Rita is Director of External Innovation for Oncology at Roche Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development. In her role she provides scientific evaluation of external opportunities for Oncology, leading the initial evaluations and interacting with cross functional lines to identify the most promising opportunities to pursue. She joined Roche as a Post-Doc in 2009 in the Oncology Discovery department and became a group leader in the same department in 2012, during which time she was pre-clinical leader of several portfolio projects, work which has granted a nomination for the Roche High Talent Pool. Rita holds a PhD in Human Biology by the Medical Faculty of the University of Porto and graduated in Biology at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon in 2002. Since early days she felt compelled to study cancer, reason why she joined the Portuguese Institute for Oncology in Lisbon for the degree’s final internship, and afterwards joined the team of Prof. Raquel Seruca at IPATIMUP in 2002. In 2004 Rita was awarded a 1-year Marie Curie fellowship, followed by a PhD fellowship from the Portuguese FCT to develop her PhD in collaboration between the University of Porto and the Technical University of Munich.  

Alexander Scheer has more than 20 years of experience in R&D and the life science industry both in Pharma and Biotech. Prior to joining ERYTECH as Chief Scientific Officer in 2016, he was the Head of Research at Pierre Fabre in France, focused primarily on oncology and central nervous system research. Before, Dr. Scheer served as a Director, Global Research Informatics & Knowledge Management R&D and Project Leader, Neglected Diseases at Merck Serono in Switzerland where he led Merck’s program to develop drugs for neglected diseases in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). At Serono, he served as Head of Molecular Screening and Cellular Pharmacology Department. Before joining industry, he was assistant professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Dr. Scheer holds M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Gottingen and a Ph.D from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg

James Matcham joined AstraZeneca in November 2013 as the Head of Early Clinical Development Biometrics, where he built the group specialising in early clinical trial design, decisions and analysis. He now leads the Early Biometrics and Statistical Innovation team. He started his career as a Research Fellow at the Applied Statistics Research Unit at the University of Kent, UK working for 5 years in various applications of statistics but particularly in the area of clinical cross-over trials, linear and non-linear modelling and Bayesian methods.  He then completed 21 years at Amgen where he worked on the development and regulatory/reimbursement approval of many of their biotechnology products, representing the company at regulatory submissions in the US and the EU. His last few years there were spent working to improve literature review, the use of adaptive and early phase design, network meta-analysis, Bayesian methods and quantitative decision making.

James is a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society has been a member of UK society for Pharmaceutical Statisticians (PSI) for over 30 years, serving on the Scientific and Training Committees as well as the Board of Directors. He has also served on the Professional Affairs Committee of the Royal Statistical Society and the Scientific Committee of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Statisticians.

Dr. Alexander Krupp heads the department “Computational Life Science IT” for Research, Development, Drug Safety and Medical Affairs of Bayer Pharmaceuticals. His department focuses on integrating information across the value chain and on improving scientific and managerial insight generation by advanced analytics.

Dr. Krupp is passionate about bringing digital innovation to the pharmaceutical industry to enable the invention of novel medicines that will benefit millions of patients. His recent activities have comprised the creation of an architecture competency cluster, digital strategy definition as well as the introduction of processes and governance bodies to achieve this company goal.

Prior to his current position, he has consulted clients in the LifeScience industry in strategy, business process redesign, digital transformation, value stream analyses, carve out and portfolio optimization. Dr. Krupp holds a M.Sc. in Biochemistry and a PhD in Neuroscience. Beyond his technology background, his scientific expertise is focused on oncogenic signaling and growth factor receptor signaling as well as neurophysiology and the molecular basis for learning and memory.

Pieter Peeters is heading the European computational biology team in Discovery Sciences at Janssen Research & Development. His group is aiding the drug discovery and development teams in Janssen R&D in their search for novel safe and effective drugs by applying both computational as well as wet lab ‘omics approaches. The team is involved data and high content imaging based approaches aiming at comprehensive understanding of drug action.    

Pieter obtained his Ph.D. in Applied Biological Sciences (medical molecular biology) at the Center for Human Genetics from the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium and graduated as a bioengineering (gene and cell technology and interface chemistry) at the same university. During his PhD he studied the role of the ETS-variant gene 6 (ETV6) in different mechanisms for leukemogenesis. This research into the molecular causes of leukemia demonstrated for the first time a role for the JAK2 kinase in the etiology of myeloproliferative neoplasms and leukemias.

