The Corporate Advisory Board for Life Sciences is a group of international decision makers from across the Life Sciences industry who provide their expertise on customer needs and advise Elsevier senior management on strategic direction. Contact: Phil Mestecky, Elsevier's Director, Business Development Corporate.

  William Hayes, PhD is the Director of the Library and Literature Informatics at Biogen Idec, where he focuses on literature-based Knowledge Discovery for all of Biogen Idec. Hayes has a Doctorate in Molecular Biology and a Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech. He is focused on extracting the maximum value out of the available literature content through the use of the most effective techniques in literature analytics and newer operational guidelines. This goal is in recognition of the amount of external information in an unstructured format that is required in the discovery, development and manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

Hayes is focused on bringing advanced text analytics and visualization capabilities to bear on the problems of pharmaceutical R&D by matching state of the art academic and commercial technologies to current problems facing scientists in a large biotech organization. He has also focused on providing more advanced library self-service capabilities, focusing on usability and library service automation in order to direct more library staff resources towards high-value research and analysis services for more complex questions faced by pharmaceutical scientists.

He was previously the Head of Cross-Discovery Strategic Informatics at AstraZeneca focusing on data/text/image mining technologies, knowledge management, and project lead for the Text Mining Initiative at AstraZeneca. Prior to that he was the Bioinformatics project lead for Drug Discovery focused Text Mining. The interest in text mining grew out of frustration with large-scale gene promoter analysis projects at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) where time in the library had greatly overtaken computational analyses.

Dr. Thomas Lorenz is currently Director, BASF Group Information Center at BASF SE. He is based in Ludwigshafen, the company’s largest R&D site. Current global responsibilities include patent, literature and business information search services, provision of enduser systems, information acquisition and distribution, management of internal information and research-specific IT services. He joined BASF in 1988 after a degree in physics, followed by a PhD in chemistry at Kaiserslautern University.

Until 1991 he worked in BASF's corporate division of Information Technology and since then he has been working at the BASF Group Information Center. In 1993 he became head of the group R&D Information Systems and Information Management and was responsible for the design, implementation and operation of scientific, technical and business information systems and IT controlling. He has been a member of various industrial and governmental Advisory Boards. Currently he is chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of FIZ Chemie, Berlin.

Henning P. Nielsen is head of Library & Information Centre at Novo Nordisk A/S a Danish pharmaceutical company. As a librarian from The Royal Danish Library School in 1974 his career started with 16 years in Central Library of Copenhagen County interrupted by a year in The Danish Film Museum, and another year teaching Bibliography and Information Science at the Library School. The last 5 years in public library service was as manager of the Bibliographic Department. In 1990 he took up a position as sales manager in Danish Data Electronics, Library Automation Group, with international marketing of library automation system as main area.

In 1993 he took over the present position managing the biggest corporate library in Denmark. Building the electronic library on a global scale within the company has been one of the major tasks in this position. Since 2004 he is President of the Pharma Documentation Ring (P-D-R). As member of P-D-R he has been active in collaboration with publishers creating the STM/P-D-R Sample License on e-journal Licensing in 1999, and lately the Draft Code of Practice for external use of e-content in pharmaceutical companies.

Chris L. Waller, Ph.D. (  http://www.linkedin.com/in/wallerc) is the Senior Director of Precompetitive Collaborations in Worldwide Technology at Pfizer, Inc., where his interest is in the development of collaborations between pharmaceutical, biotechnology, technology, academic, and government organizations  to develop and promote the use of standards, identify partnerships, and transfer technology in order to drive greater process efficiency and lower costs. Waller has a Doctorate in Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Bachelors of Science in Pre-medical Studies from Davidson College.

In his current role, Waller is spearheading a new initiative within Pfizer that consists of three primary elements: (1) the definition and promotion of industry standards (e.g., data models, APIs, processes, etc.) across the Research and Development and Medical continuum through participation on various cross-pharmaceutical company entities (e.g., Waller is a Senior Core Member  of the Pistoia Alliance, Inc.); (2) proactive pursuit of  pre/non-competitive collaborative application or technology development opportunities (e.g., industry partnerships focused on the development of commodity applications or services); and (3) identification and cultivation of opportunities to generate revenue by monetizing Pfizer’s portfolio of products and services (e.g., divestment and/or licensing of Pfizer-developed applications).

