identify value-added solutions to each business’s unique challenges and goals. Prior to joining IDBS, Sean held a variety of roles in preclinical research, bioprocessing, analytical development and global system implementation within the biopharmaceutical industry. Sean holds a PhD in Functional Genomics – Biochemistry, a BSc in Biochemistry, and a BA in Chemistry from North Carolina State and completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Yogesh Lakhotia
Solutions Manager Elucidata
Yogesh Lakhotia is a Solutions Manager at Elucidata, a company dedicated to accelerating life sciences R&D by building trusted, datacentric AI systems. Elucidata transforms massive biomedical datasets into AI-ready assets, helping biotech and pharma partners speed discovery, and has contributed to bringing 17 drugs to the clinic. With 9 years of experience, including R&D on medical devices and building cutting-edge data platforms, Yogesh brings deep expertise in leveraging data for innovation in life sciences. He is responsible for enabling large pharma customers by designing unique data-centric AI solutions to solve their most complex R&D challenges. He holds a degree in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

Kelly Doering
Consulting Industry Analyst Axendia, Inc.
Kelly Doering is currently a Consulting Industry Analyst with Axendia, Inc., where she lends her life sciences expertise on laboratory and manufacturing operations and the integration of digital technologies. Kelly previously led the Strategic Marketing team for the Pharmaceuticals Business Unit at Aspen Technology and has held numerous global roles in product development, product management, technical marketing and business development during her tenure at ALPCO and Waters Corporation, respectively. Kelly completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Endocrinology at Boston Children’s Hospital where she studied diet-induced changes in body composition in mice on low and high glycemic index diets. Kelly earned an MS and PhD in nutrient regulation of gene expression from the University of Connecticut, and a BS in Health Sciences and Natural Sciences from Worcester State University. Kelly was elected to the ISPE Boston Chapter’s Board of Directors in 2025 and has been an active ISPE member and volunteer since 2021, organizing and moderating numerous virtual and in-person events. She is passionate about celebrating STEM learners of all ages and volunteers locally as a tutor and mentor.

Reza Nemati
Senior Principal Scientist Novo Nordisk
Reza is currently a Senior Principal Scientist, Bioassay at Novo Nordisk leading advanced potency and cell-based assay strategies for therapeutic proteins. Previously, Reza spent 6 years at Biogen as a Senior Scientist, driving the development and validation of complex bioassays to support biologics and biosimilars across global regulatory frameworks, and running initiatives on data pipelining of high throughput data. His career reflects a strong foundation in molecular biology and analytical method development, complemented by leadership in cross-functional teams and innovation in drug development.

More about IDBS

More information

IDBS helps BioPharma organizations unlock the potential of AI/ML to improve the lives of patients. As a trusted long-term partner to 80% of the top 20 global BioPharma companies*, IDBS delivers powerful cloud software and services specifically designed to meet the evolving needs of the BioPharma sector. IDBS, a Danaher company, leverages 35 years of scientific informatics expertise to help organizations design, execute and orchestrate processes, manage, contextualize and structure data and gain valuable insights throughout the product lifecycle, from R&D through manufacturing. Known for its signature IDBS E-WorkBook software, IDBS has extended its flexible, scalable solutions to the IDBS Polar and PIMS cloud platforms to help scientists make smarter decisions with assured confidence in both GxP and non-GxP environments. *Rank measured by Market Cap, Q1 2024. Learn more at www.idbs.com

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IDBS – Accelerating Time to Market: Enhancing Process Efficiencies with Digital Intelligence

Bryan — Fri, 16 May 2025 15:24:09 +0000

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09
September
06:00 PM BST

Accelerating Time to Market:
Enhancing Process Efficiencies with Digital Intelligence

The Ivy Soho Brasserie, London

Fully Booked

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What You’ll Gain

Actionable Insights to Accelerate Your Drug Development Pipeline

Join a focused conversation on how digital intelligence and data excellence can unlock new levels of efficiency in preclinical and clinical development. During this interactive session, you’ll gain:

–Timely insights into overcoming data-driven delays and inefficiencies in drug development

–Strategies for unifying experiment, product, and process data to improve data integrity and accelerate analysis

–Proven approaches to enable AI adoption with structured, high-quality data

–Techniques to enhance reproducibility and tech transfer across teams and development stages

–Best practices for driving decision-making with real-time, accurate insights

–Live discussions with senior peers on practical solutions to process and data challenges

Don’t miss this opportunity to benchmark your strategy and walk away with tangible ideas to boost efficiency and innovation.

Our Agenda

Why you should attend

Join us for an insightful discussion on achieving data excellence in drug development. Together, we can explore strategies to enhance efficiency and innovation with digital intelligence in your organization.

Meet our Speakers

Mark Buswell
Head of Digital Innovation NGT BioPharma Consultants
Mark Buswell is a consultant in CMC development and digital transformation. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, an MBA from Cranfield and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Mark worked at GSK from 2002 to 2023 across R&D and IT. He is a Non-executive Director at UK Health Research Authority and leads Digital Innovation at NGT Biopharma Consultants. He serves on the ISPE PQLI Transportable and Point of Care Manufacturing team.

Marc Smith
Lead Product Manager, Process Development IDBS
Marc is a Lead Product Manager for Process Development at IDBS. Prior to that role, he was a Director of Strategic Solutions, developing the enterprise-level IDBS Polar BioPharma Lifecycle Management solutions. Marc is an expert in laboratory and operational technology, laboratory informatics and system integration and leads a team of technological and domain experts committed to the development of Polar Solutions. He has over 15 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical sector implementing and leading digital solutions and strategies. Before joining IDBS in 2021, he worked at Lonza Biologics and Angel Biotechnology. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology from the University of Sunderland.

Hugh Jarman
Principal MSAT Scientist Touchlight
Hugh Jarman is Principal MSAT Scientist at Touchlight, where he is involved in scaling and commercializing the company’s synthetic DNA platform. He has extensive experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, with a focus on process validation and technology transfer. Hugh began his career at Eli Lilly, supporting biologics commercial readiness and launch, and later joined Lonza Biologics, where he was involved in new product introduction. Throughout his career, Hugh has employed digital tools to support process monitoring and deepen process understanding. In his current role, he combines empirical and in-silico approaches to drive scale-up and improve efficiency. Hugh holds a BSc in Biotechnology with Management from Imperial College London and an MSc in Biochemical Engineering from University College London (UCL).

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Mark Buswell Head of Digital Innovation NGT BioPharma Consultants https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Mark-Buswell-PhD.jpg Mark Buswell is a consultant in CMC development and digital transformation. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, an MBA from Cranfield and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Mark worked at GSK from 2002 to 2023 across R&D and IT. He is a Non-executive Director at UK Health Research Authority and leads Digital Innovation at NGT Biopharma Consultants. He serves on the ISPE PQLI Transportable and Point of Care Manufacturing team.

Marc Smith Lead Product Manager, Process Development IDBS https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Marc-Smith.jpg Marc is a Lead Product Manager for Process Development at IDBS. Prior to that role, he was a Director of Strategic Solutions, developing the enterprise-level IDBS Polar BioPharma Lifecycle Management solutions. Marc is an expert in laboratory and operational technology, laboratory informatics and system integration and leads a team of technological and domain experts committed to the development of Polar Solutions. He has over 15 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical sector implementing and leading digital solutions and strategies. Before joining IDBS in 2021, he worked at Lonza Biologics and Angel Biotechnology. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology from the University of Sunderland.

Hugh Jarman Principal MSAT Scientist Touchlight https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Hugh-Jarman.jpg Hugh Jarman is Principal MSAT Scientist at Touchlight, where he is involved in scaling and commercializing the company’s synthetic DNA platform. He has extensive experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, with a focus on process validation and technology transfer. Hugh began his career at Eli Lilly, supporting biologics commercial readiness and launch, and later joined Lonza Biologics, where he was involved in new product introduction. Throughout his career, Hugh has employed digital tools to support process monitoring and deepen process understanding. In his current role, he combines empirical and in-silico approaches to drive scale-up and improve efficiency. Hugh holds a BSc in Biotechnology with Management from Imperial College London and an MSc in Biochemical Engineering from University College London (UCL).

Mark Buswell, Marc Smith, Hugh Jarman

More about IDBS

More information

IDBS helps BioPharma organizations unlock the potential of AI/ML to improve the lives of patients. As a trusted long-term partner to 80% of the top 20 global BioPharma companies*, IDBS delivers powerful cloud software and services specifically designed to meet the evolving needs of the BioPharma sector. IDBS, a Danaher company, leverages 35 years of scientific informatics expertise to help organizations design, execute and orchestrate processes, manage, contextualize and structure data and gain valuable insights throughout the product lifecycle, from R&D through manufacturing. Known for its signature IDBS E-WorkBook software, IDBS has extended its flexible, scalable solutions to the IDBS Polar and PIMS cloud platforms to help scientists make smarter decisions with assured confidence in both GxP and non-GxP environments. *Rank measured by Market Cap, Q1 2024. Learn more at www.idbs.com

Register Now

As the event is hosted in person, attendance is limited. We want to make sure your experience with us is relevant. Therefore, we will confirm each registered guest individually. Please check your inbox for the confirmation email.

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Further Information

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Revvity – AI with Purpose: Strategy-First Innovation Across Drug Discovery

Mary Joy Nuevo — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:05:15 +0000

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24
June
05:15 PM PT

AI with Purpose:
Strategy-First Innovation Across Drug Discovery

STK Steakhouse, San Francisco, California

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

As therapeutic pipelines grow in complexity, many organizations struggle to deploy AI/ML meaningfully across early R&D. Challenges include fragmented data ecosystems, siloed teams, and difficulty scaling models across modalities. This dinner roundtable brings together senior discovery and data leaders to explore how to implement AI strategies that scale, align with FAIR principles, and accelerate decision-making across small molecules, biologics, and new modalities. The discussion will highlight actionable strategies for unifying chemical and biological data, enhancing model reliability, and fostering cross-functional buy-in for digital transformation.

Our Agenda

18:30 – 19:30

Solving AI-Driven Discovery at Scale – From Concept to Clinical Candidate
1

20:30 – 21:30

Designing FAIR-Centric Data Platforms for the Future of Multimodal R&D
2

Why you should attend

TOPICS INCLUDE:
• AI & ML implementation in drug discovery workflows
• Data interoperability across therapeutic areas and modalities
• FAIR data practices to enable reusability and collaboration
• Platform strategies that bridge chemistry and biology

Meet Our Facilitators

David Gosalvez, Ph.D
Chief Strategy Officer-Signals Revvity Signals Software
With 25 years of experience in scientific software and analytics, David Gosalvez brings a rare combination of technical and domain expertise with broad knowledge across scientific use cases. He is a passionate advocate for improving the efficiency and quality of science via innovative software solutions. As head of Product Strategy, David works with scientists and IT across pharma and chemical industry to set the direction of the Revvity Signals Informatics portfolio. He also works with other scientific software vendors to integrate complimentary capabilities and AI/ML models into our solutions. As Director of Cheminformatics, he was responsible for the sustained growth of ChemDraw and Spotfire Lead Discovery. Previously, David headed the interdisciplinary Science & Technology team chartered with creating the novel data management technologies that underpinned Revvity Signals platform. David also served as Executive Director of Application Development at CambridgeSoft where he brought to market the Oracle Chemistry Cartridge and ChemBioOffice Enterprise Suite.

