• Start
  • R&D
    • PICs
    • Platform
    • Publications
    • Pipeline
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • News

Vice President Biology

Targeted Protein Degradation
In this new and exciting position, we have an outstanding opportunity for an ambitious scientist to lead the biology research and development efforts in a growing team at Celeris Therapeutics.

Celeris Therapeutics is the pioneer in AI-driven Degrader Discovery, revolutionizing the next generation of scientific developments focusing on degrader technologies.

 

Full-time

Office and wet lab in the city of Graz

f/m/x

Your Profile

The VP of Biology will be part of the company’s leadership team and contribute to the company’s vision for developing products that can address unmet medical needs. Closely working with the CEO and VP of Drug Discovery, you will articulate and build the long-term vision for biology research and development, and prioritize disease indications and nominate targets. You will oversee and direct early-stage programs, from target validation to IND submission. Together with our colleagues of biologists, computational chemists, medicinal chemists, and deep learning experts, you will be contributing to best-in-class and first-in-class drug candidates.

The candidate should be a mentor that recruits and retains talent and can influence stakeholders via his/her technical knowledge, novel approaches, and strategic thinking. You will provide strategic and tactical oversights for biology R&D programs, CRO activities and in-house biology work at the lab location in Graz. The VP of Biology will be accountable for designing and implementing Celeris Therapeutics’ intellectual property strategy.

This position has the unique opportunity to further create visions and implement strategies that will major impact the TPD field. The successful candidate is a confident leader with extensive prior success in drug development, preferably in multiple disease areas such as oncology, neurodegenerative and aging-related diseases, and is a proven leader with strong skills in scientific program management, communication, and team building. You will lead the company’s biology platform and a team of highly talented scientists, to advance the company’s pipeline and mission to bring novel medicines to patients.

Your Role

  • Ability to create and articulate a compelling long-term vision for the biology research team and implement and execute an aligned strategy that will ensure high quality outcomes
  • Manage a portfolio of targets related to Oncology and Neurology, oversee strategic execution of research and preclinical activities together with the VP of Drug Discovery to enable robust, timely, and compliant IND submissions with clear development paths
  • Support and execution of R&D programs in business development partnerships
  • Develop accurate budget and staff projections to support the team’s goals
  • Direct the execution of multiple concurrent programs, including setting scientific direction, development of program timelines, monitoring of key milestones and decision points, and managing the scientific team
  • Serve as the spokesperson for the biology department by representing and promoting our organization to stakeholders, including board presentations, investors, and the scientific community
  • Engage with external partners, clinical and academic collaborators, and CROs
  • Generate a robust publication record in leading journals and present findings at key conferences
  • Participate in recruiting, coaching, and developing internal talents
  • Build, lead, and manage a high-performing group of talented scientists
  • Perform research and development in collaboration with other functions in projects pertaining to a range of potential indications
  • Communicate, as appropriate, efforts and progress to internal and external parties

Requirements

    • Ph.D. in Chemical Biology, Biology, Biotechnology, or related discipline with 10+ years of relevant post-Ph.D. experience in Biotech/Pharma with an excellent track record
    • 5+ years of scientific leadership experience leading research teams working on multiple concurrent multidisciplinary projects in a drug discovery setting (biotech or large pharma)
    • Successful track record of leading drug discovery programs, especially with novel targets
    • Track record of excellence and innovation as demonstrated by multiple peer-reviewed publications and co-inventorship on patents
    • Broad experience in multiple therapeutic areas (e.g., oncology, neurology, or infectious diseases)
    • Experience advancing drugs against novel targets to IND stage in diverse therapeutic areas and molecular target classes
    • Understanding of the current competitive and regulatory landscape in targeted protein degradation
    • Experience in the discovery and preclinical development of therapeutics targeting undruggable targets
    • Experience leading collaborations with external academic, biotechnology, and contract research organizations
    • Ability to organize and communicate complex data sets clearly and concisely to key stakeholders from diverse backgrounds
Interested applicants send their CV to jobs@celeristx.com

Contact and further information:

DI Christopher Trummer, MSc., Tel.: +43 660 3837648

Celeris Therapeutics, Inc.

