Owkin Welcomes Leading Immuno-oncology Professor as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Pharma Exec as SVP Data Science

Owkin appointed Professor Vassili Soumelis as Chief Medical Officer and Eric Durand as SVP Data Science today, bolstering its mission to use AI to discover and develop better treatments for patients.

Vassili Soumelis, MD, PhD is Professor of Immunology at the Université de Paris and coordinator of ImmunAID, a European project to better understand and diagnose rare immune disorders, and is also a consulting physician in hematology. Joining Owkin as CMO, Vassili will use his expertise in immunology and oncology to coordinate the company’s efforts to deliver clinically-relevant solutions across a range of therapeutic areas.

Eric Durand is formerly Director of Data Science at Novartis. Joining Owkin as SVP Data Science, Eric will lead Owkin’s data science activities across biomarkers, diagnostics and clinical trial solutions. He will oversee an interdisciplinary team dedicated to bringing the latest research in machine learning and statistics to advance medical research.

Welcoming Vassili and Eric, Owkin Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Gilles Wainrib said:

“Owkin’s mission is to combine the latest artificial intelligence research with the best clinical and data expertise to improve the discovery and development of new therapies, leveraging the power of multimodal histology and genomic data.”

“Vassili and Eric bring unparalleled brilliance from both the worlds of medicine and AI and will help us and our partners to make unprecedented medical and scientific breakthroughs.”

Vassili Soumelis MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at Owkin, said:

“Owkin has done an incredible job gathering high-quality biomedical data across disease areas, and building world-class data analytics. I am very excited to join Owkin as CMO in order to transform these assets into clinical impact through personalized medicine.”

Eric Durand PhD, SVP Data Science at Owkin, said:

“I was struck early on by the quality and the innovative nature of Owkin’s work. Combined with the incredible data asset the company is building through its federated platform, I believe Owkin is uniquely positioned to make a lasting impact on patients. Helping to bring the best analytics to impact drug discovery has been my goal for many years, and it is hard for me to imagine a better place than Owkin for furthering this mission. I can’t wait to get started.”