Dr. Anastasia Christianson
Life Science Senior Consultant and Strategic Adviser Former SVP and Head of AI, Data, and Analytics Pfizer
Dr. Christianson, a Pharmaceutical AI & Data Science Pioneer, brings nearly three decades of pharmaceutical industry transformation as former SVP and Global Head of AI at Pfizer and leader at J&J, BMS, and AstraZeneca. Her unparalleled expertise spans: • Strategic AI Implementation that delivers measurable business value • Global AI Policy Leadership through White House and National Academy of Medicine engagements • Cross-Industry Innovation as advisor to biotech startups, venture capital, and global health initiatives

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

David Gosalvez, Ph.D Chief Strategy Officer-Signals Revvity Signals Software https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/David-Gosalvez.jpg With 25 years of experience in scientific software and analytics, David Gosalvez brings a rare combination of technical and domain expertise with broad knowledge across scientific use cases. He is a passionate advocate for improving the efficiency and quality of science via innovative software solutions. As head of Product Strategy, David works with scientists and IT across pharma and chemical industry to set the direction of the Revvity Signals Informatics portfolio. He also works with other scientific software vendors to integrate complimentary capabilities and AI/ML models into our solutions. As Director of Cheminformatics, he was responsible for the sustained growth of ChemDraw and Spotfire Lead Discovery. Previously, David headed the interdisciplinary Science & Technology team chartered with creating the novel data management technologies that underpinned Revvity Signals platform. David also served as Executive Director of Application Development at CambridgeSoft where he brought to market the Oracle Chemistry Cartridge and ChemBioOffice Enterprise Suite.

Dr. Anastasia Christianson Life Science Senior Consultant and Strategic Adviser Former SVP and Head of AI, Data, and Analytics Pfizer https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Dr.-Anastasia-Christianson.jpg Dr. Christianson, a Pharmaceutical AI & Data Science Pioneer, brings nearly three decades of pharmaceutical industry transformation as former SVP and Global Head of AI at Pfizer and leader at J&J, BMS, and AstraZeneca. Her unparalleled expertise spans: • Strategic AI Implementation that delivers measurable business value • Global AI Policy Leadership through White House and National Academy of Medicine engagements • Cross-Industry Innovation as advisor to biotech startups, venture capital, and global health initiatives

David Gosalvez, Ph.D, Dr. Anastasia Christianson

More about Revvity

More information

Revvity Signals Software provides an extensive range of scientific solutions, empowering researchers and pharmaceutical pioneers worldwide. Our cutting-edge technology simplifies processes, speeds up experiments, and prioritizes promising compounds, redefining drug discovery. The Signals Research Suite, our flagship solution, streamlines R&D workflows with data capture, collaboration, data processing, and data-driven analytics. It includes i Signals Notebook, the only cloud-native electronic lab notebook with ChemDraw®, Spotfire® powered advanced analytics, as well as next-gen data management. In addition, we have recently introduced Signals Synergy which is designed to substantially enhance collaboration, project management, and data exchange between sponsors and CROs.

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Interested in attending this virtual roundtable or running your own? Drop us a message today and we will get in touch

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Chemaxon – How Can Technology Bridge Silos within Drug Discovery?

Bryan — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:29:33 +0000

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25
September
09:00 AM CEST

How Can Technology Bridge Silos within Drug Discovery?

Hotel Pullman Basel Europe Clarastrasse 43 4058 Basel, Switzerland

REGISTER TO ATTEND

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Location Register Now

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

The first ever ChemTalks is a step up from our user group meetings to a full-fledged scientific conference in Basel, on the 25th of September 2024. In a free, one-day live event we bring you insight from renowned industry experts on using technology to bridge silos in early stage drug discovery, provide a sneak peek into Chemaxon’s product updates, and make sure you have lots of networking opportunities.

Why you should attend

All talks will cover the topic of using technology to connect silos in chemical research – this has been our focus for years. Peek into Chemaxon’s product roadmap, learn about upcoming updates early, and consult with our experts and scientists. Get access to the brightest minds of the industry and take the presentation materials home – all free of charge.

Our Agenda

See Which Topics Are Discussed

Our Speakers

Karl-Heinz Baringhaus
Site Director R&D Frankfurt Sanofi
Karl-Heinz Baringhaus obtained his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Münster. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University he joined Hoechst AG in 1990 where he was working six years in Medicinal Chemistry. He then moved into Molecular Modeling and in 2000 became Head of Computational Chemistry at Aventis Pharma. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of Drug Design at Sanofi-Aventis Pharma Deutschland GmbH. In 2010 he was promoted to Head of Structure, Design & Informatics consisting of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Computer-aided Drug Design, Scientific Computing & Data Management as well as Structural Biology. Since 2012, Karl-Heinz has been R&D Site Director in Frankfurt.

Nessa Carson
Associate Principal Scientist, Digital Champion AstraZeneca
Nessa Carson received Master’s degrees in synthesis and catalysis from Oxford University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started her career as a synthetic chemist for AMRI, then moved within the company to run the high-throughput automation facility for Eli Lilly in Windlesham, working across discovery and process chemistry, then in high-throughput reaction optimization at Pfizer and then Syngenta. Nessa moved to AstraZeneca Early Chemical Development in 2022 as Digital Champion, focusing on digital transformation. She was awarded the Salters’ Institute Centenary Award for early-career chemists with the potential to make an outstanding long-term contribution to industrial chemistry.

Josef Eiblmaier
Head of Research, Discovery and Pre-Clinical, PharmaLex a Cencora company
Josef Eiblmaier has more than two decades of successful commercial project and solutions experience in cheminformatics, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and in the intellectual property sector. He currently heads the Discovery, Research, and Preclinical service line at PharmaLex, a Cencora company (formerly OSTHUS). After completing his PhD in Technical Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, Josef started his career at InfoChem, where he held various positions in marketing, business development, product development and management before joining OSTHUS in 2021.

Peter Ertl
Formerly Director of Cheminformatics, Biomedical Research Novartis
Peter Ertl studied organic chemistry and received his PhD at the University of Bratislava. Then he joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel as a molecular modeler. After a merger with Sandoz to form Novartis, he became Head of the Cheminformatics group in Pharma Research, responsible for development of new methods for calculation of molecular properties and cheminformatics web tools for medicinal chemists. Peter is author of more than 130 publications covering all areas of cheminformatics and computational chemistry. His major research interests include analysis and visualization of chemical space, bioisosteric design and interactive web tools supporting the work of medicinal chemists. In the cheminformatics community Peter is known as the author of several cheminformatics algorithms that have become industry standards, including a fast fragment based method to calculate molecular polar surface area and methods to calculate synthetic accessibility or natural-products likeness of molecules.

Jeremy Frey
Head Computational Systems Chemistry University of Southampton
Jeremy Frey is a physical and digital chemist, interested in promoting interdisciplinary research across the physical and life sciences, from laser spectroscopy and imaging, computational modeling, and digital chemical duals. He was the PI of the AI for Scientific Discovery Network and he is a co-I on the Physical Science Data Infrastructure project. For his most recent project, Jeremy is working with the Rosalind Franklin Institute to develop a laser driven high resolution soft x-ray microscope for biological imaging in the water window.

Thrasyvoulos Karydis
Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer DeepCure
Thrasyvoulos (Thras) Karydis is the CTO at DeepCure, an AI-driven biotechnology company focusing on inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Thras is leading the development of DeepCure’s groundbreaking AI platform, and he is a thought leader on computational tools and software for small molecule design and automated chemistry. He is an alumni of the Molecular Machines of MIT Media Lab and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

Jessica Lanini
Biomedical Research Novartis Institutes
Jessica Lanini joined the CADD group at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) as a Data Scientist in 2020. She supports MedChem project teams with machine learning and deep learning tools to accelerate DMTA cycle and compound prioritization. She has an MSc in Bioengineering from Campus Bio-medico of Rome since 2014, with a master thesis at ETH, Zurich, on robot control systems and human experiments. She earned her PhD in Intelligent Systems and Robotics at EPFL, Lausanne, in 2019, focusing on data analysis, modeling and control of bipedal physical interaction while walking.

Timur Madzhidov
Senior Product Manager in Chemistry Innovation Elsevier
Timur Madzhidov is a Senior Product Manager for Reaxys at Elsevier. With expertise in chemoinformatics, he is a recognized researcher and educator who has co-authored over 70 scientific publications in the fields of reaction informatics, AI application in chemistry, algorithmic chemoinformatics, and chemistry-aware machine learning. In his role at Elsevier, he leverages his experience in chemoinformatics and the application of artificial intelligence in chemistry to support the success of Reaxys users by delivering improved search and predictive capabilities, implementing new features, and enhancing the readiness of Reaxys data for AI and ML applications. Additionally, he collaborates with academic organizations to support Reaxys R&D efforts, which aim to advance reaction and molecular informatics by providing access to extensive chemistry data. Prior to joining Elsevier, Timur held academic positions in cheminformatics and molecular modeling.

Adrian Stevens
Chief Product Officer Chemaxon
Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Becky Upton
President Pistoia Alliance
Becky Upton was appointed as the Pistoia Alliance’s first female President in June 2022. She is a long-time supporter of pre-competitive collaboration in life sciences and healthcare R&D and the critical role it plays in advancing science and is passionate about diversity in STEM. Becky is responsible for leading the Pistoia Alliance’s strategy and defining its future within areas of increasing importance to the industry, such as data standards, emerging technologies, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and precision medicine. Becky first engaged with the Pistoia Alliance on its Lab of the Future project whilst at VWR (now part Avantor) where she worked for over a decade in sales, business development, and scientific services. From here, she joined the scientific instrumentation and analytical services company, Pion, as Managing Director, before moving to the Alliance as a project manager. She later became Chief Portfolio Officer and within this role established the Alliance’s first and thriving Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Leadership program. Becky re-joined the Alliance as President after a return to the commercial world as a Director at Impellam Group where she led the company’s STEM services strategy. Becky has a PhD in Biochemistry from Imperial College and an MBA from Cranfield University.

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Karl-Heinz Baringhaus Site Director R&D Frankfurt Sanofi https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Karl-Heinz-Baringhaus.jpg Karl-Heinz Baringhaus obtained his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Münster. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University he joined Hoechst AG in 1990 where he was working six years in Medicinal Chemistry. He then moved into Molecular Modeling and in 2000 became Head of Computational Chemistry at Aventis Pharma. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of Drug Design at Sanofi-Aventis Pharma Deutschland GmbH. In 2010 he was promoted to Head of Structure, Design & Informatics consisting of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Computer-aided Drug Design, Scientific Computing & Data Management as well as Structural Biology. Since 2012, Karl-Heinz has been R&D Site Director in Frankfurt.

