Bio: Dr. Scott BEMBENEK earned his bachelor’s (Chemistry, Physics) from Carroll University, his PhD (Theoretical Chemical Physics) from University of Kansas, and was a National Research Council Fellow. He has 17 years of big pharma experience where he worked in numerous therapeutic areas (oncology, immunology, neuroscience, pain, cardiovascular & metabolic diseases, and infectious disease) and has expertise over all stages of pre-clinical drug discovery.
While at Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson), he chaired the global kinase initiative (to identify and leverage both internal and external technologies and expertise in chemistry, biology, and computation for the advancement of the internal kinase portfolio) for which he was honored with a J&J Leadership Award. There, he was a leader on multiple high-profile projects and a core member of the teams that discovered several clinical candidates. Moreover, he developed an innovative computational approach that drastically reduced the pre-clinical timeline for an oncology clinical candidate (currently entering Phase 2) to only two years. He has made substantial scientific contributions culminating in 33 peer-reviewed publications and 20 patents.
Currently, he is the Founder, CEO, CSO of Denovicon Therapeutics, which uses their AI–molecular modeling platform to accelerate and improve the development of small-molecule therapeutics for various indications (cancers, neurodegenerative conditions, and cardiovascular diseases) with particular focus on targets in the DNA damage response (DDR) pathways.
Expertise: Laboratory Informatics (LIMS, ELN, LES), Management of Inventory, Equipment, Samples, Test Execution, Data IntegrityTRUE
Bio: Jason SEXTON is a Life Science Solution Consultant in North America at BIOVIA, a Dassault Systèmes brand, having been with the company for almost four years. His background comes from a Bachelor’s degree in biology and over eight years of experience in the Life Science industry, including his last role as a Quality Control Chemist at AstraZeneca.
In his role, Jason leverages his background to provide technical guidance and drive digital transformation for enterprise customers. With a focus on informatics solutions across a diverse spectrum of laboratory settings, he plays a vital role in helping customers achieve their visions for innovation and efficiency.
Expertise: Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Quality Document Management, Quality Process Management, ONE Lab, LIMS, Structured Document Management
Bio: Jessica THEISEN is an Industry Process Consultant in North America at BIOVIA, a Dassault Systèmes brand. She has been with the company for 2 years and she has a Master’s degree in chemistry. Her background is in Pharmaceuticals specializing in Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Stability, and LIMS. Jessica’s role is to provide scientific and technical support for Dassault Systèmes’ customers in adopting our solutions for Document Management, Quality Process Management, and Laboratory Informatics across a range of industries.
Expertise: Digital transformation, Materials Science and Formulation, Drug Discovery, Sustainability, Lab informatics
Bio: Dr. Kai ZHANG is the marketing director at BIOVIA, Dassault Systèmes. Dr. Zhang has over 15 year experience in global marketing, R&D and product development. He is a passionate advocate for empowering scientists to innovate better and faster with advanced software solutions. Dr. Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Expertise: Computational Biophysics and Chemistry
Bio: Kevin CASSIDY, Ph.D., Biosciences Application Scientist at BIOVIA, obtained his doctorate with a focus on computational biophysics and chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. A member of the Berman and Durrant labs, he focused on combining the advantages of both in silico and in vitro experiments to study the RNA binding protein LARP1. He interfaced between wet and dry labs to design the most effective and efficient experiments that leveraged the strengths of both disciplines. As a pre-sales scientist at BIOVIA, he has contributed to validation studies focusing on small molecule optimization. He supports the BIOVIA Biosciences solutions that have functionality for biologics and/or small molecule design/discovery, such as Discovery Studio and Generative Therapeutics Design.
Expertise: Lab Informatics, ELN, LIMS, Digitalization
Bio: Kirsten GESENBERG is portfolio director for BIOVIA ONE Lab products. She began her career as a small molecule process chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. Since joining BIOVIA more than 15 years ago, she has been involved in the successful implementation of BIOVIA ONE Lab and Workbook across the Life Sciences industry.
Bio: Leo Bleicher is the Director of Bioscience and Scientific Informatics Development at BIOVIA in San Diego. He spent two decades working as a medicinal chemist, cheminformatics and drug discovery information scientist before joining BIOVIA in 2012.
Bio: Dr. YAN has a Ph.D. in computational chemistry and worked on developing computational methods for drug discovery for many years. As the senior manager of the Discovery Studio R&D team, she has been a key contributor in designing the current macromolecule modeling packages in Discovery Studio Simulation and led the development of the scientific methods and user interface of the tools in this area, including homology modeling, sequence analysis, antibody modeling, and protein design.
Expertise: Drug Discovery, Biotherapeutics, Protein Engineering
Bio: Dr. VILLANUEVA completed a PhD in structural biology focusing on drugging protein-protein interactions with fragment derived small molecules. His postdoctoral studies centered around understanding the structure, function and pharmacology of G proteins and GPCRs. As a postdoc, Dr. Villanueva also played a pivotal role in the development of a therapeutic enzyme that has been out-licensed and is currently in phase II clinical trials. He then joined the pharmaceutical industry as a scientist, making contributions in the discovery and development of small molecules, PROTACs and therapeutic antibodies.
Expertise: Computational Chemistry, Molecular Dynamics, Protein Engineering, Drug Discovery, Machine Learning
Bio: Dr. Reed HARRISON is a R&D software engineering specialist at BIOVIA, Dassault Systèmes. With a background in protein engineering, computational chemistry, and bioinformatics; a Ph.D. in bioengineering; and an interest in methods to probe and engineer the protein structure-function paradigm, Reed has worked to support protein modeling and simulation activities in BIOVIA.
Expertise: Lab Informatics, ELN, LIMS, Digitalization
Bio: Stephen HAYWARD has a PhD in Chemical Engineering, with a background in laboratory informatics, chemical modeling, and environmental analysis. Originally from Toronto, Canada, he currently leads product marketing efforts for laboratory informatics solutions at BIOVIA in San Diego.
Expertise: 3D Modeling and Simulation, computational chemistry, drug discovery
Bio: Tien LUU is the Product Manager and Principal Scientific Specialist at BIOVIA Dassault Systèmes, managing aspects of life science modeling and simulation predictive science solutions. She began her career as a Scientific Specialist after receiving her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wollongong, Australia. Since joining BIOVIA 22 years ago, Tien’s passion and excitement for helping customers accelerate their R&D have been steadfast and she is committed to improve customer experiences and product successes. In addition, she continues to be an active leader in scientific software product development, new program initiatives, and new applied and fundamental scientific research.
Expertise: AI-driven drug design, Pipeline Pilot
Bio: Ton VAN DAELEN is the Life Sciences Portfolio Lead at BIOVIA / Dassault Systèmes. He has helped pharmaceutical and biotech customers implement cloud solutions to address internal and external research collaboration challenges. Previously, Ton helped grow the Pipeline Pilot product in various support and product management functions and grow it into one of the premier research informatics frameworks in biopharma organizations. Today one of Ton’s interests is using this framework for building solutions that leverage AI and Machine Learning for the design of novel therapeutics. This helps pharma save significant cost in the discovery phase and get new drugs to market faster. Ton has a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from the University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands.