Sebastian Schlicker, Head, Biologics Business Operations, Genedata AG

Sebastian Schlicker has more than 15 years of experience in managing pharma R&D IT projects, specializing in the implementation of global enterprise software solutions for large molecule R&D. As the director of Genedata’s Biologics business, Sebastian oversees all major consulting and deployment projects globally. Currently based in Basel, Switzerland, Sebastian previously worked out of the Genedata Boston office, where he helped to build Genedata’s biopharma business in the US. Among his many responsibilities, he led implementation and customization projects for major US biopharma companies. Before joining Genedata, Sebastian worked at Sanofi, where he managed the implementation of new R&D platforms in both small- and large-molecule R&D, covering the complete project life-cycle and resulting in integrated and harmonized enterprise solutions used by scientists around the globe. Sebastian holds a degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany.

Monica Wang, PhD, Principal Technology Lead, Scientific Informatics, Takeda

Monica currently leads the Biology (including Biologics) Capabilities and Products in Takeda Scientific Informatics. She comes with multidiscipline education with PhD in Biochemistry and MSc in Software Engineering. She has 8+ years of experience in academic research and 15+ years of experience in Research Informatics in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. She is good at strategic planning with proven successful track records of managing complicated global enterprise informatics projects. She has delivered many informatics projects/programs within time and budget for many departments (Global Biologics, Molecular Pathology, Protein Science, Biotherapeutics, Translational Medicine and Legal IP, et al). She is technically and scientifically proficient in Bioinformatics, Cheminformatics, Functional Genomics, and Pharmacogenomics. Her team has designed and implemented many global enterprise informatics solutions to support biologics research, biomarker discovery, translational research and personalized medicine. Her recent focus is concentrated on building a state-of-art Global Biologics Platform to support the global biologics R&D research in Oncology, GI and CNS across Takeda.

Lijuan Li, Senior Staff Engineer (CMC) in Process Modeling, Process Strategy and Development Support, Takeda

Lijuan Li is a senior staff engineer in Biologics Process Development at Takeda. Lijuan is leading the innovation in multiscale modelling, ranging from molecular to plant scales, to facilitate process development. Lijuan received her PhD in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a focus on efficient methods development to characterize protein surface hydrophobicity and their application toward the rational design of antibodies against Alzheimer’s disease. She also has strong expertise in process systems engineering, especially on process economic modelling and process network design at equipment and plant levels. Before joining Takeda, Lijuan worked for Bristol Myers Squibb for 3 years, where she helped implement the first real-time modeling system with integration to MES systems to monitor and optimize the resources across multiple Biologics manufacturing.

John Boles, Business Technology Leader, Janssen Biotherapeutics

Over 25 years of experience leading software initiatives for the life sciences and financial industries. Leveraging cost effective, open source software, cloud computing and innovative solutions for Janssen as we work towards a world without disease. AFAA certified Group Fitness Instructor (GFI).

Jay Randazzo, Digital Service Owner, Large Molecule Research, Sanofi

Jay started his career with Sanofi over 16 years ago. He was initially responsible for supporting a wide array of business systems including some R&D applications. Later, he moved onto the End User Services group as a Business Process Analyst and then an Operations Manager in the Collaboration and Content Management space. He spent 5 years as a Service Delivery Lead for the Digital Archiving team. In 2020, Jay joined the Molecule Design Service Line and is currently the Digital Product Owner for Large Molecule Research.

Yves Fomekong Nanfack, Director, Head of Operations Digital Biologics Platform, Sanofi

As the Head of Operations, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack is responsible for overseeing daily project operations in digital foundational activities and digital innovation. He is managing the implementation of global DBxP digital policies and strategy impacting an organization of ~550 FTEs. Dr. Fomekong Nanfack has more than 14 years of experience, having served various roles at EMD Serono, a pharmaceutical company, and a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Dr. Fomekong Nanfack led the Structural and Digital Drug Discovery Group, an interdisciplinary team of scientists built around a core of experts to drive drug discovery of small molecules and biologics. He has driven the digital transformation of EMD Serono for large molecules by incorporating more data analytics and mining platforms as well as AI/ML and predictive models. Prior to joining EMD Serono, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack was in Geneva, Switzerland at Merck Serono, where he held a Computational Biologist position focused on antibody engineering and bioinformatics for molecular biology. In his early professional years, prior to joining the pharma industry, Dr. Fomekong Nanfack worked in image processing and computational finance. After earning a Diploma in computer science and mathematics from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Dr. Fomekong Nanfack completed his PhD in computational biology, with a focus on systems biology at the Universität van Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

Jason Necaise, Applications Developer, D-Wave Systems

Shane Corder, Senior Scientific Consultant, Engineering, BioTeam, Inc.

Shane is a Senior Scientific Consultant for BioTeam, specializing in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Storage. He has worked in the HPC industry designing, implementing, and managing systems for over 17 years in various technical positions ranging from Systems Architect to Research Computing Manager. Shane's expertise in HPC and storage helped achieve the world's first 48-hour and later 26-hour whole-genome sequencing pipelines, to improve the outcome for critically ill children.

Brian Martin, Head of AI, R&D Information Research, Research Fellow, AbbVie, Inc.

Brian joined AbbVie in October of 2018 as the head of the newly formed RAIDERS team within Research & Development’s Information Research division, focused on accelerating, scaling, and amplifying the work of AbbVie’s R&D community using Artificial Intelligence technologies like machine learning, deep learning, and cognitive computing. Brian came to AbbVie after spending five years in technology consulting across many industries, and over a decade of additional experience before that working in trading and financial markets technology. During his consulting time, Brian architected the United States’ Common Securitization Platform and was a founding member of Publicis.Sapient’s AI practice. While his primary focus is AI technologies, his interests are much broader, and he has presented at multiple conferences on topics including optical networking, quantum computing, blockchain, cognitive architecture, and other emerging technology concepts that are all part of digital transformation. Brian holds a BS degree in Computer and Cognitive Science from Alma College and a MS in Computer Science from the University of Chicago. He is actively involved with technology incubator programs at Mundelein and Lake Forest High Schools, the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School, and is a member of the Education Committee for District 115’s Board of Education.