Nessa Carson Associate Principal Scientist, Digital Champion AstraZeneca https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Nessa-Carson.jpg Nessa Carson received Master’s degrees in synthesis and catalysis from Oxford University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started her career as a synthetic chemist for AMRI, then moved within the company to run the high-throughput automation facility for Eli Lilly in Windlesham, working across discovery and process chemistry, then in high-throughput reaction optimization at Pfizer and then Syngenta. Nessa moved to AstraZeneca Early Chemical Development in 2022 as Digital Champion, focusing on digital transformation. She was awarded the Salters’ Institute Centenary Award for early-career chemists with the potential to make an outstanding long-term contribution to industrial chemistry.

Josef Eiblmaier Head of Research, Discovery and Pre-Clinical, PharmaLex a Cencora company https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Josef-Eiblmaier.jpg Josef Eiblmaier has more than two decades of successful commercial project and solutions experience in cheminformatics, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and in the intellectual property sector. He currently heads the Discovery, Research, and Preclinical service line at PharmaLex, a Cencora company (formerly OSTHUS). After completing his PhD in Technical Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, Josef started his career at InfoChem, where he held various positions in marketing, business development, product development and management before joining OSTHUS in 2021.

Peter Ertl Formerly Director of Cheminformatics, Biomedical Research Novartis https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Peter-Ertl.jpg Peter Ertl studied organic chemistry and received his PhD at the University of Bratislava. Then he joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel as a molecular modeler. After a merger with Sandoz to form Novartis, he became Head of the Cheminformatics group in Pharma Research, responsible for development of new methods for calculation of molecular properties and cheminformatics web tools for medicinal chemists. Peter is author of more than 130 publications covering all areas of cheminformatics and computational chemistry. His major research interests include analysis and visualization of chemical space, bioisosteric design and interactive web tools supporting the work of medicinal chemists. In the cheminformatics community Peter is known as the author of several cheminformatics algorithms that have become industry standards, including a fast fragment based method to calculate molecular polar surface area and methods to calculate synthetic accessibility or natural-products likeness of molecules.

Jeremy Frey Head Computational Systems Chemistry University of Southampton https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Jeremy-Frey.jpg Jeremy Frey is a physical and digital chemist, interested in promoting interdisciplinary research across the physical and life sciences, from laser spectroscopy and imaging, computational modeling, and digital chemical duals. He was the PI of the AI for Scientific Discovery Network and he is a co-I on the Physical Science Data Infrastructure project. For his most recent project, Jeremy is working with the Rosalind Franklin Institute to develop a laser driven high resolution soft x-ray microscope for biological imaging in the water window.

Thrasyvoulos Karydis Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer DeepCure https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Thrasyvoulos-Karydis-2.jpg Thrasyvoulos (Thras) Karydis is the CTO at DeepCure, an AI-driven biotechnology company focusing on inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Thras is leading the development of DeepCure’s groundbreaking AI platform, and he is a thought leader on computational tools and software for small molecule design and automated chemistry. He is an alumni of the Molecular Machines of MIT Media Lab and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

Jessica Lanini Biomedical Research Novartis Institutes https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Jessica-Lanini.jpg Jessica Lanini joined the CADD group at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) as a Data Scientist in 2020. She supports MedChem project teams with machine learning and deep learning tools to accelerate DMTA cycle and compound prioritization. She has an MSc in Bioengineering from Campus Bio-medico of Rome since 2014, with a master thesis at ETH, Zurich, on robot control systems and human experiments. She earned her PhD in Intelligent Systems and Robotics at EPFL, Lausanne, in 2019, focusing on data analysis, modeling and control of bipedal physical interaction while walking.

Timur Madzhidov Senior Product Manager in Chemistry Innovation Elsevier https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Timur-Madzhidov.jpg Timur Madzhidov is a Senior Product Manager for Reaxys at Elsevier. With expertise in chemoinformatics, he is a recognized researcher and educator who has co-authored over 70 scientific publications in the fields of reaction informatics, AI application in chemistry, algorithmic chemoinformatics, and chemistry-aware machine learning. In his role at Elsevier, he leverages his experience in chemoinformatics and the application of artificial intelligence in chemistry to support the success of Reaxys users by delivering improved search and predictive capabilities, implementing new features, and enhancing the readiness of Reaxys data for AI and ML applications. Additionally, he collaborates with academic organizations to support Reaxys R&D efforts, which aim to advance reaction and molecular informatics by providing access to extensive chemistry data. Prior to joining Elsevier, Timur held academic positions in cheminformatics and molecular modeling.

Adrian Stevens Chief Product Officer Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Becky Upton President Pistoia Alliance https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Becky-Upton.jpg Becky Upton was appointed as the Pistoia Alliance’s first female President in June 2022. She is a long-time supporter of pre-competitive collaboration in life sciences and healthcare R&D and the critical role it plays in advancing science and is passionate about diversity in STEM. Becky is responsible for leading the Pistoia Alliance’s strategy and defining its future within areas of increasing importance to the industry, such as data standards, emerging technologies, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and precision medicine. Becky first engaged with the Pistoia Alliance on its Lab of the Future project whilst at VWR (now part Avantor) where she worked for over a decade in sales, business development, and scientific services. From here, she joined the scientific instrumentation and analytical services company, Pion, as Managing Director, before moving to the Alliance as a project manager. She later became Chief Portfolio Officer and within this role established the Alliance’s first and thriving Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Leadership program. Becky re-joined the Alliance as President after a return to the commercial world as a Director at Impellam Group where she led the company’s STEM services strategy. Becky has a PhD in Biochemistry from Imperial College and an MBA from Cranfield University.

Karl-Heinz Baringhaus, Nessa Carson, Josef Eiblmaier, Peter Ertl, Jeremy Frey, Thrasyvoulos Karydis, Jessica Lanini, Timur Madzhidov, Adrian Stevens, Becky Upton

Register Now

As ChemTalks is hosted in person, attendance is limited. We want to make sure your experience with us is relevant. We will confirm each registered guest individually. Please check your inbox for the confirmation e-mail.

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More about Chemaxon

More information

Scientific curiosity, customer collaboration, and technical innovation are all part of Chemaxon’s DNA. Chemaxon was founded in 1998 by Ferenc Csizmadia. Back then, we had one simple goal: to advance science with tools that were accessible from anywhere. This goal inspired our flagship product, Marvin, which was the first chemical drawing software you could use in a browser.

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Curia – Medicinal Chemistry Strategy Dinner

Bryan — Thu, 02 May 2024 18:33:17 +0000

https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hero-Banner_VB-WCT-1.jpg

15
May
06:00 PM CEST

Medicinal Chemistry Strategy Dinner

Season 52, 3535 US-1 Suite 100B Princeton, NJ 08540

FULLY BOOKED

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

Join us for dinner, drinks and discussions on how technology and geopolitics is shaping the future of drug discovery.

Curia was the first discovery CRO and has grown to provide a breadth of services to support clients research and development needs.

Engage in conversation with peers and Curia’s expert medicinal chemists in understanding how technology and geopolitics is shaping the way discovery outsourcing is done.

Curia, from Curiosity to Cure.

Our Agenda

Why you should attend

At Curia the journey to medical breakthrough may be linear, but it’s never simple. From discovery through manufacturing, launch through commercialization, we leverage deep scientific expertise and state-of-the-art technology to ensure every stage of this intricate process advances as quickly and accurately as possible.

Meet Our Facilitator

Christopher Conway
President, Research and Development Curia
Chris is a seasoned business executive with a 25 year strong track record across a variety of industry verticals including aerospace, pharmaceutical/biotech and contract research, development, and manufacturing. Chris is highly experienced in P&L leadership, sales, and marketing having worked in large and small, public and private equity backed companies. Currently, Chris serves as President and R&D Business Unit Head at Curia, a global top ten organization in contract research, development and manufacturing services, serving the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Chris also currently serves as a Director on the board of two Life Sciences organizations including Viyash Life Sciences Private Limited, a Carlyle owned company, as well as the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, Inc. (DCAT). Chris received his B.S. in Marketing & Management from Siena College and his Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Dr. Grant Carr
Vice President, Head of Global R&D Drug Discovery Curia
Dr. Grant Carr is a 30-year biopharmaceutical discovery and development veteran with degrees from Imperial College and Oxford. He is currently the Vice President of Global R&D Discovery Services for Curia, a global contract research, development and manufacturing organization headquartered in Albany, NY. Prior to assuming his current role, Dr. Carr was the Head of Discovery Biology at Curia and Director of Screening Operations at Elitra Pharmaceuticals, a start-up focused on the identification of novel antibiotics and their mechanisms of action, ultimately acquired by Merck. Based in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Carr is a diehard Bills fan. 

Douglas Kitchen
Research Fellow, Medicinal Chemistry Curia
Doug Kitchen obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University (Chemistry). He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Kitchen’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patents and author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters. Two of Dr.Kitchen’s inventions are now marketed drugs. He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Doug’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patentsand author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters

Mark Wolf
Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia
Mark Wolf, Ph.D. is Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia and has over 27 years of drug discovery and development experience. He has led interdisciplinary scientific teams to support large pharma, biotech collaborations and Curia R&D programs. His research has spanned several therapeutic areas including oncology, CNS, pain/inflammation, and respiratory. Mark has experience establishing practical screening strategies to identify drug candidate compounds with a first-in-class or best-in-class product profile. He led Curia’s Tubulin Inhibitor Program which discovered and advancedALB-109564 into a Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of solid tumors. His CNS experience includes targets in the areas of pain management (GPCR targets) and antipsychotics based on the hypoglutamate hypothesis (GlyT1 inhibitors). Mark has extensive experience managing multiple external providers and Curia assets in support of discovery and pre clinical development programs. He is named as an inventor/co-inventor on five patents and co-author on 25 peer reviewed publications.

Matthew Surman
Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia
Matt Surman, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Global and has over 20 years of industry experience. He joined the Curia Medicinal Chemistry department in 2002 and worked on contract research projects spanning a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, anti-infectives and CNS disorders. From 2005 to 2011, he was part of the Curia internal Discovery Research and Development department. His efforts were focused in the area of metabolic disorders, particularly in obesity. He served as the project leader for the Curia MCH-1 antagonist program from 2008 until returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department in late 2011. During that time, the project culminated in the discovery and development of a successful Phase I clinical candidate. Since returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department, Dr. Surman has led the discovery efforts on a number of programs including projects involved in oncology, neurological disease, and pain. Multiple pre-clinical and clinical candidates have arisen from these efforts. Dr. Surman has over 40 peer reviewed publications and patent applications

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Christopher Conway President, Research and Development Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Chris-Conway.jpg Chris is a seasoned business executive with a 25 year strong track record across a variety of industry verticals including aerospace, pharmaceutical/biotech and contract research, development, and manufacturing. Chris is highly experienced in P&L leadership, sales, and marketing having worked in large and small, public and private equity backed companies. Currently, Chris serves as President and R&D Business Unit Head at Curia, a global top ten organization in contract research, development and manufacturing services, serving the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Chris also currently serves as a Director on the board of two Life Sciences organizations including Viyash Life Sciences Private Limited, a Carlyle owned company, as well as the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, Inc. (DCAT). Chris received his B.S. in Marketing & Management from Siena College and his Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Dr. Grant Carr Vice President, Head of Global R&D Drug Discovery Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/grant-carr.jpg Dr. Grant Carr is a 30-year biopharmaceutical discovery and development veteran with degrees from Imperial College and Oxford. He is currently the Vice President of Global R&D Discovery Services for Curia, a global contract research, development and manufacturing organization headquartered in Albany, NY. Prior to assuming his current role, Dr. Carr was the Head of Discovery Biology at Curia and Director of Screening Operations at Elitra Pharmaceuticals, a start-up focused on the identification of novel antibiotics and their mechanisms of action, ultimately acquired by Merck. Based in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Carr is a diehard Bills fan.