585 Glenwood Ave
Menlo Park, CA 94025
USA
EIN: 30-1282444

 

Celeris Therapeutics GmbH

Schmiedlstraße 3, 8042 Graz, Austria

Company register: FN 550442z

UID: ATU76712158

IBAN: AT10 3800 0000 0082 1272 BIC: RZSTAT2G

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsAccept
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT

Dr. Mark Whittaker

Mark Whittaker is a passionate and experienced researcher in drug discovery. He has a D.Phil. in chemistry from the University of York and undertook postdoctoral studies in Toronto and Oxford. He has worked for Evotec, a leading biotechnology company, for over 20 years, where he initially held the position of Director of Drug Discovery, leading integrated drug discovery collaborations within the CRO business. He moved in 2013 to the internal research business segment, where he held positions of SVP Head of Oncology and, latterly, SVP Head of Protein Homeostasis. During his time at Evotec, he was involved in several projects that aimed to develop novel drugs in various therapeutic areas, including oncology, diabetes, and neuroscience. Prior to joining Evotec, Mark spent 13 years at British Biotech, initially as a Group Leader in Medicinal Chemistry and subsequently, he became Head of Medicinal Chemistry and finally Director of Chemistry.

Dr. Chris Tame

Chris is a distinguished scientist in the field of drug discovery and development, renowned for his expertise in this area. He brings a wealth of experience across all preclinical phases, coupled with a diverse skill set encompassing AI and targeted protein degradation. Dr. Tame has held several key positions in the industry, including Head of Early Discovery Chemistry and Target Evaluation at Benevolent AI, and Protein Degradation Research Leader at GSK (in collaboration with Craig Crews’ group). His contributions to these organizations have been invaluable, and he continues to make significant strides in the field of drug discovery.

Dr. James Field

Dr. James Field is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of LabGenius, a London-based biotech company that leverages the combined power of synthetic biology, robotic automation, and machine learning. This combination of technologies is used to develop a smart platform capable of intelligently developing therapeutic antibodies.

For decades, scientists, engineers, and technologists have dreamt of building ‘robot scientists’ capable of autonomously discovering new knowledge, technologies, and sophisticated real-world products.

For Dr. Field, this represents the most exciting opportunity of our generation, and he founded LabGenius with the dream of making this a reality.

In 2017, James was awarded the BBSRC Innovator of the Year award for early career impact. In 2018, he was featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for Science and Healthcare. He is also a fellow of the prestigious Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program (LEAP).

In addition to his company responsibilities, James is a recognized thought leader in his field. He has spoken at global events such as the Milken Global Conference, TEDMED, RAAIS and CogX, and works with The Ditchley Foundation to brief key policymakers in government on AI-enabled drug discovery.

Dr. Ronjon Nag

Ronjon Nag is a British-American inventor and entrepreneur specializing in the field of mobile technology. He co-founded the technology company Lexicus, which was acquired by Motorola in 1993. His later co-founded company Cellmania was acquired by Research in Motion in 2010. He later served as vice president at both Motorola and BlackBerry.

Ronjon is the founder and president of R42, a U.S. VC group. He was one of the early investors in Healx and Oxford Drug Design.

Petr Šrámek

Petr Sramek has been a serial entrepreneur in DeepTech for more than 30 years. Petr builds science, funding, and business infrastructure to support the faster adoption of technologies to improve health. Petr was Entrepreneur in Residence at Singularity University, Co-Founder of the Artificial Intelligence Platform at the Confederation of Industry, and Senator for the Czech Republic in the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF).

Petr is also the founder of the AI Awards project. Petr was listed in the group of 28 AI leaders in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s flagship study alongside Nick Bostrom, Frank Chen, Martin Ford, Kai-Fu Lee, Andrew Ng, Ben Lorica, and others.

Petr is Co-Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Managing Partner of Longevitytech.fund, a Czech VC.

DI Christopher Trummer

Christopher Trummer is CEO and Co-Founder of Celeris Therapeutics.

He is an accomplished biotech executive with expertise in bridging the fields of engineering and biotechnology, driving development processes and forging technology partnerships. As a board member of BIOTECH AUSTRIA, the biotechnology association in Austria, he contributes to shaping the industry landscape.

Christopher is regularly invited to share his insights at drug development conferences, particularly focusing on the intersection of artificial intelligence and pharmaceuticals. Additionally, he has co-authored peer-reviewed publications across various journals.

Christopher holds a degree in molecular biology and biotechnology with honors from TU Graz and KFU Graz. Besides, he completed his Master’s degree in information systems at IU in Bad Honnef.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp

Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp joined Frankfurt University (Germany) in 2015 as a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Buchmann Institute of Molecular Life Sciences. He is associated to the Structural Genomics Consortia (SGC) as a visiting Professor at Oxford and an adjunct Professor at George Washington University. Since 2017 he has been the CSO of the newly founded SGC node at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research interests are the rational design of selective inhibitors that target protein kinases and protein interactions.