Pieter has been the Janssen lead for the ExaScience life lab, a collaborative effort between Intel, IMEC the 5 Flemish Universities and Janssen with the aim of expediting R&D in healthcare by applying high performance computing approaches. In addition, he was the Janssen lead for the Innovative Medicine Initiative project on the application of inducible pluripotent stem cells in drug discovery and drug safety testing (StemBANCC). Currently, his team is utilizing single cell analytical capabilities to enable the exploitation of the immune system for disease monitoring, interception and immunomodulation as well as advanced analytics and machine learning methods to for both evaluating and designing small molecules  expediting drug discovery.

Benoît has an IT Master Degree from the University of Technology of Compiegne (France) and has more than 25 years’ experience leading various digitalization projects to improve and streamline the clinical research process. Before joining Roche, Benoît created and managed the startup NovaXon that provided solutions to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals to collect clinical data. Previously he worked for Medtronic in a special innovation department to explore new therapies with active medical devices. Most recently, he took the position of Roche representative in the industry collaboration EHR4CR and became a strong advocate both internally and externally of the potential of hospital real world data to support medical research. In parallel Benoît, is leading several innovation proposals to address some of the common challenges observed in precision medicine.

Prof Theo F. Meert is head of the R&D Global Government Grant office (G3O) of J&J. He is also a professor and scientific advisor/researcher at different universities: Leuven, Antwerp, Brussels, Hasselt and Ghent.

During his career at J&J that started in 1981, Dr. Meert has been appointed to multiple international global functions. Within his various functions, he guided different multidisciplinary research teams in the field of CNS (Psychiatry - Addiction - Pain -Neurology/ Alzheimer). The activities of these groups covered the complete drug discovery process from early drug candidate selection to POC and further clinical testing. He was a key driver for several advanced projects in the CNS area leading to marketed drugs. Dr. Meert also supports some Full Development products and is involved in the scientific support of novel and marketed products. Dr. Meert has constructed an extensive network within J&J and external scientific and clinical organizations. He has also built an external network of external partnership initiatives and was instrumental in various novel external innovation models.

Dr. Meert’s scientific expertise is reflected in multiple patents (>15), publications (> 243), congress communications (> 200) and invited lectures (>190). Dr. Meert obtained a Ph.D. in psychopharmacology in Experimental Psychology at the University of Brussels (1986) and a Ph.D. in Medicine/Anesthesiology at the University of Antwerp (1994).

Elke Dittrich-Wengenroth, Ph.D., is heading the function External Innovation Therapeutics at Bayer, Pharmaceuticals Division, as Vice President since October 2014. The R&D function’s mission is to ensure early access to breakthrough innovation to enable a sustainable, value-creating pipeline of innovative products by fostering external partnerships based on scientific excellence, mutual trust and successful alliance management.

Before she hold the position of a Global Program Head within Drug Discovery at Bayer HealthCare leading global, cross‐functional teams from preclinical development up to clinical Proof of Concept in different therapeutic areas e.g. Cardiology, Hematology, Ophthalmology and Gynecological Therapies.

Elke is a biologist by training and received her Ph.D. from the Rheinisch-Westfälische-Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany. She started at Bayer R&D as a Lab‐Head identifiying new targets and lead compounds in cardiovascular indication areas. During that time she was also responsible for lead optimization project teams, optimizing first lead structures up to the identification of a clinical development candidate.

David Ruau, PhD. is the global Head of Decision Science at Bayer Pharmaceuticals working across all business functions. David is an experienced leader in data science, quantitative biomedical and pharmaceutical research with 15+ years experience in various research area of bioinformatics and biomedical research.

Joerg is leading the Data Science Team in the Pharmacokinetics Sciences section within Translation Medicine. He is a physico-chemist by training and has gained broad experience in supporting project teams during lead optimization. During his career in pharmaceutical industry, he worked on solid-state characterization, formulation support for PK and toxicological studies, determination of physico-chemical parameters and various ADME properties. He represented ADME and PK sciences in various project teams in discovery phase and got involved in data science and modeling due to his interest in ADME property models and PBPK predictions.

Abel joined Bayer July 2017, as head of IT for the Pharma division and member of Bayer Group IT Board.
Before joining Bayer, Abel was Global CIO,  Sandoz Division (Generics, 2012-) as well as head of IT for Novartis Technical Operations (~85 plants) looking after manufacturing, supply chain and quality (2015-) and member of the Novatis IT Board. In sum, Abel has ran IT at Big Pharma for over ten years.
Positions prior to Novartis include Cemex (CIO Europe-Asia from Madrid),  Dell (General Manager, Mexico, and Supply Chain, Latin America) and Boston Consulting Group (Principal, Monterrey and Dallas offices).  He holds a degree in electronics engineering from Tec de Monterrey, Mexico, and an MBA and Public Management degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Abel is married and has two children, young men who keep him on his toes. He enjoys sports like competitive rowing and swimming, loves the outdoors and is a lousy golfer.