Douglas Kitchen Research Fellow, Medicinal Chemistry Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Douglas-Kitchen.jpg Doug Kitchen obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University (Chemistry). He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Kitchen’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patents and author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters. Two of Dr.Kitchen’s inventions are now marketed drugs. He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Doug’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patentsand author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters

Mark Wolf Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mark-Wolf.jpg Mark Wolf, Ph.D. is Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia and has over 27 years of drug discovery and development experience. He has led interdisciplinary scientific teams to support large pharma, biotech collaborations and Curia R&D programs. His research has spanned several therapeutic areas including oncology, CNS, pain/inflammation, and respiratory. Mark has experience establishing practical screening strategies to identify drug candidate compounds with a first-in-class or best-in-class product profile. He led Curia’s Tubulin Inhibitor Program which discovered and advancedALB-109564 into a Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of solid tumors. His CNS experience includes targets in the areas of pain management (GPCR targets) and antipsychotics based on the hypoglutamate hypothesis (GlyT1 inhibitors). Mark has extensive experience managing multiple external providers and Curia assets in support of discovery and pre clinical development programs. He is named as an inventor/co-inventor on five patents and co-author on 25 peer reviewed publications.

Matthew Surman Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/matthew-surman.jpg Matt Surman, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Global and has over 20 years of industry experience. He joined the Curia Medicinal Chemistry department in 2002 and worked on contract research projects spanning a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, anti-infectives and CNS disorders. From 2005 to 2011, he was part of the Curia internal Discovery Research and Development department. His efforts were focused in the area of metabolic disorders, particularly in obesity. He served as the project leader for the Curia MCH-1 antagonist program from 2008 until returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department in late 2011. During that time, the project culminated in the discovery and development of a successful Phase I clinical candidate. Since returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department, Dr. Surman has led the discovery efforts on a number of programs including projects involved in oncology, neurological disease, and pain. Multiple pre-clinical and clinical candidates have arisen from these efforts. Dr. Surman has over 40 peer reviewed publications and patent applications

Christopher Conway, Dr. Grant Carr, Douglas Kitchen, Mark Wolf, Matthew Surman

More about Curia

More information

Curia is a Contract Research, Development and Manufacturing Organization with over 30 years of experience, an integrated network of 27 global sites and over 3,500 employees partnering with customers to make treatments broadly accessible to patients. Our biologics and small molecules offering spans discovery through commercialization, with integrated regulatory and analytical capabilities. Our scientific and process experts and state of the art facilities deliver best-in-class experience across drug substance and drug product manufacturing. From curiosity to cure, we deliver every step to accelerate and sustain life-changing therapeutics. To learn more visit us at curiaglobal.com

Further Information

Interested in attending this virtual roundtable or running your own? Drop us a message today and we will get in touch

Help me register

Create your own online workshop

Download Agenda

Here To Help

Need help registering your team? Just get in touch and a member of the team will be happy to help.

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The post Curia – Medicinal Chemistry Strategy Dinner appeared first on Proventa International.

Curia – Drug Discovery Biology & Bioinformatics Strategy Dinner

Bryan — Thu, 02 May 2024 18:31:06 +0000

https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hero-Banner_VB-WCT-1.jpg

14
May
06:00 PM CEST

Drug Discovery Biology & Bioinformatics Strategy Dinner

Season 52, 3535 US-1 Suite 100B Princeton, NJ 08540

FULLY BOOKED

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

Join us for dinner, drinks and discussions on how technology is shaping the future of Drug Discovery Biology

Curia is a leading intellectual property and solutions development company serving the pharmaceutical industry from early discovery through chemical development and manufacturing of API and drug product. Curia discovery expertise, technologies and solutions are widely employed by industry, non-profits and Federal government discovery, development and manufacturing programs.

Engage in conversation with peers and Curia experts in understanding how technology is impacting drug discovery. Hear of recent research results highlighting what your peers are doing with technology and how it is helping drive new levels of insight and efficiency.

Curia, from Curiosity to Cure

Our Agenda

Why you should attend

At Curia the journey to medical breakthrough may be linear, but it’s never simple. From discovery through manufacturing, launch through commercialization, we leverage deep scientific expertise and state-of-the-art technology to ensure every stage of this intricate process advances as quickly and accurately as possible.

Meet Our Facilitator

Christopher Conway
President, Research and Development Curia
Chris is a seasoned business executive with a 25 year strong track record across a variety of industry verticals including aerospace, pharmaceutical/biotech and contract research, development, and manufacturing. Chris is highly experienced in P&L leadership, sales, and marketing having worked in large and small, public and private equity backed companies. Currently, Chris serves as President and R&D Business Unit Head at Curia, a global top ten organization in contract research, development and manufacturing services, serving the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Chris also currently serves as a Director on the board of two Life Sciences organizations including Viyash Life Sciences Private Limited, a Carlyle owned company, as well as the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, Inc. (DCAT). Chris received his B.S. in Marketing & Management from Siena College and his Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Dr. Grant Carr
Vice President, Head of Global R&D Drug Discovery Curia
Dr. Grant Carr is a 30-year biopharmaceutical discovery and development veteran with degrees from Imperial College and Oxford. He is currently the Vice President of Global R&D Discovery Services for Curia, a global contract research, development and manufacturing organization headquartered in Albany, NY. Prior to assuming his current role, Dr. Carr was the Head of Discovery Biology at Curia and Director of Screening Operations at Elitra Pharmaceuticals, a start-up focused on the identification of novel antibiotics and their mechanisms of action, ultimately acquired by Merck. Based in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Carr is a diehard Bills fan. 

Douglas Kitchen
Research Fellow, Medicinal Chemistry Curia
Doug Kitchen obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University (Chemistry). He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Kitchen’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patents and author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters. Two of Dr.Kitchen’s inventions are now marketed drugs. He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Doug’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patentsand author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters

Jim LaRocque
Senior Research Scientist III, Assay Development & Screening Curia
James LaRocque, Senior Research Scientist III, is leading a team of Curia’s biologists focused on providing state of the art screening and compound characterization platforms, including high content screening and cellular imaging analysis along with traditional cellular and biochemical technologies and label free screening by mass spectrometry detection as part of Curia’s integrated drug discovery center in Buffalo, NY. Previously he focused on the development and implementation of screening platform technologies and led characterization initiatives to identify selective inhibitors of critical Ubiquitin pathway enzymes. He led efforts in assay development, compound management, screening and hit characterization on hundreds of exploratory projects for Wyeth over his 20 year career which started with antiviral research and later diversified in to a wide variety of therapeutic areas while contributing to Wyeth’s and later Pfizer’s lead identification programs.

Matthew Surman
Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia
Matt Surman, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Global and has over 20 years of industry experience. He joined the Curia Medicinal Chemistry department in 2002 and worked on contract research projects spanning a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, anti-infectives and CNS disorders. From 2005 to 2011, he was part of the Curia internal Discovery Research and Development department. His efforts were focused in the area of metabolic disorders, particularly in obesity. He served as the project leader for the Curia MCH-1 antagonist program from 2008 until returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department in late 2011. During that time, the project culminated in the discovery and development of a successful Phase I clinical candidate. Since returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department, Dr. Surman has led the discovery efforts on a number of programs including projects involved in oncology, neurological disease, and pain. Multiple pre-clinical and clinical candidates have arisen from these efforts. Dr. Surman has over 40 peer reviewed publications and patent applications

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Christopher Conway President, Research and Development Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Chris-Conway.jpg Chris is a seasoned business executive with a 25 year strong track record across a variety of industry verticals including aerospace, pharmaceutical/biotech and contract research, development, and manufacturing. Chris is highly experienced in P&L leadership, sales, and marketing having worked in large and small, public and private equity backed companies. Currently, Chris serves as President and R&D Business Unit Head at Curia, a global top ten organization in contract research, development and manufacturing services, serving the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Chris also currently serves as a Director on the board of two Life Sciences organizations including Viyash Life Sciences Private Limited, a Carlyle owned company, as well as the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, Inc. (DCAT). Chris received his B.S. in Marketing & Management from Siena College and his Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Dr. Grant Carr Vice President, Head of Global R&D Drug Discovery Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/grant-carr.jpg Dr. Grant Carr is a 30-year biopharmaceutical discovery and development veteran with degrees from Imperial College and Oxford. He is currently the Vice President of Global R&D Discovery Services for Curia, a global contract research, development and manufacturing organization headquartered in Albany, NY. Prior to assuming his current role, Dr. Carr was the Head of Discovery Biology at Curia and Director of Screening Operations at Elitra Pharmaceuticals, a start-up focused on the identification of novel antibiotics and their mechanisms of action, ultimately acquired by Merck. Based in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Carr is a diehard Bills fan.

Douglas Kitchen Research Fellow, Medicinal Chemistry Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Douglas-Kitchen.jpg Doug Kitchen obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University (Chemistry). He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Kitchen’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patents and author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters. Two of Dr.Kitchen’s inventions are now marketed drugs. He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Doug’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patentsand author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters

Jim LaRocque Senior Research Scientist III, Assay Development & Screening Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Jim-LaRocque.jpg James LaRocque, Senior Research Scientist III, is leading a team of Curia’s biologists focused on providing state of the art screening and compound characterization platforms, including high content screening and cellular imaging analysis along with traditional cellular and biochemical technologies and label free screening by mass spectrometry detection as part of Curia’s integrated drug discovery center in Buffalo, NY. Previously he focused on the development and implementation of screening platform technologies and led characterization initiatives to identify selective inhibitors of critical Ubiquitin pathway enzymes. He led efforts in assay development, compound management, screening and hit characterization on hundreds of exploratory projects for Wyeth over his 20 year career which started with antiviral research and later diversified in to a wide variety of therapeutic areas while contributing to Wyeth’s and later Pfizer’s lead identification programs.

