Digital Discovery Webinar: Artificial Intelligence and Data in Drug Discovery and Development

Dr. Max Jakobs is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMirror, a company that makes chemists more productive to reduce the time spent on preclinical drug development using machine learning and effortless design. Max has a background in theoretical physics and neuroscience with a PhD in Biophysics from the University of Cambridge. With DeepMirror, launched in 2021, Max raised more than $3M and built a product that is used in biotech businesses across the globe.

Dr Andreas Bender is a Professor for Molecular Informatics at Cambridge University, working on data analysis methods related to compound safety and efficacy, and Chief Technology & Informatics Officer (CITO) at PangeAI, part of Pangea Bio. Previously he was a Director for Digital Life Sciences at Nuvisan in Berlin, as well as as an Associate Director for Data Science and AI in the Clinical Pharmacology & Safety Sciences group at AstraZeneca. On the entrepreneurial side, Andreas was involved in setting up Healx Ltd. (for data-driven drug repurposing) and PharmEnable Ltd. (for designing novel chemistry for targets that are difficult to drug conventially), both based in Cambridge/UK. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands before his current post.

Nessa Carson received Master’s degrees in synthesis and catalysis from Oxford University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started out 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, focussing 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.