Governance

Governance

Our Governance Structure and Leadership

The SGC is governed by a Board of Directors, composed of representatives from our major funders, and Scientific Committees that provide direction to our research activities.  The SGC is overseen by its CEO, Aled Edwards. Each of the SGC labs is directed by a Chief Scientist.

SGC Board

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Anke Mueller-Fahrnow is the chair of the SGC Board of Directors, and Conscience Board of Directors and she works as an independent consultant for Nuvisan ICB GmbH. Trained as a biochemist and structural biologist at the Free University of Berlin, her research interests include drug discovery with a strong focus on lead discovery, mostly in the areas of oncology and women’s health. She has published close to 50 scientific publications. Anke has worked for 30 years in pharma drug discovery. She retired from Bayer as VC, Head of Lead Discovery Berlin. She is a strong supporter of the “public science” concept, aiming to make research results broadly available in the public domain to foster drug discovery.

Anke Müller-Fahrnow

ICB Nuvisan
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Christopher Bi is an experienced drug discovery and early development leader with 20 years of experience. He is currently Executive Director of Integrative Sciences at Bristol Myers Squibb. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the SGC and a Board Observer of Nitrase Therapeutics and Elsie Biotechnologies. Prior to joining BMS, Chris was a Director at Pfizer, providing oversight on strategic partnerships of Medicine Design to advance Pfizer’s small molecule portfolio through the optimal integration of capabilities and capacities of biotech, CRO, and CDMO partners. Chris obtained his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University and an executive MBA degree from UC San Diego.

Christopher Bi

BMS
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Dafydd Owen is a Senior Scientific Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer. He has 25 years of experience as a medicinal chemist in the design and synthesis of drug-like molecules for. During his research career, he has delivered over 100 invited lectures and is an author of over 70 research papers and patents. He has been recognized through Pfizer's highest scientific honor, The Breakthrough Science and Innovation Prize, the Pfizer Worldwide R&D People Leader Award and was also selected as an ACS Organic Division Young Industrial Investigator. Most recently he led Pfizer's oral protease inhibitor program that ultimately delivered PAXLOVID, the world's first oral anti-viral therapy for the treatment of COVID-19.

Dafydd Owen

Pfizer
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Ingo Hartung is a synthetic organic chemist with almost 20 years of Pharma industry experience. He has been a project leader in oncology and cardiology drug discovery. In his current role, Ingo heads Merck’s Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Design department covering all stages of discovery projects in oncology, immune-oncology & immunology. Ingo has played a key role in building up Merck’s global cross-functional targeted protein degradation platform. His research interests comprise all aspects of innovation in small molecule drug discovery with a special focus on chemical probe discovery and new synthetic modalities like protein degraders. He is the author of >50 scientific publications and patents.

Ingo Hartung

Merck
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Jim Kiefer is a structural biologist who has worked in structure-based drug design for more than 20 years, studying protein-ligand complexes, catalytic and inhibitory mechanisms, and target recognition by immune proteins. His primary interests involve pathways triggering cancer and inflammation. He has determined more than 1,000 structures and has worked on a variety of projects. At Genentech, he manages the NMR, crystallography, and CryoEM groups and is actively involved in portfolio strategy. He has led or participated in the steering committees of the SGC, Vernalis, X-CHEM, and Constellation. He is also very active in Genentech mentoring and diversity programs.

Jim Kiefer

Genentech
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Judith Günther is a senior scientist in Bayer’s Computational Molecular Design team, focusing on modern in silico methods for drug discovery. She had a driving role in the discovery of zabedosertib, currently in phase II clinical trials. Judith is interested in faster DMTA cycles and integrating phenotypical data, chemical biology approaches, and AI algorithms into drug discovery processes. For her contributions to digital transformation at Bayer, she was recently awarded “Distinguished Woman in Data Science”. Through her engagement in the CACHE initiative and the SGC board of directors, she aims to foster open science in industry-academic collaborations.

Judith Günther

Bayer
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Oliver Krämer studied chemistry at the University of Siegen, Germany, and the University of Marburg, Germany. He did his Ph.D. in computational chemistry / molecular modeling at the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Marburg and holds an executive MBA from the University of Mainz, Germany. In 2003, Oliver joined Boehringer, where he has held positions with responsibility for computational chemistry, hit identification and structural biology efforts. Since 2015, Oliver has been a director of Discovery Research Coordination at BI. In his current position, he is responsible for the global coordination of research activities and external liaison, in particular public-private partnerships.

Oliver Krämer

Boehringer Ingelheim
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Susanne Müller-Knapp studied Human Biology in Marburg Germany followed by a PhD in molecular biology at the Karolinska Institute. After spending more than 6 years as a postdoctoral researcher in the area of inflammation and gene regulation at the Karolinska Institute and at the DIBIT San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, Susanne joined the SGC. Susanne has been the Project Manager of the Epigenetic Probe Project. In her role as Chief Operating Officer at the SGC Frankfurt, Susanne continues to work on chemical probes to make these well-characterized tool compounds available to the scientific community. She is also the Director of Operations of the Chemical Probes Portal.

