Senior Director - External Innovation & Drug Discovery

About the Department                                                                                                                                             

 

Our Boston Research & Development hub, anchored in the greater Boston area, brings together the best minds in life science innovation. The teams located in facilities in Lexington, Watertown and Cambridge reflect the full R&D continuum, from early research through late-stage clinical development. Here, we are building for the future, creating a distinct R&D community based on collaboration, partnerships, and cutting-edge research across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas. We recognize that improving human health starts here and that patients rely on us. Our greater Boston R&D hub merges biotech speed and agility with large pharmaceutical company quality, resources, and stability, uniting the best of both worlds to develop new medicines for patients.
 
The team is comprised of collaborative, diverse and passionate people who have a true sense of pride in their work and are committed to helping others grow and develop their careers. You’ll also have a platform to engage with key stakeholders on a global scale throughout the entire pipeline process. And while changing the future of diabetes, obesity and MASH is no easy task, we also recognize the importance of an enjoyable workplace, which is why we’ve cultivated a culture of fun, ingenuity and innovation. And our competitive compensation package and support of a healthy work-life balance all add to a best-in-class employee experience. We are changing lives for a living. Are you ready to make a difference?

 

The Position

Global Drug Discovery (GDD) is engaged in accelerating the path of novel cardiometabolic therapies for clinical development within Novo Nordisk. A main focus is discovery and evaluation of novel targets that can modulate cardiometabolic disease and advance the projects to deliver to the NN pipeline. The therapeutic area (TA) teams collaborate closely with the teams in GDD and Novo Nordisk sites around the globe. The TA will drive a high level of scientific innovation in the scientific and therapy area of diabetes, obesity, and MASH to assure the key and most important scientific topics and areas are being pursued to support Novo Nordisk's Global Drug Discovery (GDD) aspirations.

 

The Senior Director External Innovation and Drug Discovery actualizes Novo Nordisk's externalization agenda by driving pipeline impact from alliances, research collaborations and business development activities in Diabetes and Obesity. The position contributes to our drug pipeline by using comprehensive knowledge of early drug discovery and development, R&ED's (Research & Early Development) strategic priorities, and external collaborations. In addition, the Director will use their expertise to determine the most impactful areas in which external collaborations can be used to develop novel insights that can enhance the early project portfolio or accelerate our path to project maturation.

 

Relationships

Reports to the Vice President of Metabolic Research. Internal relationships include working with research employees, project managers, Therapy Area Heads, as well as colleagues across therapeutic areas. External relationships include collaborations, partnerships, and academic collaborators.

 

Essential Functions

• Taking project leadership and oversight roles on drug programs run in external alliances and arising from external discovery efforts
• Using external resources to accelerate drug discovery projects, working with project leads to identify bandwidth or capability gaps that hinder the projects and presenting them at internal governance
• Conducting due diligence and ensuring scientific drive and value generation of ongoing and new external collaborations
• Working with data science and genomics expertise to realize the impact of big data and machine learning
• Driving new collaborations across Diabetes, Obesity & MASH, supporting the strategy of the therapeutic area
• Owning and driving key external collaborations independently with global and cross-organizational impact
• Leadership:
  • Securing global cross-organizational collaboration
  • Drive change management in own area as well as make recommendations to assist in influencing other changes

• Collaboration across GDD:
  • Collaborate across therapy areas at all levels in GDD
  • Role model – joint responsibility for target progression and pipeline support across GDD
• Scientific Responsibilities:
  • Drive state of art drug discovery with external partners
  • Integration and application of newest technology
  • Integrating data science with biology
  • Continuously move the