Michael joined Roche in September 2018 as an ML/AI Lead. In this role, he is responsible for driving the Lab Automation. Before joining Roche, Michael worked already as consultant for Roche and also for other companies with a particular focus on data integration.

Liam is a founding Director at Tecrea Ltd. Liam’s first post graduate employment was within wineries and breweries, where he developed a passion for microbiology. He next completed a PhD in Canada on yeast genetics and then postdoctoral training at the Department of Cell and Molecular Medicine at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen. Liam was next a group leader at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Liam is now a Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology and Dean for Innovation at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. Liam sits on several scientific advisory and strategy boards.  His research and innovation interests include nanomedicine, antimicrobials, antimicrobial resistance and cellular delivery technologies.

Dr. Hoflack is the CSO/COO of Oncodesign S.A., a France based biotechnology company, with over 32 years’ experience in the field of Drug Discovery and Development in international companies. Jan moved into the small life science company world after 22 years as a senior executive in major pharma companies (Sanofi, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson). He is a strong believer in the open innovation model, based on productive partnerships that combine the strengths of "big pharma" and small innovation companies. As creator of the Nanocyclix medicinal chemistry platform for next generation macrocyclic kinase inhibitors, Dr Hoflack initiated multiple international collaborations around Oncodesign’s probe based drug discovery process. Following Oncodesign’s IPO in 2014, the company is  advancing a number of internal programs on unexplored and intractable kinases with high potential in oncology, neurology and inflammatory diseases. In 2016 these programs were strongly accelerated following the acquisition of a former GSK R&D site in Paris, France. Oncodesign is now established as a leader in next generation kinase inhibitors, and as an emerging and sustainable biopharmaceutical company.

Dr. John Castle is Associate Vice President, Head of Translational Sciences, at Agenus, Inc. Dr. Castle has deep expertise in biomarkers and therapy development using computational immunology, bioinformatics, biotechnology, and genomics. Having built translational bioinformatics and genomics units focused on immunotherapies, Dr. Castle pioneered the computational approach to neoantigen identification for anti-tumor immunity. His bioinformatics approach has revolutionized neoantigen vaccine platforms and is used for TCR target selection and response biomarkers. Prior to joining Agenus, he served as associate director at Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck & Co. and subsequently as the co-director at the Biomarker Development Center of Translational Oncology at the University of Mainz, Germany. Dr. Castle was the director of bioinformatics at BioNTech AG (DE). Dr. Castle studied physics at Rice University (U.S.), in Göttingen (DE) , and in Canberra (Fulbright to AUS) and received a Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Born in Berlin. Graduate IT on Technical University of Berlin.
Experienced Technology Leader in setup of corporate digital technology innovation teams with the entrepreneur mindset (“act as a growth accelerator by proactively utilize modern technologies to implement new business models) for different industries such as healthcare, automotive, airspace and industry.

Hobbies: Soccer trainer and compose music on piano

Career Path:

CIO & Senior Vice President, Paul HARTMANN AG (actual role since January 2017)
Business Technology Leader EMEA, Johnson & Johnson (2015 - 2017)
Global IT Director, Trelleborg (2011 - 2015)
Head of IT, Sonova Holding (2008 – 2011)
Head of IT Europe, Sonic Innovation (2003 – 2008)

Nazar has been within Siemens since more than 15 years, with strong professional background in R&D, technology and digitalization strategy, realization of digital agenda, strategic innovations on corporate level, industrial and healthcare IT, innovation program management.

His current position is Global Head of Technology & Innovation Management within company CTO organization. He used to work several years until 2015 for Siemens Corporate Technology within Strategic Marketing&Visioning as Project Director with focus on strategic innovation management and future visions.

Between 2003 and 2009 he was Head of SW development within Medical Electronics and Imaging Solutions at Siemens Healthcare in Germany. He started his carrier earlier at Siemens Medical Solutions in Sweden as Technical Project Manager for Angiography systems for cardiology and neurology applications.

He holds a Ph.D. degree in Engineering / Automated systems and an MBA in General Management.

Jeremy Everett is the Professor of Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Greenwich UK. In addition, he is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College and at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also a Scientific Consultant.

