Karen Akinsanya

Executive VP, Chief Biomedical Scientist, Head of Discovery R&D at Schrodinger

Speaker

Karen Akinsanya, president, head of therapeutics R&D and chief strategy officer, partnerships, joined Schrödinger in 2018. Karen leads the company’s therapeutics research and development organization. Karen is also responsible for therapeutics business development, ventures strategy, and outreach as well as growth initiatives that leverage synergies between the company’s therapeutics and software businesses. She has more than 30 years of experience spanning academia, pharmaceutical R&D and business development. Karen joined Merck Research Labs in 2005 and held positions of increasing responsibility in clinical pharmacology, development team leadership in early clinical development, as a therapeutic area head and search and evaluation lead in business development. Karen received her Ph.D. from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Imperial College in London, in endocrine physiology. After post-doctoral training at Imperial and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (UCL), Karen held several R&D roles at Ferring Pharmaceuticals in the UK and US.