He was previously Worldwide Head of Chemistry Informatics at Pfizer where he was responsible for the strategic direction of the IT portfolio of products and services in support of enterprise chemical and biological data access and analysis as well as medicinal chemistry compound design and synthesis. Prior to joining Pfizer, Waller held various positions at Eli Lilly and Company (Sphinx Laboratories), OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Oliver Renn is Head of the Scientific Library for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG. He is based in Biberach, the largest R&D site of the company. Current responsibilities include the global acquisition and distribution of STM information, the management of internal knowledge databases and the effective management and development of innovative library services (teaching library, information retrieval).

Oliver Renn studied chemistry, landscape architecture and design and received a chemistry degree in 1988 from the University of Freiburg, Germany. After his doctorate in 1990 at the University of Dortmund he continued working in cancer research at the University of California at Davis. Further steps of his academic career include a position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. More than 30 publications are the results of his scientific work. In 1996, he left academia and went into publishing business.
He was appointed Publishing Director in 1999 at a BertelsmannSpringer company, with responsibilities for scientific journals and conference publishing. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim in 2003, Dr. Renn was Director of Data Acquisition, Medical Writing and Publishing for ‘Oncology World’, start-up company located in Munich. Based on a data warehouse and a knowledge portal, the company engaged in information and knowledge management as well as knowledge discovery and consulting.

Dr. Graeme Robertson is the Vice President of Therapeutic Research at Sienabiotech S.p.A. He is responsible for 4 units covering Medicinal Chemistry 1, Medicinal Chemistry 2, Drug Design and Information Technology, and Drug Profiling, providing support for a portfolio of drug discovery targets in the areas of neurodegeneration and brain cancer. Graeme has detailed knowledge of the challenges of drug design gathered from more than 17 years experience in drug discovery. Prior to joining Sienabiotech, Graeme worked at GlaxoSmithKline where he held a variety of positions culminating in co-chair of the ion channel target class, in which he was responsible for development of ion channels as a drug target class and the introduction and leading of chemistry into this exciting area.

Graeme obtained his Ph.D. working with Prof. Pattenden at Nottingham University, UK and was a post-doctoral scientist with Prof. Overman at UC Irvine. He has published 25 scientific papers as well as numerous review articles.

Mick completed his first degree in Chemistry at Sheffield University, too long ago to remember when! Having worked initially at the bench in two cosmetics companies, he moved into information work with an international chemical company and introduced the first use of computers in information retrieval there. To develop his interest in the area he moved to Beechams in 1982 where he managed the information group in Worthing UK, became a company expert in coding of chemical structures and led the computer developments for the information group. At this time he completed a second degree in Information Technology with the Open University – including the first significant use of computers for distance learning. Mick worked on several work streams looking at the needs for information after the merger to form SmithKline Beecham including leading the health and safety information work stream, another area of expertise he had developed during his information career.

In 1992 Mick joined Fisons to lead the library group there and spearhead the implementation of electronic resources. Fisons became Astra then AstraZeneca and Mick developed his role on a global basis, leading the move of the library services from a site based paper delivery to a global electronic service. He now leads the Licensing and Delivery of library services in the AZ Library. Mick is an active member of various cross industry organizations and also serves on several publisher advisory boards as well as the Counter Executive Committee.

Deputy to International Director SILS; Global Head Published Information Access

Matthias studied Library and Information Science at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and he graduated in 1987 with a diploma in Biomedical Documentation. He joined Hoechst AG as an Information Specialist and Librarian, where he was involved in activities such as database production, end-user training and biomedical information searching. In 1999 he was responsible for the consolidation of the various information units of the Frankfurt research site of what was then Hoechst Marion Roussel and later became Aventis. He headed this team until 2005.