He previously held a variety of global drug discovery technology leadership positions for Pfizer and SmithKline Beecham, including responsibility for drug target analysis, drug design, drug lead generation, analytical sciences, biobanking, screening file management, high throughput screening (HTS), and structural biology. He is a consultant on drug discovery and on pharmaceutical patent litigation.

Jeremy conducts research in metabonomics and pharmaco-metabonomics, in which he has worked for over 30 years, including co-naming and defining both areas. He is a co-discoverer of pharmacometabonomics. Current work is focused on genotype – metabotype correlations in the areas of obesity and ageing.

Jeremy received both his BSc and PhD in chemistry from Nottingham University, UK. He did post-doctoral studies at McMaster University and at McGill University in Canada.

Jeremy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Chartered Chemist, a Member of the American Chemical Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is an author or co-author on 99 peer-reviewed publications and several patents, with over 4,400 citations to date and an h-index of 29. He has delivered over 60 invited lectures.

Hide performed post-doctoral training in molecular evolution at the University of Texas in Houston with Wen Hsuing Li, also at Baylor College of Medicine at Human Genome Centre with Richard Gibbs and also at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. His first paper, published in Nature, was a controversial analysis of rodent evolution - using molecular phylogenetics he questioned the membership of guinea-pigs in the rodentia.

His career began as a director of genomics at MasPar high performance computer corporation in Silicon Valley, California. Returning to South Africa to found and direct the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) at the University of Western Cape in 1996, he established the first PhD programme in Bioinformatics in Africa and is a founder of the African Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and was the first African on the board of the International Society of Computational Biology. At SANBI he founded the Medical Research Council Unit for Bioinformatics Capacity Development and established the WHO regional Training Center for bioinformatics. An author of the National Biotechnology Strategy for South Africa he founded the South African National Bioinformatics Network. Focusing on the development of Africa’s peoples he is a founder member of the steering committee that established the NIH-Wellcome Trust funded Pan African H3 Africa Genome Initiative. Together with a group from the World Health Organisation, Yale University, and the UK Sanger Center he established the International Glossina Genome Initiative in 2005 which culminated in the publication of the Tsetse Fly genome in 2014.

Hide has been recognised for these activities by receipt of the first International Society for Computational Biology award for outstanding achievement.

As Associate Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health he has led development of personal genomics approaches to public health and directed the Center for Health Bioinformatics. Hide developed the bioinformatics strategy for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and was Director of its Center for Stem Cell Bioinformatics where he built a science commons for data sharing and integration.

After 4 years as Chair in Computational Biology at the University of Sheffield Institute for Translational Neurosciences where he drove of systems approaches to genome medicine as Director of the Centre for Genome Translation, Hide has recently returned to Harvard.

His research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center now addresses systems biology of RNA medicine to deliver clinical translation of genomics for application to repurposing of drugs, to determine prioritised drug targets and to deliver prediction to predisposition to disease. He uses standardized approaches to discovery in complex neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Hide directs the bioinformatics for the Alzhiemer’s Genome Project  (Cure Alzhiemer’s Foundation) where he has built the computational infrastructure for, and analyzed 1400 whole genome sequences from patients with the disease and is a driving member of the CureAD CIRCUITS consortium, a group made up of scientists from Harvard, MIT and UCSF funded by the Cure Alzhiemer’s Foundation to determine the regulatory processes that go awry in Alzheimer’s.

Honours: Hide has received the South African National Research Foundation Presidents’ award, the Oppenheimer Trust Sabbatical Award and the first International Society for Computational Biology; Outstanding Achievement award.

Academies: Elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Michel Goldman (born 1 January 1955) is a Belgian medical doctor specialized in immunology and internal medicine. He is the Founder and  co-Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation in healthcare and a Professor of immunology at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

He was the first Executive Director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI), from 2009 to 2014. With a €2 billion budget provided jointly by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and the European Commission, he was responsible for 59 public-private consortia in areas of major importance, including antimicrobial resistance, Alzheimer's dementia, autism, diabetes, immuno-inflammatory disorders, chronic pulmonary diseases and drug safety. During his mandate, he established privileged contacts with major European academic centers as well as large pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies active in healthcare worldwide.

From 1990 to 2008, he was the Director of the Department of Immunology-Hematology-Transfusion at the Erasme Hospital in Brussels and from 2009 to 2014 he serves as the first Director of the Institute for Medical Immunology at ULB.