Matthew Surman Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry Curia https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/matthew-surman.jpg Matt Surman, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Global and has over 20 years of industry experience. He joined the Curia Medicinal Chemistry department in 2002 and worked on contract research projects spanning a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, anti-infectives and CNS disorders. From 2005 to 2011, he was part of the Curia internal Discovery Research and Development department. His efforts were focused in the area of metabolic disorders, particularly in obesity. He served as the project leader for the Curia MCH-1 antagonist program from 2008 until returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department in late 2011. During that time, the project culminated in the discovery and development of a successful Phase I clinical candidate. Since returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department, Dr. Surman has led the discovery efforts on a number of programs including projects involved in oncology, neurological disease, and pain. Multiple pre-clinical and clinical candidates have arisen from these efforts. Dr. Surman has over 40 peer reviewed publications and patent applications

Christopher Conway, Dr. Grant Carr, Douglas Kitchen, Jim LaRocque, Matthew Surman

More about Curia

More information

Curia is a Contract Research, Development and Manufacturing Organization with over 30 years of experience, an integrated network of 27 global sites and over 3,500 employees partnering with customers to make treatments broadly accessible to patients. Our biologics and small molecules offering spans discovery through commercialization, with integrated regulatory and analytical capabilities. Our scientific and process experts and state of the art facilities deliver best-in-class experience across drug substance and drug product manufacturing. From curiosity to cure, we deliver every step to accelerate and sustain life-changing therapeutics. To learn more visit us at curiaglobal.com

Further Information

Interested in attending this virtual roundtable or running your own? Drop us a message today and we will get in touch

Help me register

Create your own online workshop

Download Agenda

Here To Help

Need help registering your team? Just get in touch and a member of the team will be happy to help.

[contact-form-7]

The post Curia – Drug Discovery Biology & Bioinformatics Strategy Dinner appeared first on Proventa International.

Chemaxon Innovation Spotlight : Celebrating 25 years of innovation in drug discovery

Bryan — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 13:38:50 +0000

https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hero-Banner_VB-WCT-1.jpg

04
October
10:00 AM CEST

Celebrating 25 years of innovation in drug discovery

Artists For Humanity EpiCenter, 100 W, 2nd street, Boston, MA 02127

SOLD OUT

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

Join Chemaxon’s 25th-anniversary User Group Meeting in downtown Boston, October 4, 2023. We are excited to bring you expert presentations about the hottest topics shaping the industry today. Let us celebrate our shared history in drug discovery innovation.

Online Agenda

Opening Remarks
Richard Jones,
CEO, Chemaxon

Chemaxon Roadmap
Adrian Stevens
CPO,
Chemaxon

Generative AI Begins to Dominate the AI Conversation in Early Drug Discovery
Joe Michel,
Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics

ChemistryView: how Pfizer simplifies its legacy desktop chemistry systems
David Klatte,
Senior Director of Scientific Solution Engineering, Pfizer

Challenges and Opportunities for AI in drug discovery
Pat Walters,
Chief Data Officer, Relay Therapeutics

Panel discussion on the use of AI in drug discovery – moderated by Jan Christopherson, Application Scientist, Chemaxon
Joe Michel
Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics

Advocating Change: One Synthetic Cannabinoid at a Time
Zofia Jordan
Compound Complance Consultant, formerly of GSK

COFFEE BREAK + DEMO CORNER

Project team data visualization and decision support solutions: core requirements and must-have features Jo
John McNeil,
Life Sciences R&D Informatics Strategist

Are reaction data FAIR … and what can we do with that?
Gerd Blanke,
Chem- and bioinformatics Consultant

The World’s Largest Protein-Ligand Complex and Binding Affinity Dataset for Data Driven Methods in Drug Design
Dr. Arun Subramaniyan,
VP Cloud & AI Strategy and Execution, Inte

Closing Remarks
Dr. Arun Subramaniyan,
VP Cloud & AI Strategy and Execution, Intel

EVENING SOCIAL
GALA DINNER

Why you should attend

Understanding the evolving needs of early drug discovery

Understanding the evolving needs of early drug discovery

Over the years, we have been dedicated to empowering scientists in their research efforts. We value the trust of the scientific community, and are proud to host a day filled with thought-provoking discussions about our shared passion.

Patrick Walters
Chief Data Officer, Relay Therapeutics Relay Therapeutics
Pat will explore the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence in various drug discovery areas, highlighting emerging opportunities, and addressing open issues in the field.

Joe Michel
Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics Cytokinetics
Joe will focus on how deep neural networks and generative AI are transforming molecular design, improving predictions, and enhancing the drug discovery process.

John McNeil
CEO Life Science R&D Informatics Strategist
John will talk about the core requirements and must-have features of collaborative data visualization and decision support solutions in the DMTA cycle.

Zofia Jordan
Compound Compliance Consultant formerly of GSK
Zofia will talk about how compliance aspects associated with sample management are becoming more critical due to the collaborative and globally distributed nature of research. She will showcase it through her experience working with the industry and authorities to modify the Third Generation Synthetic Cannabinoids amendment.

David Klatte
Senior Director, Scientific Solution Engineering Pfizer
David will introduce ChemistryView, Pfizer’s custom developed Java component designed to simplify their legacy chemistry software systems. ChemistryView stemmed from a strong desire for the company’s often 20-years old applications to be user customizable and to have consistent tools for managing advanced stereochemistry

Dr. Arun Subramaniyan
Vice President Cloud & AI, Strategy & Execution Intel
Arun will uncover a collaborative, multi-phase research project involving Intel, AWS, Insilico Medicine and IIITH with the ultimate aim of creating the world’s largest proteinligand complex and binding affinity dataset that significantly accelerates drug research and discovery timelines.

Gerd Blanke
Technical director StructurePendium Technologies GmbH
Gerd will talk about how chemical reaction data needs to comply with FAIR principles in order to be reliable, reproductible, and be used for accurate AI/ML predictions. He will address the specific challenges related to in-house chemical reaction data capturing and discuss what steps should be taken to make these databases more consistent for precise predictions.

Richard Jones
Senior Vice President Chemaxon
Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

Adrian Stevens
Chief Product Officer Chemaxon
Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Jan Christopherson
Application Scientist Chemaxon

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Patrick Walters Chief Data Officer, Relay Therapeutics Relay Therapeutics https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Pat-Walters.jpg Pat will explore the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence in various drug discovery areas, highlighting emerging opportunities, and addressing open issues in the field.

Joe Michel Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics Cytokinetics https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Joe-Michel.jpg Joe will focus on how deep neural networks and generative AI are transforming molecular design, improving predictions, and enhancing the drug discovery process.

John McNeil CEO Life Science R&D Informatics Strategist https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/John-McNeil.jpg John will talk about the core requirements and must-have features of collaborative data visualization and decision support solutions in the DMTA cycle.

Zofia Jordan Compound Compliance Consultant formerly of GSK https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Zofia-Jordan.jpg Zofia will talk about how compliance aspects associated with sample management are becoming more critical due to the collaborative and globally distributed nature of research. She will showcase it through her experience working with the industry and authorities to modify the Third Generation Synthetic Cannabinoids amendment.

David Klatte Senior Director, Scientific Solution Engineering Pfizer https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/David-Klatte.jpg David will introduce ChemistryView, Pfizer’s custom developed Java component designed to simplify their legacy chemistry software systems. ChemistryView stemmed from a strong desire for the company’s often 20-years old applications to be user customizable and to have consistent tools for managing advanced stereochemistry

Dr. Arun Subramaniyan Vice President Cloud & AI, Strategy & Execution Intel https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Dr-Arun-Subramaniyan.jpg Arun will uncover a collaborative, multi-phase research project involving Intel, AWS, Insilico Medicine and IIITH with the ultimate aim of creating the world’s largest proteinligand complex and binding affinity dataset that significantly accelerates drug research and discovery timelines.

Gerd Blanke Technical director StructurePendium Technologies GmbH https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gerard-Blanke.jpg Gerd will talk about how chemical reaction data needs to comply with FAIR principles in order to be reliable, reproductible, and be used for accurate AI/ML predictions. He will address the specific challenges related to in-house chemical reaction data capturing and discuss what steps should be taken to make these databases more consistent for precise predictions.

Richard Jones Senior Vice President Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

Adrian Stevens Chief Product Officer Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.

Jan Christopherson Application Scientist Chemaxon https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/avatar.jpg

Patrick Walters, Joe Michel, John McNeil, Zofia Jordan, David Klatte, Dr. Arun Subramaniyan, Gerd Blanke, Richard Jones, Adrian Stevens, Jan Christopherson

Register Now

As the User Group Meeting is hosted in person, attendance is limited. We want to make sure your experience with us is relevant. Therefore, we will confirm each registered guest individually. Please check your inbox for the confirmation email.

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More about Chemaxon

More information

Scientific curiosity, customer collaboration, and technical innovation are all part of Chemaxon’s DNA. Chemaxon was founded in 1998 by Ferenc Csizmadia. Back then, we had one simple goal: to advance science with tools that were accessible from anywhere. This goal inspired our flagship product, Marvin, which was the first chemical drawing software you could use in a browser. We have come a long way since then.https://chemaxon.com/

Here To Help

Want to know more? Interested in sponsoring the event? Need help registering your team? Just get in touch and a member of the team will be happy to help.

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Further Information

Interested in attending this virtual roundtable or running your own? Drop us a message today and we will get in touch

Help me register

Create your own online workshop

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The post Chemaxon Innovation Spotlight : Celebrating 25 years of innovation in drug discovery appeared first on Proventa International.

BIOVIA Virtual Boardroom – 26th April 2023

Bryan — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 15:11:05 +0000

ONLINE

https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hero-Banner-BOSTON-1.jpg

26
April
11:00 AM EST

Accelerate Drug Discovery with AI-driven Drug Design

Overview Speakers Agenda Resources Contact

What to expect

Timely information, interactive format

Join Chemaxon’s 25th-anniversary User Group Meeting in downtown Boston, October 4, 2023. We are excited to bring you expert presentations about the hottest topics shaping the industry today. Let us celebrate our shared history in drug discovery innovation.

Online Agenda

Opening Remarks
Richard Jones,
CEO, Chemaxon

Chemaxon Roadmap
Adrian Stevens
CPO,
Chemaxon

Generative AI Begins to Dominate the AI Conversation in Early Drug Discovery
Joe Michel,
Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics

ChemistryView: how Pfizer simplifies its legacy desktop chemistry systems
David Klatte,
Senior Director of Scientific Solution Engineering, Pfizer

Challenges and Opportunities for AI in drug discovery
Pat Walters,
Chief Data Officer, Relay Therapeutics

Panel discussion on the use of AI in drug discovery – moderated by Jan Christopherson, Application Scientist, Chemaxon
Joe Michel
Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics

Advocating Change: One Synthetic Cannabinoid at a Time
Zofia Jordan
Compound Complance Consultant, formerly of GSK

COFFEE BREAK + DEMO CORNER

Project team data visualization and decision support solutions: core requirements and must-have features Jo
John McNeil,
Life Sciences R&D Informatics Strategist

Are reaction data FAIR … and what can we do with that?
Gerd Blanke,
Chem- and bioinformatics Consultant

The World’s Largest Protein-Ligand Complex and Binding Affinity Dataset for Data Driven Methods in Drug Design
Dr. Arun Subramaniyan,
VP Cloud & AI Strategy and Execution, Inte

Closing Remarks
Dr. Arun Subramaniyan,
VP Cloud & AI Strategy and Execution, Intel

EVENING SOCIAL
GALA DINNER

Why you should attend

Understanding the evolving needs of early drug discovery

Meet the Facilitator

The virtual boardroom will be lead by our expert facilitator

Reza Sadeghi
Chief Strategy Officer BIOVIA, Dassault Systèmes

External Id First name Middle name Last name Honorific Job title Company name Photo URL Bio Position

Reza Sadeghi Chief Strategy Officer BIOVIA, Dassault Systèmes https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Reza-Sadeghi.jpg

Reza Sadeghi

More about Chemaxon

More information

Scientific curiosity, customer collaboration, and technical innovation are all part of Chemaxon’s DNA. Chemaxon was founded in 1998 by Ferenc Csizmadia. Back then, we had one simple goal: to advance science with tools that were accessible from anywhere. This goal inspired our flagship product, Marvin, which was the first chemical drawing software you could use in a browser. We have come a long way since then.https://chemaxon.com/

Further Information

Interested in attending this virtual roundtable or running your own? Drop us a message today and we will get in touch

Help me register

Create your own online workshop

Download Agenda

The post BIOVIA Virtual Boardroom – 26th April 2023 appeared first on Proventa International.

