Remy Evard, CIO of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)

Episode Overview

Among other topics, Remy discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy

• The unique role of an IT division that supports research scientists whose mission is discovery, as opposed to an IT division that supports a business division more responsible for revenues and costs
• How technology can enable global research and foster innovation by leveraging the scale of the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
• The way in which Remy, as a new CIO, went about gaining credibility with the business and scientists through “quick wins”, and the natural progression that the IT department followed once that credibility was established
• NIBR’s data initiative to manage decades of legacy information and how to ensure sound knowledge management
• The challenges of governance and managing a budget in a non-traditional IT environment, which requires flexibility in order to accommodate research projects
• The potential of new technologies, such as Web 2.0, mobile devices, and deep sequencing, to change the way in which scientific research is conducted

Remy Evard’s Biography

Remy is the Chief Information Officer of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), Novartis’ global pharmaceutical research organization. The informatics organization in NIBR is responsible for scientific application and scientific infrastructure, as well as any research-specific IT activities and all aspects of information technology infrastructure, platforms and services.

Before joining Novartis, Remy was the CIO for Argonne National Laboratory, a 4,000- person US Department of Energy open science research laboratory operated by the University of Chicago. His emphasis there was on operation of all aspects of the IT infrastructure, including security, and the development and maintenance of all business applications. He also led teams of computer scientists, helping to design and build the fastest supercomputers in the world for open science.

Remy has been an active member of the international high-end computing and networking community for twenty years He serves on the USENIX Board of Directors and PRIME.

Remy received an M.S. in computer science from the University of Oregon, and undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics from Andrews University.

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