2019 European Sample Management Symposium

I am a computer scientist with over 10 years industrial experience working in a global Sample Management function to support and improve a wide range of operational processes and to help shape long-term strategy. My areas of interest are applying informatics, software development and machine learning approaches to data interrogation. I have a passion for leveraging data to provide insights and knowledge that can support strategic decision-making and drive performance.

Mark Dörr studied Chemistry and Biology at the University Mainz und Jena (Germany) and made his Dr. of natural sciences in Jena, 2004.

Followed by a six years research stay in Denmark. In 2012 he was offered a position as a staff for the medium-sized high-throughput platform LARA of the Institute of Biochemistry, University Greifswald ([DOERR2016], lara.uni-greifswald.de).

Since then he is responsible for the running the platform, planning the experiments (biochemical assay development, screening strategies), process opimisation, programming and data evaluation. He is developer of the LARAsuite (gitlab.com/LARAsuite), a free and open source lab automation software and is member of the SiLA2 core development team.

Chatura Jayakody, heads the research operations and sample management group at Accent Therapeutics. A graduate from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, Chatura started his career at the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at the University of Chapel Hill (UNC), North Carolina. At UNC his primary focus was on sample management and assay development managing a compound collection with over 100,000 small molecules and working with various groups across the UNC system. His next appointment was at Warp Drive Bio in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he helped build the sample management group and led the outsourcing of assay operations to CROs in Asia. Accent Therapeutics presented him with a new opportunity to build informatics and sample management infrastructure to suit a small biotech where he now heads research operations.

Mark Wigglesworth, Ph.D., leads The UK Centre for Lead Discovery on behalf of AstraZeneca. Mark has contributed to numerous publications in the field of receptor pharmacology, hit identification and compound management, including editing the book, Management of Biological and Chemical Samples for Screening Applications. He has led several academic collaborations as well as building successful organisations in sample management and hit identification in two large pharmaceutical companies.

Mark is an active conference supporter having held co-director responsibility for the European Laboratory Research and Innovation Groups (ELRIG), Research and Innovation conference for 4 years, and has delivered high-profile presentations at conferences such as SLAS. Throughout his career, he has maintained an active interest in technology and how automation can be utilised in a pharmaceutical environment.

Ian Sinclair joined AstraZeneca in 1999 as a MS Support specialist, in 2007 Ian joined Compound Management to add his knowledge to the challenge of quality assurance within the group. He has published on the use of Corona CAD for the measurement sample concentration and devised strategies to improve quality within large compound collections. More recently this background in mass spectrometry has led him into the bio-chemical screening environment where the idea for an acoustic MS interface first surfaced. He has spent the last two years working with Labcyte and Waters to develop this technology and its applications.

Rebecca Wiesner studied Pharmacy at the Technische Universität Braunschweig from 2011 to 2015, meanwhile, she completed a two-month research internship at the University of Rhode Island (USA). Afterwards, she worked for two years as a pharmacist in Berlin.

Since October 2017 she receives a fellowship in the working group of Prof. Hermann Wätzig at the Technischen Universität Braunschweig. Her research topic is "Development of Automation in Pharmaceutical Analytics with Consideration of Gender Aspects". This fellowship belongs to the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Stipendium in the doctoral program "Gendered Configurations of Human and Machine (short: KoMMa.G; www.tu-braunschweig.de/kommag)", which is funded by the State of Lower Saxony.

Mike Gray received a degree in Applied Biology (Pharmacology) from the University of Hertfordshire in 1996. He joined the Compound Management group at SmithKline Beecham in 1997 and over the past 22 years has performed a variety of roles in support of GlaxoSmithKline’s drug discovery initiatives from early discovery to clinical candidate selection. For 12 of these years Mike managed the solid compound collection and shipping operations in the UK. He was co-author of the book, Management of Biological and Chemical Samples for Screening Applications (edited by Mark Wigglesworth and Terry Wood). Mike has been involved in numerous modernisation and development projects during his career and is currently the Team Leader for Lead Optimisation at the GlaxoSmithKline Medicines Research Centre in the UK.

