Optibrium appoints Ian Smith as Chief Technology Officer

November 22, 2022
  • New role will lead technology development as the Company continues to scale team and global business operations
  • Appointment of former Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) Director of R&D Analytics supports continued innovation of Optibrium’s AI drug discovery software

Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, US 23 November 2022 - Optibrium, a leading developer of software and AI solutions for drug discovery, today announced the appointment of Ian Smith as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), the latest in a number of senior-level hires for the Company. With over 25 years of biopharma experience, Ian will oversee the development of the Company’s technology portfolio and cloud services and guide the team’s growth to support the continued expansion of the Company’s global customer base. This latest hire marks a key milestone for Optibrium as it enters the next phase of commercial growth as a provider of innovative computational and AI drug discovery technologies. 

As CTO, Ian will lead the 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.

Ian joins Optibrium having previously served as Head of Technology and Delivery for an insurance technology start-up, Hx—part of the Howden Group—where he developed innovative data, analytics and digital application-focused strategies through cloud platform delivery, as well as defining a target operating model to implement the Group’s data transformation and growth objectives. Prior to this, Ian worked at Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD), holding positions including Director of Research and Development Analytics, Director of IT Productivity and Director of Scientific Modelling & Real-World Data. During his tenure as Director R&D Analytics, Ian led a team to define, develop and execute an 18-month strategy to build Merck’s next-generation machine learning and AI-driven analytics platform and data science capabilities to mature research and develop scientific insights. 

Ian Smith, Chief Technology Officer, Optibrium, commented: “I’m excited to join Optibrium at a time of significant growth and success as the Company’s technologies drive computer-aided drug discovery across the biotech industry. I look forward to working with a world-class team to develop our innovative platforms, further transforming customers’ drug discovery programmes.”

Edmund Champness, Chief Scientific Officer, Optibrium, said: “We are delighted to welcome Ian to the team to support the scale-up of our infrastructure and technical teams and to lead the development and deployment of our next-generation solutions. Ian brings an impressive combination of experience in cloud engineering, platform development and the pharma industry, which will be invaluable as we continue to expand our computational drug discovery platforms.”

For further information on Optibrium, please visit www.optibrium.com, contact info@optibrium.com or call +44 1223 815900.