Besides his academic duties, Michel Goldman is the Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Medicine, a Senior Fellow of Fastercures, a branch of the Milken Institute, a member of the Board of the European Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, of the Scientific Board of the Quebec - Clinical Research Organization in Cancer (Q-CROC), and of the Governing Board of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

Michel Goldman’s scientific achievements resulted in more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals and the Thomson Institute recognized him as ISI Highly Cited Scientist for Scientific Information. In 1992, he shared the Lucien Steinberg Prize with Pr. Peter Piot. In 2000, he was the laureate of the Quinquennial Prize of the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research for Clinical Sciences. He held in 2001 the Spinoza chair at the University of Amsterdam. In 2007, Michel Goldman was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Université of Lille.

Loubna is an AI and ML expert as well as Founder and CEO of OKRA Technologies. Loubna is currently a member of the European Union High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, where she is particularly focused on healthcare and achieving competitive business impact with AI. She was named an MIT Technology Review Top Innovator Under 35, a Forbes 50 Top Women In Tech, and recently won the prize for Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards. 

As lead for Health and Life Sciences, Elena is responsible to drive strategy, advance the digital transformation agenda with health and pharma customers, and represent Microsoft’s industry position, working together with a community of over 250+ professionals across the EMEA region.

Over the last ten years, Elena has been a proactive contributor in the areas of healthcare policy, health-tech innovation, and multi-stakeholder partnerships.  In July 2017, Elena was elected to the HIMSS Europe Governing Council.

Elena spearheaded key initiatives on Health 4.0 and health digital transformation.  Mobilizing a core group of industry stakeholders, Elena started the European Cloud in Health Advisory Council, a vendor-neutral C-level forum aimed to foster cloud-first innovation in the health sector. The Council promoted two Calls to Action: one on Health Data Saving Lives and Protecting Patients’ Rights (eHealth Week 2017); and Trust in the Cloud, leading with cloud-first policies (eHealth Week 2016).

In 2013, working with a group of leading e-Health partners, Elena led two industry-wide go to market and advocacy positions on innovative health services; the Manifesto for a Healthier Europe and Healthier Cities.

From 2007-2012, Elena held the role of Senior Director Health and Education Policy in Europe, when she led the creation of the Employability Alliance aimed to empower 20 Mil people with Skills for New Jobs.

Elena started at Microsoft in February 2003 as Director of Corporate Affairs and Corporate Responsibility with the task to define Microsoft CSR strategy and corporate philanthropy programs.  She is the co-founder and Board Member of the Women in Leadership (WiL) Network, a joint effort between Microsoft, INSEAD and the Women Forum.

Before joining Microsoft, Elena worked for CSR Europe as Director of Corporate Programs - in charge of stakeholder engagement and CSR initiatives across member companies; actively contributing to the development of the CSR agenda at international level.  Elena co-founded the European Academy of Business in Society where she served as interim Executive Director.

Elena is part and founding member of the Centre for Evolutionary Learning CEL, a network of academic and management professionals devoted to empowering organizational and executive development through meditation and innovative learning practices.

Grazia Frontoso is a Data Analytics Specialist at Google Cloud in charge of supporting enterprise customers in Switzerland in digital transformation and Big Data analytics for the healthcare & life science sector. Before joining Google, she worked for several years as Software Product manager in risk management designing cloud solutions for regulated industries. She holds a PhD in physics and is passionate about the transformational power of technology.

Sam recently finished his PhD at Imperial College London and the Institute of cancer research, under the supervision of Prof. Robert Glen an early pioneer of chemoinformatics, and Dr. Chris Bakal a leader in high-content screening. Over this period Sam used novel machine learning methods to answer questions in biology and drug discovery, publishing 12 times over a 4-year period, and winning industry led competitions. During this time, he also organized conferences in the field and met Oren Kraus, his co-founder at Phenomic AI and one of the first researchers to use deep-learning on biological data. Together they set-up Phenomic AI an early stage biotech, based in Toronto, backed by $2.25m in Silicon Valley and Canadian VC funding, and with >$1m in industry contracts. Phenomic is now racing to commercialize a platform for high-content screening of therapeutic Ab, that integrates wet-lab automation with state-of-the-art analysis techniques. 

Brian joined Horizon in August 2012 as a Business Development Manager and was promoted to Global Head of Strategy during 2018. In this role, he is responsible for driving strategic development and execution across the Horizon business. He works closely with other functions to analyse and impact the wider Horizon opportunity in order to build value more effectively.

Before joining Horizon, Brian worked successfully in a number of commercial and licensing roles with a particular focus on gene editing, bioproduction and next generation sequencing. Prior to moving to industry, he gained a first class honours degree from the University of Glasgow and a PhD from Leeds University.