OPTIBRIUM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- VP of Research, BIOPHARMICS DIVISION
Ajay has a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University following dual BS degrees in Biochemistry and in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Ajay has over 30 years of experience working in the field of computer-aided drug design. He held a series of senior scientific roles in multiple small biopharma companies, beginning with Arris Pharmaceutical in 1992 where he and his group pioneered new approaches to ligand- and structure-based drug design. He was also faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for over two decades, with a broad research program including both CADD and bioinformatics. Ajay founded BioPharmics LLC in 1998, which became the BioPharmics Division of Optibrium in August 2023.
Ally heads the Finance and Operations teams at Optibrium, collaborating with key internal and external stakeholders to drive the group's financial strategy. He most recently led the finance department at SciBite, a Cambridge-based software company, working alongside the founders to execute a sale of the business to a FTSE 100 group. Prior to this, Ally was responsible for a portfolio of audit clients at Deloitte, having trained as an accountant in its Entrepreneurial Business department.
Job Titles:
- VP of APPLICATION SCIENCE, BIOPHARMICS Division
Ann has a PhD in Microbiology and Cell Biology from the University of Illinois, followed by work in Biochemistry as a Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She moved to small biopharma beginning with MetaXen in 1997, leading many aspects of biological research and complex assay development across multiple projects. Ann's research focus shifted to the causal linkages between molecular structure and human pharmacology. Her research spanned both the academic environment of UCSF and the applied realm within BioPharmics LLC since its founding in 1998. Ann has a deep understanding of how to solve challenging problems in pre-clinical pharmaceutical discovery using sophisticated computational approaches for ligand- and structure-based predictive modeling. BioPharmics LLC became the BioPharmics Division of Optibrium in August 2023.
Job Titles:
- Director of Implementation
Chris studied Chemistry at King's College London, obtaining a BSc and a PhD in the field of organic reaction mechanisms. After a spell at the Royal Society of Chemistry he moved into software development and in 2006 joined Inpharmatica where he worked on early versions of StarDrop, including the innovative Auto-Modeller functionality. Following the establishment of Optibrium he contributed to many developments for StarDrop and associated technologies. Since 2018 he has led Optibrium's custom project team, working on projects to enhance customer value by integrating Optibrium software with customers' in-house infrastructure and tools.
Cindy heads the Business Development team, building and delivering Optibrium's global sales strategy and supporting discovery scientists to make scientifically robust decisions through the application of software. She has over 25 years of experience in the informatics and life sciences industries, and has held numerous senior sales leadership positions, most recently as Head of Account Management and US Regional Head of Sales for Chemaxon. Cindy's extensive background in sales, business development and professional services includes positions at CAS and CambridgeSoft, providing well-known solutions such as SciFinder-n and ChemDraw to biotechnology and global pharmaceutical researchers. She is an organic chemist by training, with a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Brown University.
After graduating with a degree in Mathematics in 1995 Ed joined GlaxoWellcome working as part of a pioneering team building predictive pharmaceutical tools. He developed the first graphical user-interfaces for working with predictive models which were adopted globally within GlaxoWellcome. He was a core member of the team which established the UK operation of Camitro in 2001 and remained with that company (now operating within BioFocus DPI following merger and acquisition) until 2008. During this time he designed and built the StarDrop software and, in 2009, co-founded Optibrium.
Ian leads Optibrium's Software Engineering, DevOps and Quality Assurance teams, driving the scale-up of the company's infrastructure and managing the expanding portfolio of products and development projects. He previously served as Head of Technology and Delivery for an insurance technology start-up, developing innovative data, analytics and digital application-focused strategies through cloud platform delivery. Prior to this, Ian worked at Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and during his tenure as Director R&D Analytics, he led a team to define, develop and execute a strategy to build Merck's next-generation machine learning and AI-driven analytics platform and data science.
Matt has a Master of Science in Computation from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge. As Associate Director at Camitro (UK), ArQule Inc. and then Inpharmatica, he led a team developing predictive ADME models and state-of-the-art intuitive decision-support and visualization tools for drug discovery. In January 2006, he became responsible for management of Inpharmatica's ADME business, including experimental ADME services and the StarDrop software platform. Following acquisition of Inpharmatica, Matt became Senior Director responsible for BioFocus DPI's ADMET division and in 2009 led a management buyout of the StarDrop business to found Optibrium.
Job Titles:
- DIRECTOR of Strategic Marketing
Michelle heads up the Marketing Team, developing and delivering the strategy to drive Optibrium's continued commercial growth. Having worked at a number of life science tech scale-ups, both in-house and agency-side, she's experienced at executing high-impact marketing campaigns. Before joining Optibrium, Michelle worked at AI drug discovery company, Healx, where she cultivated the messaging, branding and team to successfully target global pharma, biotech, academic and investor audiences.
Job Titles:
- Director of Computational Chemistry
Peter trained as a synthetic organic chemist, gaining a degree and PhD at Imperial College, University of London. He moved into the computational chemistry field during a postdoc at the 3D Centre in Australia, focusing on peptidomimetic design to address HIV protease inhibition and mimicry of bioactive peptides such as the conotoxins. He returned to the UK in 1994 to join the CADD group of Merck & Co Inc and then moved to Novartis 2006. Prior to joining Optibrium in 2014, Peter lead the UK CADD group efforts in drug discovery and development research in the neuroscience, respiratory and gastrointestinal disease areas. He is an inventor on over 20 patents, as well as a former chair of the TRIPOS User group and Secretary of the UK-QSAR committee.
Steve Yemm - Chief Commercial Officer
Steve manages Optibrium's commercial team, driving global sales, customer success and marketing activities. Prior to joining Optibrium, Steve held numerous senior positions at companies delivering SaaS software solutions to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life science industries, most recently as VP of Sales for Life Sciences and Healthcare at Paradigm4. He also worked as CCO of Aigenpulse and CEO of BioData, both leading informatics providers. With industry experience as a research scientist and a BSc in Applied Chemistry from the University of Nottingham, Steve brings a wealth of both scientific and business expertise to his role in guiding Optibrium's global commercial strategy.
Job Titles:
- President, Optibrium Inc. and Global Head of Application Science
Tamsin holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of East Anglia in the UK and pursued Postdoctoral studies in the labs of Prof. Philip Magnus at University of Texas, Austin. She is an experienced drug discovery scientist, having worked as a medicinal chemist at Eli Lilly and UCB Research. Her interests lie in coupling machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques with generative chemistry approaches to explore chemistry space and guide compound design.