Susanne Müller-Knapp

SGC-Frankfurt

SGC Management Team

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Aled Edwards is a Professor at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor at McGill University. He has published over 200 papers and has founded many companies, including Affinium Pharmaceuticals, which developed a novel antibiotic currently in late-stage clinical trials, and M4K Pharma, the first pharmaceutical company formed explicitly to invent new, and affordably-priced, medicines for pediatric cancers.

Aled Edwards

Chief Executive Officer
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Susan McCormick joined SGC as Chief Financial Officer in June 2019. Prior to joining SGC, Ms. McCormick was CFO for Crosswinds Holdings Inc., a publicly traded private equity firm. Prior to that, Ms. McCormick held Director of Finance roles at Candax Energy Inc., Clean Power Income Fund and Yahoo! Canada Co. Ms. McCormick received her MA (Econ) and B.Comm from the University of Toronto and is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant and Certified Public Accountant (Illinois).

Susan McCormick

Chief Financial Officer
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Max Morgan leads open science policy development and outreach, translational initiatives, and legal matters for the Structural Genomics Consortium. Prior to joining SGC, he worked as an intellectual property litigator and pharmaceutical regulatory lawyer, and more recently served as in-house counsel with Grand Challenges Canada. Max holds a B.Sc. from McGill University, a J.D. from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the Law Society of Ontario and the New York State Bar.

Max Morgan

General Counsel and Public Policy Director
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Cheryl Arrowsmith is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, a Professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of the SGC-Toronto. Her research focuses on the structural and chemical biology of chromatin and epigenetic regulatory factors related to cancer and drug discovery. She leads the international open science program that is developing and distributing Chemical Probes. She was co-founder of Affinium Pharmaceuticals, which developed a new medicine for multidrug-resistant bacteria. She has published over 300 research articles and was recognized by Clarivate Analytics in 2018 and 2019. She was elected an AAAS Fellow (2015), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2020).

Cheryl Arrowsmith

Chief Scientist at SGC-Toronto
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Stefan Knapp studied Chemistry at the University of Marburg and the University of Illinois. He did his PhD in protein crystallography at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and continued his career at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral scientist. From 1999 to 2004 he worked at Pharmacia Corporation and from 2004 to 2015 at the SGC at Oxford University. From 2008 to 2015 he was a Professor of Structural Biology at Oxford University (UK) and between 2012 and 2015 he was the Director of Chemical Biology at the Target Discovery Institute. He joined Frankfurt University in 2015 as a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Since 2017 he has also been the CSO of the SGC at the University of Frankfurt.

Stefan Knapp

Chief Scientist at SGC-Frankfurt
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Michael Sundström received his Ph.D. at the Biomedical Research Center in Uppsala, followed by post-doctoral studies at the Karolinska Institutet. He held various positions in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including Pharmacia, Actar and Biovitrum. In 2003, he was appointed Chief Scientist for the SGC at the University of Oxford. He later became the Managing Director for the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen. In 2011, he joined Karolinska Development as VP of Discovery Research and re-joined the SGC in 2014 as Scientific Director. In 2022, he was appointed Director and CEO of the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital.

Michael Sundström

Chief Scientist at SGC-Karolinska
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Tim Willson is the Harold Kohn Distinguished Professor in Open Science Drug Discovery at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Chief Scientist of the SGC-UNC site. He has over 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical research with a track record in the discovery of first-in-class clinical candidates. He led the Glaxo program on orphan nuclear receptors and was co-discoverer of an FDA-approved breakthrough drug for liver diseases. He is widely recognized for scientific leadership in chemical biology and was named one of the world’s 400 most influential biomedical researchers. He is currently the co-PI of the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative AViDD Center. 

Tim Willson

Chief Scientist at SGC-UNC
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Mat Todd is a Professor and Chair of Drug Discovery at University College London. He founded and currently leads several open science consortia such as Open Source Malaria. In 2011 he was awarded a New South Wales Scientist of the Year award in the Emerging Research category for his work in open science and 2012 the OSM consortium was awarded one of three Wellcome Trust/Google/PLoS Accelerating Science Awards. For his open-source research, Mat was selected for the Medicine Maker’s Power List in 2017 and 2018. He is on the Editorial Boards of PLoS One, Chemistry Open and Nature Scientific Reports.

Mat Todd

Chief Scientist at SGC-UCL
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Edward A. Fon is a neurologist-scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro) and a Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University. He is the Scientific Director of The Neuro, the Director of the FRQS Quebec Parkinson Network, and co-director of the Canadian Open Parkinson Network. His research focuses on the molecular and cellular events leading to Parkinson's disease. As Scientific Director of The Neuro, he oversees its platforms including the Clinical Biological Imaging and Genetic repository and iPSC/CRISPR Early Drug Discovery Unit, all under the auspices of The Neuro’s Open Science principles.

Edward A. Fon

Chief Scientist at SGC-Neuro