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Filip	Miljković	Associate Principal AI Scientist	AstraZeneca	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Filip-Miljkovic-1.jpg	Dr. Filip Miljković holds an MPharm degree from the University of Niš, Serbia, and a PhD degree in Computational Life Sciences from the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2020, he joined AstraZeneca, Sweden where he currently works as an Associate Principal AI Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry within the Department of Early Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism. He also maintains a close connection to academia, remaining affiliated with his former academic group at the University of Bonn, Germany, and holds a visiting researcher position at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Claire	Bellamy	Senior Manager, Product Management	Pfizer	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Claire-Bellamy.jpg	Claire is currently product manager for proteomics related systems at Pfizer and recently led projects in transcriptomics. After gaining an MBA from Loughborough University, Claire led the Pistoia Alliance HELM project which established HELM across the life science community as the preferred representation of complex biomolecules, gaining recognition by ISO and supported the EBI ChEMBL and PubChem teams to add HELM to their public datasets. Prior to this, Claire worked for AstraZeneca for 13 years as project manager or global business analyst for various projects including AZ-wide ELN implem
Nathan	Brown		Independent Consultant	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Nathan-Brown.jpg	Globally recognised as a thought-leader in cheminformatics and computational drug discovery, Nathan is the inventor of the first multi-objective de novo molecular design system, published in 2004, and has published over 50 papers and four books on the field. Nathan is the 2017 recipient of the Corwin Hansch Award – an award given by the Hansch-Fujita Foundation for significant contributions to the field of computer-aided drug design. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Societies of Chemistry, Biology, and The Arts.
John	Cumming	Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry	Roche	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/John-Cumming.jpg	John is currently Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at Roche pRED in Basel, Switzerland. He has led chemistry teams on multiple projects in several disease areas and played a leading role in the introduction of a next generation informatics environment for medicinal chemists facilitating improved data visualisation and analysis, and prediction-led compound design. He also co-organises international medicinal chemistry conferences as a member of the Fine Chemicals Group committee of the SCI.
Xin	Zhang	Senior Director of Cheminfo and Platform Integration	Cellarity	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Xin-Zhang.jpg	Xin Zhang is the Senior Director of Cheminformatics and Platform Integration at Cellarity, where he leads the development of the cheminformatics roadmap and builds platforms to leverage smallmolecule data to support lead optimization research programs. Previously, he played a key role in Scientific Computing at X-Chem, focusing on developing software tools for DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) design and advancing AI/ML strategies for DEL screening hit identification. Before X-Chem, he served as the IT Business Partner at Celgene, where he developed the R&D IT roadmap and spearheaded multiple informatics initiatives to support Celgene’s Cambridge R&D site
Sameh	Eid	Associate Scientific Director – Digital, Data, IT Healthcare	Merck	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Sameh-Eid.jpg	Sameh Eid is a trained pharmacist who earned his Ph.D. in computational drug design from the University of Basel. He then joined the BioMed X Innovation Center in Heidelberg, where he developed novel computational methods to optimize protein kinase selectivity. Since 2017, Sameh has been part of the Healthcare Digital, Data & IT team at Merck, focusing on research data systems and the integration of biologics and ADC with processing and analysis tools, including Certara D360.
Shijun	Yu	Senior Scientist, Project Lead	Roche	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Shijun-Yu.jpg	With 16+years of experience in the Roche Pharma R&D informatics, Shijun has developed a deep expertise in building end-to-end biological workflows with FAIR principles, establishing information and data models for the emerging areas, and facilitating the data integration, querying and visualization to accelerate the drug discovery. In the last five years, she managed and developed the D360 platform as the key portfolio dashboard to advance the data-driven decision-making in Roche Pharma Early Research and Development (pRED) organization, spanning cross-therapeutic areas and modalities (i.e. small molecule, oligo, biologics, and gene therapy).
Thomas	Fox	Principal Scientist Computational Chemistry	Boehringer Ingelheim	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Thomas-Fox.jpg	Thomas Fox studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, where he also completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 1993. His doctoral research focused on solvation effects on UV spectra of small organic molecules. This was followed by a postdoctoral stay at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 1993 to 1996, where he performed molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations and contributed to the AMBER forcefield development. Since 1996, Thomas has been working as a Principal Scientist in the computational chemistry group at Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach, Germany.
Miklos	Feher	Senior Director, Computational Chemistry	X-Chem	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Miklos-Feher.jpg	Dr. Miklos Feher is Senior Director of Computational Chemistry at X-Chem Inc., where he focuses on the discovery of novel drugs for challenging biological targets and the advancement of computational tools to support this mission. With over 30 years of experience leading computational chemistry teams in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Dr. Feher has made significant contributions to drug discovery, including 15 patents, several compounds in clinical development, 105 peer-reviewed publications, and two textbooks.
Gian	Marco Ghiandoni	Associate Principal AI Engineer \| Scaled AI and Chemistry (SAIC) Tech Lead	AstraZeneca	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Gian-Marco-Ghiandon.jpg	Giammy is a cheminformatics and machine learning engineer at AstraZeneca whose role is to bridge science and technology to accelerate drug discovery programs. His platform, named Augmented DMTA, develops and integrates scaled solutions across the discovery pipeline. These include chemistry services, molecular property and retrosynthesis prediction capabilities, and agentic systems.
J.	Christian Baber	Chief Portfolio Officer	The Pistoia Alliance	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Christian-Baber.jpg	Christian Baber, is a chemist by training and holds undergraduate and PhD degrees in computational chemistry with a focus on AI techniques to assess the synthetic accessibility of de novo design compounds. Christian continued this work with a post-doctoral fellowship on the automated design of targeted combinatorial libraries at the Department of Knowledge Engineering, Osaka University, Japan before moving into industry initially as a computational chemist and cheminformatician. Christian has a wide breadth of R&D experience across companies ranging from startups to large pharma with a focus on informatics and predictive modeling for drug discovery but has also managed development systems and lab & automation teams including compound management and high-throughput purification.
David	Lowis	Executive Director, Scientific Informatics	Certara	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/David-Lowis.jpg	For more than 15 years, David has spearheaded the design and development of D360, expanding from small molecule discovery into biologics and other sequence-based modalities and pre-clinical research. He is a subject matter expert for D360 deployments examining scientific data workflows for discovery, preclinical, clinical and translational science.
Matthias	Gehringer	Tübingen Professor	Eberhard Karls University	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Matthias-Gehringer.jpg	Matthias studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM; France), and the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He obtained his doctorate from the University of Tübingen (Germany) where he worked in the group of Prof. Stefan Laufer on reversible and irreversible inhibitors of the protein kinase JAK3. As a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich (with Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann), he focused on the total synthesis of complex natural products from the mycolactone family. In 2019, he was appointed as Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tübingen.
Piet	van der	SVP, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology	Certara	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Piet-van-der-Graaf.jpg	Piet van der Graaf is Senior Vice President and Head of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology at Certara and Professor of Systems Pharmacology at Leiden University. From 2013-2016 he was the Director of Research of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. From 1999-2013 he held various leadership positions at Pfizer in Discovery Biology, Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology from 2012-2018 before becoming Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
Adrian	Stevens	Chief Product Officer	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg	Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.
Robert	Aspbury	President	Certara Predictive Technologies	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Robert-Aspbury.jpg	Rob Aspbury, PhD, is the President of Certara’s Predictive Technologies. Prior to this appointment, he served as Simcyp’s Chief Operating Officer. Simcyp provides Population-based Pharmacokinetic Modeling which is used during the drug development process. These software platforms include Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), Quantitative Systems Toxicology and Safety (QSTS) and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) technology. Dr. Aspbury brings more than 17 years’ commercial and scientific leadership experience with Covance to Certara. Dr. Aspbury was appointed Global Finance Director for Covance’s Clinical Pharmacology Services Division in 2003 and was rapidly promoted within the division to Managing Director, then Vice President, Europe, and later Vice President and General Manager, Global.
Papp	Ákos	Senior Product Manager	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Papp-Akos.jpg	Ákos Papp has 30+ years of experience in cheminformatics. He joined Chemaxon in 2007 to design and lead the development Compound Registration. Today he is the Product Manager of the controlled substance detection and tariff coding systems and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Controlled Substance Compliance and Shipping Community of the Pistoia Alliance.
Richard	Jones	Senior Vice President	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg	Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.
Michael	Hofmann	Research Scientist & System Consultant	Merck KGaA	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Michael-Hoffman.jpg	1998 Master of Science in Food Chemistry, University of Hohenheim 1999 – 2001 System Consultant, IBM 2001- Research Scientist & System Consultant, Merck KGaA
Roland	Knispel	Senior Product Manager	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Roland-Knispel.jpg	Roland Knispel is responsible for the Core Cheminformatics product portfolio at Chemaxon, among others including structure representation, descriptor generation/prediction, Naming, and virtual library enumeration tools. Prior to that he worked 10+ years in various product management roles at Chemaxon, leading initiatives in both biologics and small molecule registration. He and his team contributed extensively to the Pistoia Alliance HELM project establishing HELM as a widely adopted representation for complex biomolecules.
William	McCoull	Director, Oncology Medicinal Chemistry	AstraZeneca	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/William-McCoull.jpg	Bill received his D.Phil in organic chemistry working in lab of Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin at the University of Oxford in 1996. After postdoctoral research with Prof Jeff Winkler and Prof Franklin Davis in Philadelphia he returned to the UK and joined AstraZeneca in 2000. He worked first at the Alderley Park, Macclesfield site before moving to Cambridge, UK in 2015 where he is currently a Director in Oncology chemistry.
Richard	Jones	Senior Vice President	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg	Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Mark	Buswell	Head of Digital Innovation	NGT BioPharma Consultants	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Mark-Buswell-PhD.jpg	Mark Buswell is a consultant in CMC development and digital transformation. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, an MBA from Cranfield and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Mark worked at GSK from 2002 to 2023 across R&D and IT. He is a Non-executive Director at UK Health Research Authority and leads Digital Innovation at NGT Biopharma Consultants. He serves on the ISPE PQLI Transportable and Point of Care Manufacturing team.
Marc	Smith	Lead Product Manager, Process Development	IDBS	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Marc-Smith.jpg	Marc is a Lead Product Manager for Process Development at IDBS. Prior to that role, he was a Director of Strategic Solutions, developing the enterprise-level IDBS Polar BioPharma Lifecycle Management solutions. Marc is an expert in laboratory and operational technology, laboratory informatics and system integration and leads a team of technological and domain experts committed to the development of Polar Solutions. He has over 15 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical sector implementing and leading digital solutions and strategies. Before joining IDBS in 2021, he worked at Lonza Biologics and Angel Biotechnology. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology from the University of Sunderland.
Hugh	Jarman	Principal MSAT Scientist	Touchlight	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Hugh-Jarman.jpg	Hugh Jarman is Principal MSAT Scientist at Touchlight, where he is involved in scaling and commercializing the company’s synthetic DNA platform. He has extensive experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, with a focus on process validation and technology transfer. Hugh began his career at Eli Lilly, supporting biologics commercial readiness and launch, and later joined Lonza Biologics, where he was involved in new product introduction. Throughout his career, Hugh has employed digital tools to support process monitoring and deepen process understanding. In his current role, he combines empirical and in-silico approaches to drive scale-up and improve efficiency. Hugh holds a BSc in Biotechnology with Management from Imperial College London and an MSc in Biochemical Engineering from University College London (UCL).

