Owkin welcomes leading immuno-oncology professor as Chief Medical Officer and senior pharma exec as SVP Data Science

NEW YORK, March 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — 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 is Professor of Immunology at the Université de Paris and coordinator of ImmunAID, a project to better understand and diagnose rare immune disorders, and is also a consulting physician in hematology. Joining Owkin, Vassili will use his expertise in immunology and oncology to coordinate efforts to deliver clinically-relevant solutions across numerous therapeutic areas.

Eric Durand is formerly Director of Data Science at Novartis. Joining Owkin, Eric will lead data science across biomarkers, diagnostics and clinical trial solutions. He will oversee an interdisciplinary team 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 AI 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, Ph.D., 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 excited to join as CMO to transform these assets into clinical impact through personalized medicine.”

Eric Durand, Ph.D., SVP Data Science at Owkin, said:

“I was struck early on by the quality and the innovative nature of Owkin’s work. Helping to bring the best analytics to impact drug discovery has been my goal for years, and it is hard to imagine a better place than Owkin for furthering this mission.”

About Vassili Soumelis

Vassili was Professor of Immunology at the Université de Paris and coordinator of ImmunAID.

Vassili has an MD in hematology and a Ph.D. in immunology. He is an expert in human immunology and immunotherapy, and has made major contributions to the field, in particular in the characterization of dendritic cell (DC) functional plasticity, the ability of DC to control Th cell differentiation, and the role of the cytokine TSLP in DC activation and allergic responses.

About Eric Durand

Studying at Grenoble Institute of Technology and UC Berkeley, Eric joined 23andMe in 2011, where he developed Ancestry Composition. he joined Novartis in 2015. From 2018 to 2022, he led Oncology Data Science in Basel, developing and applying state-of-the-art machine learning, bioinformatics and computational biology methods in oncology drug discovery.

About Owkin

Owkin is a startup that uses AI to find the right treatment for every patient. Our focus is to use AI to discover and develop better treatments for unmet medical needs, starting with the fight against cancer.

Contact marketing@owkin.com.

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