Dr. Jerome Giovannoni received his Master of Physics and Chemistry from the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry (ESPCI-Paris). He then moved to the University of Montpellier (France) where he obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Professor Martinez. Subsequently, he joined the company Chemspeed Technologies as an Application Chemist. In 2005, Jerome Giovannoni was hired by the agrochemical company Syngenta Crop Protection as a laboratory head and GLP study director in analytical development, with a focus on seed treatment products. He joined Novartis in 2009 where he implemented a high-throughput LCMS quality control laboratory within the Compound Management department. From 2013 to 2016, he took over responsibility for the Automated Solution Production team, managing the inventory of the DMSO stocks solutions used for high-throughput screening. Since 2016, Dr. Giovannoni is leading a team focusing on the development of mass-spectrometry based screening and profiling assays.

Chair, Controlled Substance Expert Group. The group shares best practice, learns from external experts and collaborates to improve understanding of current issues in controlled substance legislation and is part of the Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit members’ organization working to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D through pre-competitive collaboration.

Compliance Manager, Discovery Supply, GSK

"Marybeth Burton is Executive Director, Discovery Sample Management at Merck in Rahway, NJ, USA.  Marybeth leads Merck’s global Discovery Sample Management and is responsible for small molecule and peptide compound management, high throughput purification, commercial chemical inventory management, and discovery chemistry operations.  Her group monitors compound collection quality and participates in efforts to continuously improve both stewardship and composition of Merck's small molecule compound collection.  Marybeth has been involved with process optimization efforts and development of new workflows to support changing sample management needs resulting from globalization of drug discovery efforts.  Marybeth and her team recently completed a multiyear major infrastructure upgrade which includes new automation platforms and processes for small molecule and peptide sample management.

Prior to her tenure at Merck, Marybeth led the compound management group at Schering-Plough.  Marybeth holds a B.A. in Biology and an M.S. in Information Science."

May Sharpe (née Marsh) received her BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Sussex in 2004 and in 2008 her PhD from the University of Bristol in Structural Biology. During her PhD she spent one year working at Novartis (NIBR) in Basel. In 2008 she moved to the University of Cambridge to join Professor Sir Tom Bundell's group working on developing PPI inhibitors using FBDD. In 2012 she joined the MX group in the Swiss Light Source and since 2018 she has been working as the Group Leader of the MX Samples group, responsible for protein crystal growth and delivery.

Dr. Tetko is Coordinator of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network European Industrial Doctorate Horizon2020 project “Big Data in Chemistry” (http://bigchem.eu) and CEO of BIGCHEM GmbH, which offers innovative solutions for Big Data analysis. His research interests covers (Q)SAR, QSPR, application and development of machine learning approaches to predict physico-chemical properties and biological activity of molecules, drug-design and Big Data analysis. He supports Virtual Computational Chemistry Laboratory (http://www.vcclab.org) as well in charge of On-line Chemical Database and Modeling Environment platform (http://ochem.eu). He has contributed more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has H-index of 49 (Google scholar).

Dr Rebecca Docherty received her Ph.D. in supramolecular chemistry from The University of Manchester in 2011. She then worked as a Research Assistant at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology in the area of graphene-based hydrogen fuel cells. After this, she worked internationally in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry and in the UAE nuclear industry. She joined the Materials Innovation Factory (https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/materials-innovation-factory) in 2014 as a Knowledge Exchange Scientist in Professor Andy Cooper’s research team. The Materials Innovation Factory is an £82 M institute that accelerates materials discovery through collocation of industry and academia, and the use of robotics and high-performing computing.

Ms Moana Simpson is the Manager of Compounds Australia, and has over 20 years’ experience in providing support for drug discovery research within Australia and the UK, both in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. Ms Simpson was instrumental in the initial development and subsequent growth of Compounds Australia from its inception to now a fully operational and busy compound management facility. Ms Simpson holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Graduate Diploma in Project Management; her expertise is primarily in the areas of chemistry and biochemistry.

Phil Spencer has 20 years’ experience working in Compound Management. From 2000 he was Head of Compound Management at AstraZeneca’s Charnwood site, where he established an Automated Compound Management Facility to support High Throughput Screening. In 2011, Phil moved to the Compound Management group at Alderley Park, where he launched New Molecule Profiling within AstraZeneca’s Open Innovation program. More recently he has led AstraZeneca’s global capability build for dispensing liquids acoustically direct from storage tubes.

Johannes Knop received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Hannover (Germany). In 2000, he started his career in the biopharmaceutical industry as an HTS scientist. Prior to founding Assay.Works in 2016, Dr. Knop was head of Research Operations at Amgen Research in Regensburg, where he managed Sample Bank, Cell Production, Informatics, and EH&S