Dr. Peter Ho

Peter received his B.A. in biology from The Johns Hopkins University and his M.D. and Ph.D. (pharmacology) degrees from Yale University, then completed a pediatrics residency at The Children’s Hospital of Boston followed by clinical fellowships in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and in clinical oncology and regulatory sciences jointly through the U.S. FDA and the NCI.

He began his career in drug discovery and development at the Investigational Drug Branch of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, NCI followed by positions of increasing responsibility at Novartis and DuPont Pharmaceuticals. He subsequently served as Senior VP of the Oncology Center of Excellence in Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline and VP of Oncology Clinical Development at Johnson and Johnson.  In 2010, he co-founded BeiGene Ltd. and served as President. Most recently, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Epizyme Inc. and then at Boston Pharmaceuticals both of which are based in Cambridge, MA.  Over his career, he has been directly responsible for the first-time-in-human dosing of 19 anticancer agents and has overseen the development of over 60 hematology and oncology compounds in all phases of clinical trials.  His work has contributed to eleven NCE or biologics approvals to date:  Gleevec®; Arranon®; Tykerb®; Promacta®; Votrient®; Synribo®; Tafinlar®; Mekinist®; Sylvant®; and Rydap®, and Tazverik®.

Karel Kubias

Karel Kubias is an experienced leader in Life Sciences, chemical, and pharmaceutical businesses with more than 25 years of experience.

Karel studied chemistry at TH Merseburg, Germany, and holds an MBA from Auburn University.

He worked for five years as the CEO of Merck spol. s.r.o., Czech Republic, before becoming the Regional Head Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa at Merck Millipore, division of Merck KGaA Darmstadt, for another five years.
Karel, Partner in the i&i Biotech Fund, joins the Board of Directors at Celeris Therapeutics.

Jakob Hohenberger

Jakob has co-founded several tech companies over the past few years, covering a wide variety of areas from marketing, to sales, business management, and product development.
While he was active in various markets, high technology was always the common denominator, including artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
Before co-founding Celeris Therapeutics, he was Head of Sales of an international venture building company in Switzerland.

Jakob is responsible for finance, operations, investments, marketing, and sales.

Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Johannes Kirchmair

Johannes Kirchmair is Associate Professor of cheminformatics at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Vienna and Head of the Computational Drug Discovery and Design Group (COMP3D).
He is also a group leader at the Center for Bioinformatics (ZBH) at the University of Hamburg. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Innsbruck (2007), Johannes started his career as an application scientist at Inte:Ligand GmbH (Vienna) and as a university assistant at his alma mater. In 2010, he moved to BASF SE (Ludwigshafen) as a postdoctoral fellow. He then worked as a research associate at the University of Cambridge (2010-2013) and ETH Zurich (2013-2014). Johannes held an assistant professorship in applied bioinformatics at the University of Hamburg (2014 to 2018) and an associate professorship in bioinformatics at the University of Bergen (2018 to 2019).
He has been a visiting professor at the National Institute of Warangal (2016), at the University of Cagliari (2017), and the University of Vienna (2018). His main research interests include the development and application of computational methods to predict the biological activities, metabolic activities, and toxicity of small molecules (including natural products) in the context of drug discovery.

Prof. Dr. Ola Spjuth

Ola Spjuth is a professor at Uppsala University focusing on mathematical and statistical modeling, informatics, and quantitative analysis of pharmacological systems. He has developed methods, algorithms, and software to study and model pharmaceutical interactions.
A major focus of his group is how artificial intelligence and machine learning can aid the drug discovery process: for example, in drug screening and the study of drug toxicity, metabolism, and resistance.
His group combines in silico and in vitro experiments at the cellular level and has access to a robotic high-content imaging laboratory connected to a modern IT infrastructure to manage and analyze large amounts of data.

Prof. Dr. Jean-Louis Reymond

Jean-Louis Reymond is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He studied chemistry and biochemistry at the ETH Zurich and received his Ph.D. from the University of Lausanne on the synthesis of natural products (1989).
After a post-doc and an assistant professorship at the Scripps Research Institute, he moved to the University of Bern (1997). His research focuses on the recognition and representation of the chemical space for small molecule drug discovery, the synthesis of new molecules from GDB (http://gdb.unibe.ch), and the design and synthesis of peptide dendrimers and polycyclic peptides as antimicrobial agents and for nucleic acid transport. He is the author of > 300 scientific publications and reviews (h = 62).