In the Scientific Information & Library Services (SILS) organization of sanofi-aventis, he was promoted to Global Head of various activities in the published information area, and then in 2006 he was promoted to Deputy to the International Director of SILS. He has represented Hoechst Marion Roussel, Aventis, and sanofi-aventis in the Pharma Documentation Ring (PDR) since 2000 and since 2008 he has been serving as Vice-President to the PDR.

Steve Swain graduated in Chemistry from the University of Bath in 1980 and obtained a D.Phil in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Oxford in 1983. Steve joined 3M Research in 1983 as a synthetic chemist, and was responsible for introducing the first chemical structure database systems to 3M UK utilising MDL's PC based ChemBase software.
Steve joined Glaxo in 1987 to help develop the Glaxo compound registry database and provide support and training on the internal Glaxo chemical and biological information systems. Steve has stayed with the Glaxo group of companies since this time, throughout the two mergers which created GlaxoWellcome in 1995 and GlaxoSmithKline in 2000. During this time, Steve has held various positions within the Information Management functions, including roles covering chemical structure handling, provision of scientific information services to research staff, management of library operations, and procurement of published information content. Steve pioneered the introduction of electronic journals to GlaxoWellcome in the late 90's and was responsible for negotiating a global contract for Science Direct.

Steve is currently Director of Published Information at GlaxoSmithKline where his group is responsible for the acquisition, deployment and support of published information products and services to a global GSK audience. During 2003 Steve's group managed GSK's transition to a "virtual library", expanding the range of globally accessible e-journals and books and closing all physical libraries on the various GSK pharmaceutical R&D sites in the UK and US. Steve is the GSK representative on the Pharma Documentation Ring (P-D-R). Steve is married with two teenage children and lives in Hertfordshire, England.

Sven-Olaf Vogt completed his Library Science degree in 1991. Following this, he worked for 4 years at the University of Freiburg, Germany before joining Roche in 2005 as Manager of the Scientific Library at Roche’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. In 1998 he became responsible for the Scientific Information Services Department which includes the Information Science, Scientific Documentation and Library Groups, and mainly serves the Pharma Research organization but also other departments in Basel.

After leading integration teams for a couple of major acquisitions, he was promoted to Global Head of Information Science (including IS, Scientific Documentation and Library Services) for all research sites and he was mainly responsible for budget, project portfolio, contracts and service development. Under his leadership the organization moved from a paper/print world to an electronic environment. As a member of the Global Research Informatics leadership team, he was involved in Informatics/Information Management strategy and portfolio activities and he also started building up collaborations across the Roche Group which includes the Diagnostics Division as well as Chugai and Genentech. In 2007 Roche reorganized its Pharma division and decided to build up an organization which still serves Pharma Research but also fosters collaborations across the Roche Group. As a member of the newly formed Group Research Information Leadership Team, Sven is now focusing on his global role as Global Head of Scientific Information Resources and he will further develop the collaboration across the Roche Group and help build up close alignment with the different business functions. Sven is an active member of various cross industry organizations and serves also on different Scientific Advisory Boards.

Craig Funt is the Executive Director of Information and Knowledge Integration within R&D Informatics at Bristol-Myers Squibb based in Princeton, New Jersey. Craig leads a team with responsibilities in three main areas: provide an extensive collection of electronic scientific information resources, offer specialized information analysis services spanning the entire drug development process, and facilitate the implementation of R&D proprietary information policies including laboratory notebook management and public disclosure. Craig's team also provide information management support of BMS’ string of pearls strategy from pearl identification, due diligence through appropriate integration as well as assist in BMS’ transformation to the next-generation BioPharma leader through broad adoption of collaborative behaviors and enabling technologies.

Craig has been with Bristol-Myers Squibb for over 20 years.  In that time, Craig has partnered across research and development to deliver business solutions and provided leadership for teams within Informatics.  Craig’s experience and efforts have been in the areas of Regulatory Affairs, Clinical Research, Competitive & Regulatory Intelligence, Exploratory Development, Pharmaceutical Development, Finance, and External Development.  Craig holds dual degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, both from Bloomsburg University.