Exscientia appoints Dr. David Hallett as Chief Operating Officer as company positions for further growth

Oxford, UK, 21^st January 2020: Exscientia, the leading AI drug discovery company, has appointed Dr. David Hallett as its Chief Operating Officer and Head of Drug Discovery. Dr. Hallett will be responsible for Exscientia’s full drug discovery portfolio, reporting into the CEO, Prof. Andrew Hopkins.

This appointment comes following a year of high growth for Exscientia, who signed multi-project partnerships with Celgene, Rallybio and GT Apeiron, achieved new milestones in their collaborations with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, and kicked off 2020 with a new multi-project partnership with Bayer.

Dr. Hallett joins Exscientia with more than 20-years experience in drug discovery and alliance management. He will be responsible for delivering all of Exscientia’s AI drug discovery operations including pharma collaborations, joint ventures and pipeline projects.

Prior to joining Exscientia, Dr Hallett was Executive Vice President at Evotec, where he held a number of positions including EVP of Alliance Management and Discovery Chemistry.  At Evotec, he created and led the Alliance Management function, responsible for their strategic collaborations and human iPSC-based drug discovery efforts. Before Evotec, Dr. Hallett trained as a medicinal chemist at Merck & Co. progressing to Research Fellow and leading teams who delivered preclinical candidates into Merck’s psychiatry portfolio.

“David is widely respected in the industry as a delivery-focused executive and we’re incredibly proud to have him join us, as we grow our senior leadership team ahead of an exciting year,” said Andrew Hopkins, CEO and Founder of Exscientia. “His experience in managing high profile strategic collaborations and navigating complex, innovation-driven projects is a perfect fit for Exscientia as we cement our leadership in AI drug discovery and drive ambitious plans to expand our operations and pipeline.”

Dr David Hallett commented: “Exscientia’s scientists and cutting-edge platforms are transforming the drug invention and optimisation process as manifested by their deal making with biotech and pharmaceutical partners. AI is fundamentally changing the way we discover new medicines and I joined Exscientia because they are clearly at the forefront of this shift - bringing together the best of technology and science to deliver true improvements.”

“I am eager to contribute to Exscientia’s efforts to drive innovation in the industry and make a positive difference in patients’ lives. I hope to use my experience at the crossroad of science and business to lead the firm into a new and promising phase of growth.”

Exscientia‘s AI driven drug discovery enables more efficient design and decision making, meaning drug discovery projects can be delivered five times faster. This represents industry-changing levels of productivity for traditional drug discovery.

 About Exscientia

Exscientia is at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and design. By fusing the power of AI with the discovery experience of seasoned drug hunters, Exscientia is the first company to automate drug design, surpassing conventional human approaches.

Exscientia’s innovative Centaur Chemist™ platform enables breakthrough productivity gains as well as new approaches to improve drug efficacy. Novel compounds are automatically designed and prioritised for synthesis by its AI systems, which rapidly generate compounds towards the desired candidate criteria for clinical development.

Exscientia systems learn from both existing data resources and experimental data from each design cycle. The principle is similar to how a human would learn, but the AI process is far more effective at identifying and assimilating multiple subtle and complex trends to balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria.

As a result, the AI-driven process is more likely to achieve the end goal and to do this more rapidly and efficiently than traditional human endeavour.

Exscientia is collaborating with several leading pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, has its headquarters in Oxford, UK with further offices in the UK, USA and Japan. For more information visit us on www.exscientia.ai or follow us on Twitter @exscientialtd