Professor Andrew Hopkins FRS FMedSci, founder and Chief Executive of Exscientia plc (Nasdaq: EXAI), has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Science and Innovation by His Majesty King Charles III. The distinguished honour comes as part of HM The King’s 2024 New Year Honours List, recognising the achievements and service of extraordinary people across the UK who have been recommended by the Prime Minister based on an independent assessment process.
The appointment reflects Andrew’s life-long passion for harnessing the power of innovative technologies to discover and develop high-quality medicines to benefit patients. This recognition follows multiple previous awards and prestigious honours recently received by both Andrew and Exscientia, the AI-driven precision medicine company he leads.
After publishing pioneering scientific papers on how machine learning and generative algorithms could be used to design novel drug leads, Andrew founded Exscientia in 2012 to create and develop the best possible drugs in the fastest and most effective manner. As the company’s CEO, Andrew led the group who discovered the first AI-designed drugs to enter human clinical trials. Today, he heads a global team of around 450 scientists and technology experts based in Oxford, UK, and globally. Prior to Exscientia, Andrew held the Chairs of Medicinal Informatics and Translational Biology at the University of Dundee and spent a decade at Pfizer Inc. leading various informatics groups. He received his doctorate in biophysics from the University of Oxford and his LLD from the University of Dundee where he also holds an Honorary Chair.
For its end-to-end AI-driven precision medicine platform, Exscientia won the Prix Galien USA for Best Digital Health Solution in late 2022, as well as the Prix Galien UK in the same category in May 2023. Also in May this year, Andrew was elected for life to two of the UK’s national academies in recognition of “exceptional contributions to science”, as Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest independent academic scientific body, and as Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In September, Andrew was featured on the inaugural TIME 100 AI list of most influential people in AI, while most recently, in November 2023, Exscientia was named to the inaugural Fortune 50 AI Innovators list.
“I’m truly humbled by this extraordinary recognition of the work of my outstanding team that I am privileged to lead,” said Andrew. “Our goal at Exscientia of utilising advanced technology to accelerate the design of new drugs, an idea that originated during my doctorate, has gained substantial momentum in changing the way future therapies may be created, evaluated and brought to patients in need of fast, effective and affordable treatment. Based on our progress so far, we believe all drugs will be designed and developed with AI and that this approach holds the key to transforming the trajectory of human health forever.”
About Exscientia
Exscientia is an AI-driven precision medicine company committed to discovering, designing and developing the best possible drugs in the fastest and most effective manner. Exscientia developed the first-ever functional precision oncology platform to successfully guide treatment selection and improve patient outcomes in a prospective interventional clinical study, as well as to progress AI-designed small molecules into the clinical setting. Our internal pipeline is focused on leveraging our precision medicine platform in oncology, while our partnered pipeline broadens our approach to other therapeutic areas. By pioneering a new approach to medicine creation, we believe the best ideas of science can rapidly become the best medicines for patients. Visit us at https://www.exscientia.ai or follow us on Twitter @exscientiaAI.
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