Alexander Hillisch is Executive Director and Head of “Digital Molecule Discovery” at UCB overseeing sections in Brussels, London and Boston. His teams are working on small molecule, targeted protein degraders and antibody drug discovery in disease areas such as inflammation and neurology. From 2019-2022 he headed the department for “Computational Molecular Design” at Bayer AG, Wuppertal, Germany. Between 2003 and 2019 he was head of Computational Chemistry as part of Medicinal Chemistry Wuppertal at Bayer. His team was involved in computer-aided drug design of small molecules in the areas of cardiology, oncology and ophthalmology. From 1998 to 2003 he led a research group at EnTec GmbH, Jena, Germany, a subsidiary of Schering AG, Berlin. He conducted his Ph.D. thesis at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMB), Jena in the area of biophysics (NMR, FRET) and molecular modeling. Alexander Hillisch received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry with Prof. Peter Schuster in 1998 and his diploma in Pharmacy in 1995 from the University of Vienna, Austria. He is co-author of ~60 research papers, 2 books and ~65 pharmaceutical compound patents. He contributed to the discovery of one marketed product (Finerenone, Kerendia®) and 7 clinical development candidates, amongst those Asundexian, a novel oral FXIa inhibitor currently in Phase III clinical trials. Alexander teaches “From basic research to industrial products: Modern Drug Design” as part of the “Master of Science in Chemistry” study program at the University of Cologne from which he received a honorary professorship in 2010.

Jayesh Mistry is a dedicated Product Manager at Reaxys, focusing on chemistry search optimization to enhance user experience. With a strong customer-focused approach, Jayesh brings over a decade of experience as a medicinal and process chemist, primarily in small molecule drug discovery. Before joining Elsevier, Jayesh developed his chemistry expertise at Pfizer and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Jayesh holds a BSc in Chemistry from Sheffield Hallam University.

Rito Dipto is the Global Strategic Engagement Manager for Elsevier Corporate Markets, serving as a trusted partner to the world’s top 30 pharmaceutical companies. In this role, Rito leads enterprise engagement across Elsevier’s full portfolio to advance R&D productivity and accelerate innovation in drug discovery.

Prior to joining Elsevier in 2022, Rito spent over 12 years leading commercial and market access functions at major life sciences organisations including Danone and Astellas. Earlier in his career, he trained as an R&D engineer at Siemens and holds a Master’s degree in Electronics Engineering, specialising in Nanotechnology and Advanced Machine Learning Algorithms.