External	Id	First name	Middle name	Last name	Honorific	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
		David		Gosalvez, Ph.D		Chief Strategy Officer-Signals	Revvity Signals Software	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/David-Gosalvez.jpg	With 25 years of experience in scientific software and analytics, David Gosalvez brings a rare combination of technical and domain expertise with broad knowledge across scientific use cases. He is a passionate advocate for improving the efficiency and quality of science via innovative software solutions. As head of Product Strategy, David works with scientists and IT across pharma and chemical industry to set the direction of the Revvity Signals Informatics portfolio. He also works with other scientific software vendors to integrate complimentary capabilities and AI/ML models into our solutions. As Director of Cheminformatics, he was responsible for the sustained growth of ChemDraw and Spotfire Lead Discovery. Previously, David headed the interdisciplinary Science & Technology team chartered with creating the novel data management technologies that underpinned Revvity Signals platform. David also served as Executive Director of Application Development at CambridgeSoft where he brought to market the Oracle Chemistry Cartridge and ChemBioOffice Enterprise Suite.
		Dr.		Anastasia Christianson		Life Science Senior Consultant and Strategic Adviser Former SVP and Head of AI, Data, and Analytics	Pfizer	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Dr.-Anastasia-Christianson.jpg	Dr. Christianson, a Pharmaceutical AI & Data Science Pioneer, brings nearly three decades of pharmaceutical industry transformation as former SVP and Global Head of AI at Pfizer and leader at J&J, BMS, and AstraZeneca. Her unparalleled expertise spans: • Strategic AI Implementation that delivers measurable business value • Global AI Policy Leadership through White House and National Academy of Medicine engagements • Cross-Industry Innovation as advisor to biotech startups, venture capital, and global health initiatives

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Karl-Heinz	Baringhaus	Site Director R&D Frankfurt	Sanofi	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Karl-Heinz-Baringhaus.jpg	Karl-Heinz Baringhaus obtained his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Münster. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University he joined Hoechst AG in 1990 where he was working six years in Medicinal Chemistry. He then moved into Molecular Modeling and in 2000 became Head of Computational Chemistry at Aventis Pharma. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of Drug Design at Sanofi-Aventis Pharma Deutschland GmbH. In 2010 he was promoted to Head of Structure, Design & Informatics consisting of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Computer-aided Drug Design, Scientific Computing & Data Management as well as Structural Biology. Since 2012, Karl-Heinz has been R&D Site Director in Frankfurt.
Nessa	Carson	Associate Principal Scientist, Digital Champion	AstraZeneca	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Nessa-Carson.jpg	Nessa Carson received Master’s degrees in synthesis and catalysis from Oxford University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started her career as a synthetic chemist for AMRI, then moved within the company to run the high-throughput automation facility for Eli Lilly in Windlesham, working across discovery and process chemistry, then in high-throughput reaction optimization at Pfizer and then Syngenta. Nessa moved to AstraZeneca Early Chemical Development in 2022 as Digital Champion, focusing on digital transformation. She was awarded the Salters’ Institute Centenary Award for early-career chemists with the potential to make an outstanding long-term contribution to industrial chemistry.
Josef	Eiblmaier	Head of Research, Discovery and Pre-Clinical, PharmaLex	a Cencora company	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Josef-Eiblmaier.jpg	Josef Eiblmaier has more than two decades of successful commercial project and solutions experience in cheminformatics, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and in the intellectual property sector. He currently heads the Discovery, Research, and Preclinical service line at PharmaLex, a Cencora company (formerly OSTHUS). After completing his PhD in Technical Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, Josef started his career at InfoChem, where he held various positions in marketing, business development, product development and management before joining OSTHUS in 2021.
Peter	Ertl	Formerly Director of Cheminformatics, Biomedical Research	Novartis	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Peter-Ertl.jpg	Peter Ertl studied organic chemistry and received his PhD at the University of Bratislava. Then he joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel as a molecular modeler. After a merger with Sandoz to form Novartis, he became Head of the Cheminformatics group in Pharma Research, responsible for development of new methods for calculation of molecular properties and cheminformatics web tools for medicinal chemists. Peter is author of more than 130 publications covering all areas of cheminformatics and computational chemistry. His major research interests include analysis and visualization of chemical space, bioisosteric design and interactive web tools supporting the work of medicinal chemists. In the cheminformatics community Peter is known as the author of several cheminformatics algorithms that have become industry standards, including a fast fragment based method to calculate molecular polar surface area and methods to calculate synthetic accessibility or natural-products likeness of molecules.
Jeremy	Frey	Head Computational Systems Chemistry	University of Southampton	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Jeremy-Frey.jpg	Jeremy Frey is a physical and digital chemist, interested in promoting interdisciplinary research across the physical and life sciences, from laser spectroscopy and imaging, computational modeling, and digital chemical duals. He was the PI of the AI for Scientific Discovery Network and he is a co-I on the Physical Science Data Infrastructure project. For his most recent project, Jeremy is working with the Rosalind Franklin Institute to develop a laser driven high resolution soft x-ray microscope for biological imaging in the water window.
Thrasyvoulos	Karydis	Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer	DeepCure	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Thrasyvoulos-Karydis-2.jpg	Thrasyvoulos (Thras) Karydis is the CTO at DeepCure, an AI-driven biotechnology company focusing on inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Thras is leading the development of DeepCure’s groundbreaking AI platform, and he is a thought leader on computational tools and software for small molecule design and automated chemistry. He is an alumni of the Molecular Machines of MIT Media Lab and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.
Jessica	Lanini	Biomedical Research	Novartis Institutes	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Jessica-Lanini.jpg	Jessica Lanini joined the CADD group at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) as a Data Scientist in 2020. She supports MedChem project teams with machine learning and deep learning tools to accelerate DMTA cycle and compound prioritization. She has an MSc in Bioengineering from Campus Bio-medico of Rome since 2014, with a master thesis at ETH, Zurich, on robot control systems and human experiments. She earned her PhD in Intelligent Systems and Robotics at EPFL, Lausanne, in 2019, focusing on data analysis, modeling and control of bipedal physical interaction while walking.
Timur	Madzhidov	Senior Product Manager in Chemistry Innovation	Elsevier	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Timur-Madzhidov.jpg	Timur Madzhidov is a Senior Product Manager for Reaxys at Elsevier. With expertise in chemoinformatics, he is a recognized researcher and educator who has co-authored over 70 scientific publications in the fields of reaction informatics, AI application in chemistry, algorithmic chemoinformatics, and chemistry-aware machine learning. In his role at Elsevier, he leverages his experience in chemoinformatics and the application of artificial intelligence in chemistry to support the success of Reaxys users by delivering improved search and predictive capabilities, implementing new features, and enhancing the readiness of Reaxys data for AI and ML applications. Additionally, he collaborates with academic organizations to support Reaxys R&D efforts, which aim to advance reaction and molecular informatics by providing access to extensive chemistry data. Prior to joining Elsevier, Timur held academic positions in cheminformatics and molecular modeling.
Adrian	Stevens	Chief Product Officer	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg	Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.
Becky	Upton	President	Pistoia Alliance	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Becky-Upton.jpg	Becky Upton was appointed as the Pistoia Alliance’s first female President in June 2022. She is a long-time supporter of pre-competitive collaboration in life sciences and healthcare R&D and the critical role it plays in advancing science and is passionate about diversity in STEM. Becky is responsible for leading the Pistoia Alliance’s strategy and defining its future within areas of increasing importance to the industry, such as data standards, emerging technologies, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and precision medicine. Becky first engaged with the Pistoia Alliance on its Lab of the Future project whilst at VWR (now part Avantor) where she worked for over a decade in sales, business development, and scientific services. From here, she joined the scientific instrumentation and analytical services company, Pion, as Managing Director, before moving to the Alliance as a project manager. She later became Chief Portfolio Officer and within this role established the Alliance’s first and thriving Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Leadership program. Becky re-joined the Alliance as President after a return to the commercial world as a Director at Impellam Group where she led the company’s STEM services strategy. Becky has a PhD in Biochemistry from Imperial College and an MBA from Cranfield University.

