Director, Computational HitGen ​/ LeadGen Team Lead

Company Description

About Abb Vie

Abb Vie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about Abb Vie, please visit us at  Follow @abbvie on Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, X and You Tube.

Job Description

Overview:

This position brings an opportunity to make innovative contributions that will define how Abb Vie leverages AI-native drug discovery across our small molecule portfolio. Reports to Head of Computational Drug Discovery (CDD) and will lead the computational Hit Gen/Lead Gen (HGLG) team. Will implement and enable close collaboration between members of the HGLG team and Drug Discovery partners across the Abb Vie community.

Must possess a strong track record leveraging modern computational and property-based drug design tools to deliver programs across the phases of a small molecule drug discovery pipeline. The ideal candidate will bring strong experience from across the drug discovery lifecycle from having worked on a broad range of diverse campaigns, and an established external footprint and network. Past experience will have included mentorship of early/mid-career scientists in matrixed and/or direct reporting relationships, with demonstrated ability to lead and influence through cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities:

Provide strategic thought leadership to amplify CDD's impact on the small molecule pipeline:

* Lead development of a cohesive collection of cutting-edge methods and workflows, to comprehensively address Abb Vie's small molecule portfolio needs (methods for predicting binding affinities of diverse chemo types, for predicting pharmacological properties for diverse chemo types (PK parameters, etc.), and for rapidly sampling both enumerated and AI-generated chemical spaces

* Work closely with the small-molecule leadership teams to identify and address gaps where computational predictions are needed

* Advance drug discovery expertise across CDD and collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams from R&D and Information Research to advance programs and ensure computational capabilities are best implemented across programs

Direct activities of the HGLG Team to enable program-level decision making:

* Across Abb Vie's early-stage small molecule portfolio, provide leadership and guidance that will deliver computational tools and workflows to achieve desirable hit/lead criteria. Role will be integral for ensuring alignment across functions and with the longer-term organizational and broader AI-native drug discovery strategies

* Guide HGLG team members in benchmarking experiments to evaluate models' performance and domain of applicability for Abb Vie's small molecule portfolio

* Establish processes for selecting specific approaches that best suit project needs

Build CDD's reputation for impact:

* Proactively demonstrate leadership by providing expert advice and shared knowledge with direct reports, peers, and senior management

* Present program updates and research strategies to functional and non-functional leaders as well as potential and existing partners

* Maintain awareness of emerging literature and science in the field and author scientific disclosures/publications

* Maintain scientific presence outside Abb Vie with appropriate publication and conference abstract submission highlighting innovative learnings in AI-native drug discovery

Qualifications

* Bachelor's Degree or equivalent education in science-related field with extensive (typically  18 years) of related work;
Master's Degree or equivalent education with extensive (typically  16 years) of related work;
PhD in Science or related field with typically 10+ years of related work experience

* Demonstration of successful coaching/mentoring and people management

* Demonstration of setting and driving strategy, in the context of leading a global team

* Highly organized and self-directed, experience leading multiple complex simultaneous research programs or initiatives

* Knowledge and experience in modern computational approaches for drug discovery

* Excellent written and verbal communication, as well as critical evaluation and data-driven decision making

* Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with demonstrated ability to think critically and creatively, and provide solutions both individually and collaboratively with internal experts

* Proven team leadership and management abilities, including experience mentoring, guiding, supervising, and developing scientific personnel with various backgrounds and training levels

* Highly collaborative, team-oriented, and considerate of the needs of others

* Strong interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate with diverse groups within the organization and external partners

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