About the author

About the author

Sander Timmer, PhD is the Global Head of Data Science and AI for Global Drug Development at Novartis. Based in Basel, he leads the strategic integration of AI to accelerate the delivery of medicines to patients.

His career has been defined by the intersection of life sciences and advanced engineering:

  • Novartis (Current): Global Head of Data Science and AI for Global Drug Development.
  • GSK (2019–2026): Global Senior Director of AI/ML & Decision Sciences, where he pioneered TwinOps and Physical AI.
  • Microsoft (2015–2019): Lead Data Scientist and Industry Solutions Manager for Healthcare.
  • University of Cambridge: PhD in Big Data Biology at EMBL-EBI.

You can connect with Sander on LinkedIn.

About me

I am a Lead Data Scientist at Microsoft in the World-Wide Data Insights CTO office focusing on cloud solutions for the Internet-of-Things, Big Data, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning. I obtained my PhD at the University of Cambridge specialising in Big Data Biology while being based at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).

In my previous "academic life", I was working in Ewan Birney's research group. My main subject was understanding non-coding variation using genome-wide molecular assays, like FAIRE and CTCF, onto Human cell line populations. Another research interest was identification of whole-body phenotypes in Human MRI scans using Machine Learning techniques.

Furthermore, I'm the co-founder of Rijschoolvergelijker. The largest driving school comparison website in the Netherlands with European ambitions.

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