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Christopher	Conway	President, Research and Development	Curia	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Chris-Conway.jpg	Chris is a seasoned business executive with a 25 year strong track record across a variety of industry verticals including aerospace, pharmaceutical/biotech and contract research, development, and manufacturing. Chris is highly experienced in P&L leadership, sales, and marketing having worked in large and small, public and private equity backed companies. Currently, Chris serves as President and R&D Business Unit Head at Curia, a global top ten organization in contract research, development and manufacturing services, serving the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Chris also currently serves as a Director on the board of two Life Sciences organizations including Viyash Life Sciences Private Limited, a Carlyle owned company, as well as the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, Inc. (DCAT). Chris received his B.S. in Marketing & Management from Siena College and his Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Dr.	Grant Carr	Vice President, Head of Global R&D Drug Discovery	Curia	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/grant-carr.jpg	Dr. Grant Carr is a 30-year biopharmaceutical discovery and development veteran with degrees from Imperial College and Oxford. He is currently the Vice President of Global R&D Discovery Services for Curia, a global contract research, development and manufacturing organization headquartered in Albany, NY. Prior to assuming his current role, Dr. Carr was the Head of Discovery Biology at Curia and Director of Screening Operations at Elitra Pharmaceuticals, a start-up focused on the identification of novel antibiotics and their mechanisms of action, ultimately acquired by Merck. Based in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Carr is a diehard Bills fan.
Douglas	Kitchen	Research Fellow, Medicinal Chemistry	Curia	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Douglas-Kitchen.jpg	Doug Kitchen obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University (Chemistry). He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Kitchen’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patents and author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters. Two of Dr.Kitchen’s inventions are now marketed drugs. He joined AMRI in 1997 to begin the computational chemistry group. Doug’s interests are in compound library design, structure-guided drug design and lead optimization. He is a co-inventor on more than 10 issued patentsand author on more than forty refereed articles and book chapters
Mark	Wolf	Director, Medicinal Chemistry	Curia	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mark-Wolf.jpg	Mark Wolf, Ph.D. is Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia and has over 27 years of drug discovery and development experience. He has led interdisciplinary scientific teams to support large pharma, biotech collaborations and Curia R&D programs. His research has spanned several therapeutic areas including oncology, CNS, pain/inflammation, and respiratory. Mark has experience establishing practical screening strategies to identify drug candidate compounds with a first-in-class or best-in-class product profile. He led Curia’s Tubulin Inhibitor Program which discovered and advancedALB-109564 into a Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of solid tumors. His CNS experience includes targets in the areas of pain management (GPCR targets) and antipsychotics based on the hypoglutamate hypothesis (GlyT1 inhibitors). Mark has extensive experience managing multiple external providers and Curia assets in support of discovery and pre clinical development programs. He is named as an inventor/co-inventor on five patents and co-author on 25 peer reviewed publications.
Matthew	Surman	Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry	Curia	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/matthew-surman.jpg	Matt Surman, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Global and has over 20 years of industry experience. He joined the Curia Medicinal Chemistry department in 2002 and worked on contract research projects spanning a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, anti-infectives and CNS disorders. From 2005 to 2011, he was part of the Curia internal Discovery Research and Development department. His efforts were focused in the area of metabolic disorders, particularly in obesity. He served as the project leader for the Curia MCH-1 antagonist program from 2008 until returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department in late 2011. During that time, the project culminated in the discovery and development of a successful Phase I clinical candidate. Since returning to the Medicinal Chemistry department, Dr. Surman has led the discovery efforts on a number of programs including projects involved in oncology, neurological disease, and pain. Multiple pre-clinical and clinical candidates have arisen from these efforts. Dr. Surman has over 40 peer reviewed publications and patent applications

First name	Last name	Job title	Company name	Photo URL	Bio Position
Patrick	Walters	Chief Data Officer, Relay Therapeutics	Relay Therapeutics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Pat-Walters.jpg	Pat will explore the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence in various drug discovery areas, highlighting emerging opportunities, and addressing open issues in the field.
Joe	Michel	Director of Informatics, Cytokinetics	Cytokinetics	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Joe-Michel.jpg	Joe will focus on how deep neural networks and generative AI are transforming molecular design, improving predictions, and enhancing the drug discovery process.
John	McNeil	CEO	Life Science R&D Informatics Strategist	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/John-McNeil.jpg	John will talk about the core requirements and must-have features of collaborative data visualization and decision support solutions in the DMTA cycle.
Zofia	Jordan	Compound Compliance Consultant	formerly of GSK	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Zofia-Jordan.jpg	Zofia will talk about how compliance aspects associated with sample management are becoming more critical due to the collaborative and globally distributed nature of research. She will showcase it through her experience working with the industry and authorities to modify the Third Generation Synthetic Cannabinoids amendment.
David	Klatte	Senior Director, Scientific Solution Engineering	Pfizer	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/David-Klatte.jpg	David will introduce ChemistryView, Pfizer’s custom developed Java component designed to simplify their legacy chemistry software systems. ChemistryView stemmed from a strong desire for the company’s often 20-years old applications to be user customizable and to have consistent tools for managing advanced stereochemistry
Dr.	Arun Subramaniyan	Vice President Cloud & AI, Strategy & Execution	Intel	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Dr-Arun-Subramaniyan.jpg	Arun will uncover a collaborative, multi-phase research project involving Intel, AWS, Insilico Medicine and IIITH with the ultimate aim of creating the world’s largest proteinligand complex and binding affinity dataset that significantly accelerates drug research and discovery timelines.
Gerd	Blanke	Technical director	StructurePendium Technologies GmbH	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gerard-Blanke.jpg	Gerd will talk about how chemical reaction data needs to comply with FAIR principles in order to be reliable, reproductible, and be used for accurate AI/ML predictions. He will address the specific challenges related to in-house chemical reaction data capturing and discuss what steps should be taken to make these databases more consistent for precise predictions.
Richard	Jones	Senior Vice President	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Richard.jpg	Richard Jones is currently SVP of Chemaxon an industry-leading cheminformatics company. Prior to joining Chemaxon Richard worked in a variety of different chemistry related companies. Richard helped found eChemicles as CEO, which develops technology that converts waste CO2 to chemicals using solar energy. He currently resides as a board member there. Before eChemicles, Richard worked for ThalesNano in a variety of positions from Head of Chemistry to CEO helping to develop the R&D 100 Award winning products as well as implementing their Lab of the Future strategy. Richard has also worked as CEO for InnoStudio, a scientific incubator company, helping to develop nanoformulation technology that reduces pesticide application by over 20 times.
Adrian	Stevens	Chief Product Officer	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Adrian-Stevens-1.jpg	Adrian Stevens joined Chemaxon as Chief Product Officer in 2022. Adrian has spent approximately 15 years working in Life Sciences software companies, in product management roles for most of his time. As a computational chemist at BioFocus PLC, over the course of nearly 10 years, he supported a wide range of areas in therapeutic research, from oncology, metabolic diseases, autoimmune and pain-based medicines. During this time, he specialized in designing small molecule drugs that targeted protein kinases and GPCR proteins, leading to a number of scientific publications and patents. Adrian has a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Portsmouth.
Jan	Christopherson	Application Scientist	Chemaxon	https://proventainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/avatar.jpg

R&D Archives - Proventa International

Morpho | Alfasigma – Driving Speed and Quality in Pharma Manufacturing: Strategies for Flexible, Data-Driven Development

Driving Speed and Quality in Pharma Manufacturing: Strategies for Flexible, Data-Driven Development

Alfasigma Pomezia Site, Italy

Inside Alfasigma’s Integrated CDMO Model Accelerating Pharma & Biotech Development

Why you should attend

Our Agenda

Registration & Refreshments

Opening Presentation

SITE TOUR

Roundtable Discussion Group Optimizing Formulation and Drug Delivery for Complex Therapies

Networking Lunch

SITE TOUR

Afternoon Break

Roundtable Discussion Group Driving Operational Efficiency Through Digitalization and Data Integration

Closing Presentation

Our Speakers

Rocco Paracchini

Jurgen Mensch

Giuseppe Massa

Giovanni Berducci

Register Now

More about Morpho | Alfasigma

Further Information

Here To Help

Certara | Chemaxon – From small molecules to sequences: prepare for a new discovery landscape

From Small Molecules to Sequences: Prepare For a New Discovery Landscape

Design Offices Frankfurt Wiesenhüttenplatz, Germany

Why you should attend

Our Agenda

Day 1 – Tuesday, 4th November 2025

Registration & Coffee Break

Welcome Robert Aspbury, President, Certara Predictive Technologies

From Small Molecules to Sequences: Expanding the Informatics Landscape Adrian Stevens, Chief Product Officer, Chemaxon

Molecular Design Platforms: Integrating Chemists, Biologists, and Machines Nathan Brown, Independent Consultant

One Ring to Rule Them All? The Challenges of Macrocyclic Peptide Drug Design John Cumming, Expert Scientist and Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry, Roche

Biomolecular representation in the real world: HELM and complex polymers Claire Bellamy, Senior Manager, Product Management, Pfizer

Modeling a (new) Modality: Computational Tools to Support Peptide Projects Thomas Fox, Principal Scientist Computational Chemistry, Boehringer Ingelheim

Lunch & Tech Corner

Day 1 – Afternoon Session From 2pm

Scientific Informatics Challenges in the Changing Discovery Landscape J. Christian Baber, Chief Portfolio Officer, The Pistoia Alliance

Gaining Molecular Insights from DEL Data through Pharmacophores Miklós Fehér, Senior Director, Computational Chemistry, X-Chem

Closing the Design-Make-Test-Analyze Loop: Interplay Between Experiments and Predictions Drives PROTACs Bioavailability Filip Miljković, Associate Principal AI Scientist, AstraZeneca

Warhead Chemistry for Targeted Covalent Inhibitors: Present Insights, Future Prospects Matthias Gehringer, Tübingen Professor, Eberhard Karls University

Drinks & Tech Corner

Gala Dinner

Day 2 – Wednesday, 5th November 2025

Registration & Coffee Break

Enabling AI-driven Modeling and Simulation-based Decision making in Discovery Towards Increased Clinical Drug Candidate Success Robert Aspbury, President, Certara Predictive Technologies

Aligning the early-stage discovery strategies across Chemaxon and Certara David Lowis, Executive Director, Scientific Informatics, Certara / Adrian Stevens, Chief Product Officer, Chemaxon

Recent use of D360 at AstraZeneca and expanding beyond small molecules William McCoull, Director, Oncology Medicinal Chemistry, AstraZeneca

Design, Collaborate, Predict: A Unified Approach to Discovery Xin Zhang, Senior Director of Cheminfo and Platform Integration, Cellarity

Empowering Research: D360 Integration in NBE and ADC Discovery at Merck Sameh Eid, Associate Scientific Director – Digital, Data, IT Healthcare, Merck

Lunch & Tech Corner

Day 2 – Afternoon Session From 2pm

Turning rAAV Data into Insight: An Informatics Solution for Molecule Design, Developability, and Cross-Project Learning Shijun Yu, Senior Scientist, Project Lead, Roche

Modernizing Compound Registration – Three years in: Progress, Lessons, and What’s next Xin Zhang, Senior Director of Cheminfo and Platform Integration, Cellarity

Compound Registration as a Data Quality Gateway: Evolving for Multi-Modality Support Roland Knispel, Senior Product Manager, Chemaxon

Compliance? Anywhere, anytime: Automated controlled substance detection and tariff classification at Merck KGaA Michael Hofmann, Research Scientist & System Consultant, Merck KGaA Ákos Papp, Senior Product Manager, Chemaxon

Integrating Artificial Intelligence into the Drug Discovery Pipeline Gian Marco Ghiandoni, Associate Principal AI Engineer | Scaled AI and Chemistry (SAIC) Tech Lead, AstraZeneca

Early feasibility assessment: using biosimulation to guide design and prioritization in early discovery Piet van der Graaf, Senior Vice President, Quantitative Systems Pharmacology, Certara

Program Ends

Our Speakers

Filip Miljković

Claire Bellamy

Nathan Brown

John Cumming

Xin Zhang

Sameh Eid

Shijun Yu

Thomas Fox

Miklos Feher

Gian Marco Ghiandoni

J. Christian Baber

David Lowis

Matthias Gehringer

Piet van der Graaf

Adrian Stevens

Robert Aspbury

Papp Ákos

From Small Molecules to Sequences:
Prepare For a New Discovery Landscape

Compliance? Anywhere, anytime: Automated controlled substance detection and tariff classification at Merck KGaA Michael Hofmann, Research Scientist & System Consultant, Merck KGaA
Ákos Papp, Senior Product Manager, Chemaxon

Accelerating Time to Market:
Enhancing Process Efficiencies with Digital Intelligence

AI with Purpose:
Strategy-First Innovation Across Drug Discovery