Keynote speakers

Confirmed Keynote speakers include:

Ilgaz Akseli
Bristol-Myers Squibb


Predictive Product Design in the Pharmaceutical Industry


Ilgaz Akseli is a Director at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He leads the Predictive Design team within the Integrated Technology and Engineering group. His team provides advanced modeling and simulation support to the formulation and process development teams across BMS, including sterile and oral product portfolios. Dr. Akseli is the drug product development leader for several products used worldwide.

Carl Anderson
Duquesne University


Keeping the ‘free’ in calibration free chemometric methods: diagnostics designed for deployment with Iterative Optimization Technology


Carl A. Anderson is the associate Dean for research and graduate programs and an associate professor of pharmaceutical science at Duquesne University. His current research focus is analytical technologies and their application to SODF manufacturing and upstream bioprocessing. He currently serves on the USP expert subgroup on chemometrics.

Dan Bailey
Takeda


Closing the Loop: Harnessing Advanced Processing & Control for Circular Pharmaceutical Production


Dan joined the Process Chemistry group at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2009 where he co-founded a green chemistry program and led sustainability initiatives. He is currently an Associate Scientific Fellow in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Sustainability & Technology group where his work focuses on minimizing the environmental footprint of Takeda’s new products and manufacturing processes.

Suryaprakash Digavalli Surya
Belsim


Decarbonization through digitalization empowered by advanced data validation and reconciliation


Sury joined Belsim in 2009 after gaining extensive experience working at the world's largest refinery at Reliance Industries and with Invensys. He is a certified energy auditor and worked in lead positions in multiple projects with Saudi Aramco for energy management and optimization projects. He is currently Global Business Development Director at Belsim and is based out of their Belgium office.

Marissa Dobulis
Dow


Moving Manufacturing Forward: A Story of Online Analytical Monitoring


Marissa Dobulis, Ph.D., is a senior analytical specialist in the Process Analytical organization at Dow. In this role, she serves as a global SME for spectroscopy, primarily NIR and TDL in the multi-business global install base, along with the design and implementation of process analyzers across Dow’s various businesses. In total, her organization in Dow supports well over 20,000 process analyzers.

Amanda M Lines
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory


Optical spectroscopy based monitoring for extremely harsh environments: processing nuclear wastes and materials


Dr. Amanda Lines is a Chief Scientist at PNNL with experience in the design and deployment of on-line monitoring and sensor technology. Her work primarily focusses on the development of optical sensors for highly harsh environments, such as those common to nuclear materials processing, as well as the application of chemical data science tools to enable advanced, automated data output.

John Mack
Applied Materials


Statistical and Hybrid Techniques for Process Monitoring, Control and Optimization


John is a Product Unit Manager within Applied Material’s APG Pharma division. His role is to lead the team that delivers software and solutions for Advanced Process Control, process monitoring and optimisation in the process industries. He is particularly interested in developing robust model-based systems to reduce process development costs and to optimise routine manufacturing.

Adam Pearson
Motiva


Seeing the Light: Learnings from implementing online FT-NIR in a refinery setting


Adam joined Motiva in 2019 as the Manager of Technology for Analyzers at their corporate office in Houston responsible for analyzer innovation projects, standards development, performance improvement, and overall strategic direction for analytical equipment within the organization. He has recently been focusing on implementing online spectroscopy to enable improved process control and unit monitoring.

Brian Gilson Rohrback
Infometrix Inc.


Industrial grade chemometrics: from laboratory to process implementation


Brian started with Infometrix in 1983 and became President and CEO in 1985. He steered Infometrix into position as the dominant independent supplier of pattern recognition technology to analytical instrument companies. His expertise is in the integration of multivariate data processing for a variety of analytical instrument methods. His experience prior to Infometrix was in the petroleum business.

Saly Romero-Torres
Thermo Fisher


The relationship between controls & risk & how it impacts new control development & implementation


Saly has extensive experience having worked for multiple Bio-pharmaceutical companies. She has a multi-disciplinary background in digital quality systems, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, automation, PAT, data analytics, workforce development, & Operational Excellence. Saly is an ex-member of the Board on Chemical Sciences & Technologies of the US National Academies.

Michael Weber
Mondelez International


Net Zero: Accelerating positive impact - Driving focused actions faster together


Michael Weber is Sr. Director Climate & Environment at Mondelez International. He leads the development, evolution and implementation of a comprehensive end-to-end strategy on net zero carbon, water stewardship, and broader climate risk. He brings to this role a broad range of expertise gained from corporate experiences in R&D, Engineering, Business Development, Mergers & Acquisitions and Company Integrations.

Andrew Whitley
HORIBA Scientific


Adapting General Research Analytical Techniques and Instruments to Meet Dedicated Pharma Applications


Andrew Whitley is the Vice President of Global Business Development for HORIBA, and Field Leader for Life Sciences. Through his career he has played a key product line management role adapting techniques and products to meet customer user requirements, particularly in high volume applications and markets. He emphasizes the importance of taking existing platforms and creating applications along with standard operating procedures to enhance their utility.