Timothy Gardner, PhD
Founder/CEO, Riffyn

Timothy Gardner, Riffyn’s Founder and CEO, is a scientist who pioneered the field of synthetic biology. He was previously Vice President of R&D at Amyris, where he led the engineering of yeast strain and process technology for bio-manufacturing of renewable chemicals. Tim has been recognized for his pioneering work by Scientific American, the New Scientist, Nature, Technology Review, and the New York Times. He also serves as an advisor to the European Union Scientific Committees, Imperial College London, and the Boston University Engineering Alumni Advisory Board. He holds a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University.

Delivering Products to Market 2x Faster with Blueprints for Science
Biopharmaceutical products are the result of methodical development, iterative improvement, and scale-up of technologies — all of which depend on good data. Industry momentum to digitize the core of R&D has been accelerating – with a focus on more integrated, more accessible, and more useable data by their employees (citizen data scientists). We discuss the value of a process-centric approach to R&D data — using "blueprints" of lab processes. This approach lends itself to the needs of distributed fast-evolving organizations with modular / interacting data ecosystems. It helps to accelerate development and smooth technology transfer across sites and to manufacturing.

Oliver Hesse
Head, Biotech Data Science & Digitization, Bayer

Oliver Hesse is Head of Biotech Data Science & Digitalization at Bayer – Product Supply in Berkeley, CA. He started his career in small biotech, building up and running high-throughput screening systems for large molecules that generated large amounts of data and incorporated automated decision making. Since 2008, he is at Bayer and since 2011, at the Berkeley site. There he has been developing and implementing strategies and directed projects with respect to lab automation, lab informatics, and data sciences for the global biological development organization and since March, he is in his new role where his focus is on the application of data science and digital technologies to gain better process understanding and the seamless digital integration from process development to commercial manufacturing.

Digital Continuum – From Development to Manufacturing
Development of production processes and manufacturing in the biopharmaceutical industry become more distributed. We will discuss approaches to a so called digital continuum that allows for seamless flow of process information. This digital continuum is even more relevant in times where a technical transfer maybe not be possible through in person presence, as seen during the current pandemic. Several key topics and concepts that have been demonstrated at Bayer will be presented.

Anastasia Christianson
Vice President, R & D Business Technology, Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Strategic, visionary leader with an established track record of building and leading multidisciplinary, global Informatics and IS/IT teams, driving change and simplification, and delivering value through innovation. She has over 20 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry working in both Discovery and Development leading projects, managing complex portfolios, driving change programs, identifying opportunities for strategic initiatives, and translating scientific and medical questions into innovative solutions. Anastasia’s areas of particular strength include: strategy development and implementation; translational medicine; biomedical and health informatics; evidence-based decision making; scientific and competitive intelligence; and "Big Data" exploitation.

Digital Transformation in Pharmaceutical R&D
The Pharmaceutical industry has been on a digital transformation journey for a number of years prompted, and at the same time facilitated, by the increased availability of new technologies to generate, manage, and effectively utilize more the ever-increasing volume and speed of data being generated and necessitated, at least in part, by the increase in externalization and collaborations across the industry, academia, and other research organizations. While progressing at different pace across the value chain from discovery through development, manufacturing and commercialization, the current pandemic has increased the urgency and people’s comfort level with adopting new technology, and thereby the pace of transformation, at every stage of the process. This brief talk will share some examples of digital transformation in Pharmaceutical R&D, including a couple of highlights of how the pandemic has acted as a catalyst.