Owkin bolsters senior team with experienced pharma executives to drive strategic partnerships

Owkin, a startup pioneering Federated Learning and AI technologies for medical research and clinical development, announces two senior hires to boost its Platform and expand its strategic life science partnerships. Today, Asif Jan and Sezai Taskin bring the Owkin team an accumulated 30 years of experience in
the pharmaceutical industry.

Asif Jan joins Owkin as an SVP, Head of Platform & Solutions to lead the development of the Owkin Platform and its federated data network, bringing a unique skillset and experience covering computer science, data science, product and strategy. Prior to this move, Asif served as a Global Head of Personalized Healthcare Analytics in the PHC group for Roche. Asif began a decade-long association with Roche in 2011, covering Informatics, Diagnostics and Pharma. In his early work there, he oversaw the data and solution architecture for clinical data capture, management and analysis solutions supporting clinical studies conducted by the Diagnostics division. In 2014, he moved to the Diagnostics Chief Technology Office leading technology assessment for external data and analytics opportunities in the RWD, digital and bioinformatics domain. He and his team successfully introduced RWD capabilities across global lifecycle, medical and market access teams and opened new possibilities for data-driven evidence generation. Asif joined the PHC Data Science team in 2019 and established the PHC Analytics team supporting PHC products.

As an SVP of Strategic Business Development, Sezai Taskin will bring his 20 years of industry experience to develop strategic value-based partnerships with pharma and biotech companies. Sezai joins from AstraZeneca where he was Head of ENHERTU and Daiichi Sankyo Alliance for Europe. Prior to his position at AstraZeneca, Sezai was a recognized business leader in haematology and oncology at Abbvie and Roche, both at the regional and international levels. He supervised the launch, marketing and commercialization of numerous leading franchises across multiple therapeutic areas. Throughout his experience, he has always pushed for innovative approaches to deliver the right drug for the right patient, leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven solutions to improve patient outcomes at scale.

Thomas Clozel, Owkin Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

We are thrilled to have Asif and Sezai join our dynamic team. Both bring a wealth of experience across healthcare, pharma and technology. We believe they will boost our efforts to scale our federated network of academic hospital partners and our solutions across pharma clients.