Senior appointment at Exscientia

Clinical stage AI drug discovery company Exscientia has appointed a new executive vice president of strategic alliances.

Dr Richard Law joins from Evotec where he was senior vice president of business development for more than seven years and previously head of computational chemistry.

Prior to Evotec, Law was a senior computational chemistry researcher at the University of California, San Diego and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. He is also a director on the board of OpenEye Scientific Software.

Law said: “I am tremendously excited to join Exscientia, who have pioneered the use of AI and automation for drug discovery globally.

“Exscientia have demonstrated they can use AI to create drugs with custom-optimised profiles and then move them into the clinic. Adoption of AI to more rapidly bring better medicines to patients is a necessary step change for the industry.”

Professor Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, added: “Richard has extensive expertise in biopharma business development, as well as a deep understanding of Exscientia from his research at some of the top computational chemistry laboratories in the world.

“Richard has the experience and relationships to substantially expand Exscientia’s collaborations using our Centaur AI-driven discovery and design platform.”