Brandon Patton, Director, Network Services, BioTeam, Inc.

After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Telecommunications Engineering Technology, Brandon began his career working for Cisco Systems where he focused on supporting routing and switching technologies for enterprise and service provider customers. He later moved into a consulting role which included designing, implementing, and testing custom solutions. After leaving Cisco, Brandon went to Biogen where he would become team lead of the Global Network Services Operations & Engineering team. Among other things, he led a redesign and expansion of the dedicated R&D network infrastructure to provide high-speed connectivity for lab equipment, increased aggregate backbone bandwidth, and hybrid cloud connectivity across dedicated circuits and Internet2. In his current role, Brandon leads the networking practice at BioTeam where he assists customers with developing network strategies, designing scalable high-speed data networks, and implementing network solutions that enable scientific research.

 Brandon lives in Cary, NC with his wife Kia and children Bryson and Sydney.

Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Executive Director, Globus, University of Chicago

Rachana Ananthakrishnan is Executive Director & Head of Products at the University of Chicago, and has a Joint Staff Appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. In her role at the university, she leads Globus (www.globus.org) department, which delivers research data management services and platform to national and international research institutions. She also serves on the WestGrid Board of Directors, and is a member of the InCommon Community Assurance and Trust Board. Her work is focused on research and education field, and she has worked on security and data management solutions on various projects including Earth System Grid (ESG), Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) and Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). Prior to that she worked on the Globus Toolkit engineering team and customer engagement teams, leading the efforts in web services and security technologies. Rachana received her MS in Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Brigitte E. Raumann, Product Manager, Globus, University of Chicago

Brigitte Raumann is a Product Manager at Globus and led the effort to enable Globus support for management of protected research data, including PHI and CUI. As the Globus Privacy Officer, she continues to oversee the Globus compliance program and incident investigations. Brigitte has focused her career on providing researchers with the software tools and data they require to advance discovery. Her decades of experience span sectors as diverse as biotech, publishing, patent law, and academic clinical research. Brigitte Raumann earned her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Vas Vasiliadis, Chief Customer Officer, Globus, University of Chicago

Vas leads the customer team for Globus, an innovative software-as-a-service for research data management, developed and operated by the University of Chicago. He works with current and prospective users to grow adoption of the service and make it self-sustaining. Vas is also a lecturer in the Master's Program in Computer Science, where he teaches courses on Cloud Computing and Product Management. Vas has 30 years of experience in operational and consulting roles, spanning strategy, marketing and technology. He has nurtured early stage companies into successful businesses, and consulted to companies on a wide range of strategic issues. Vas holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Saira Kazmi, Senior Director, Analytics, Data Engineering and Strategy, CVS Health

Saira Kazmi, Ph.D., is an Engineering leader in Data Science with the ability to align cross-functional technology, business, and research teams to deliver advanced analytics capabilities into business workflows.She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science, focusing on Bioinformatics from the University of Connecticut, and her post-doctoral training in Medical Informatics from Yale University. Saira loves working with complex data and enjoys designing and implementing solutions for problems associated with generating, storing, and analyzing large amounts of data. Saira has extensive technical and leadership expertise in delivering novel solutions for complex business problems from inception to production. Domains of experience include Bioinformatics, Medical Informatics, Healthcare, Insurance, Business Analytics, Text Search, Patent, and Intellectual Property Analytics. She advocates metadata best practices and establishes standards and business processes to enable high-quality data-driven metrics and insights. Her core competencies include: Proof of Concepts and Product Development, Leading Cross-Functional Enterprise Teams, Team Skill Development and Training, Product Roadmap and Strategy Development, Data Acquisition, Integration, and Infrastructure Roadmaps for Long and Short Term Enterprise Initiatives, Big Data Engineering and Algorithm Development, Data Science, Analytics, Machine Learning, AI, Strategy and Roadmap Development for Application and Data Migration from Legacy to Big Data and Cloud Environments (AWS/Google)

Meghan Raman, Senior Director, IT - Global Biometrics & Data Sciences, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

Meghan Raman has 20+ years of experience in successfully leading large scale business transformation programs. She has cross industry domain expertise including Life Sciences, Financial, Consulting, Insurance, Telecomm and Resellers. She is experienced in building and leading global, high performance teams. She has also built Analytics frameworks, AI/ML capabilities and Data Platforms to drive scientific prediction, revenue uplift and productivity. Meghan has led process development and implementation activities in Clinical, Regulatory and Pharmacovigilance domains. She has set up Analytics framework and integration efforts between Product Registration, Safety Reporting and Clinical Trial Management. She is currently leading the IT organization for Biometrics & Data Sciences. She is accountable for the roadmap, strategy, platforms including a Clinical Data Repository & Statistical Compute Environment and various digital-AI/ML products across the Drug Development area including cohort selection, biomarker identification, trial design, site feasibility, signal detection etc.

Anna Sowa, PhD, Senior Scientific Consultant, BioTeam, Inc.

Anna is on a mission to help the scientific community make the most out of their data. Trained in human genetics and rare neurodegenerative disease, she transitioned to working on machine learning for agricultural data challenges and subsequently joined BioTeam in 2021. Since joining, she is focused on advancing the mission of BioTeam to empower science, scientists, and accelerate their ability to innovate.

Fernanda S. Foertter, PhD, Director of Applications, NextSilicon