Our Projects Team

Aditya Tyagi

Aditya is an experienced Project Manager with over 17 years in global clinical research, leading projects across multiple phases and regions within CROs and academic institutions. He currently plays a key role in developing innovative solutions that streamline research processes, leveraging his deep expertise in semantic data models to enhance operational efficiency. He leads the IDMP Ontology and Social Media and RWE projects.

Anca Ciobanu

Anca joined the Pistoia Alliance in 2021 and has facilitated numerous roundtable discussions, webinars, and training programs. She leads the Change Management and Future Labs Evolution communities and contributes to various training initiatives, including: FAIR and Data Governance, AI/ML, General Ontology and IDMP-Ontology. Anca has a background in medical engineering, holds an EMBA, and brings valuable corporate and entrepreneurial experience from the pharmaceutical industry.

Birthe Nielsen

Birthe leads several strategic initiatives at the Pistoia Alliance focused on data standards, regulatory alignment, and global collaboration across the life sciences. She manages the Chemical, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) Ontology and the Global Substance Registration System (GSRS) projects, supporting improved interoperability and governance of substance and manufacturing data and leads the Controlled Substance Compliance & Shipping Community, facilitating cross-industry collaboration on global compliance challenges.

Farah Egby

Farah Egby has extensive experience facilitating communities in leading scientific and technology environments. She is passionate about enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing, supporting the co-creation of practical resources, and fostering meaningful exchanges among researchers, technologists, and change-makers. Utilizing her experience within the UXLS and Chemical Exchange Format Committee for the Pistoia Alliance, Farah strives to create opportunities for open dialogue, strategic alignment, and the operationalization of user-centric innovation across the life sciences sector.

Giovanni Nisato

At the Pistoia Alliance Giovanni manages the Pharma General Ontology project and facilitates the FAIR for Pharma Community of Experts. Giovanni holds a PhD in physics and is a PMP certified project manager. His experience in technology maturation encompasses roles in R&D management and business development across diverse settings, including large industries (Philips Electronics), public-private structures (Swiss Center of Electronics), and EU project consortia coordination. He has spearheaded visionary projects in flexible electronics, medical devices and is passionate about human-centered collaborative innovation.

Marc Graber

Marc Graber specializes in helping pharmacovigilance (PV) teams define their technology strategies and implement related solutions.
Marc is a software engineer by training and has over 30 years of experience in IT consulting, project and program management and business partnering. He worked for 17 years supporting PV as a project/program manager and business partner at one of the top 10 pharma companies and was leading their IT Safety team for 7 years.
Marc is now managing the Pharmacovigilance Systems and Processes Standards project for Pistoia Alliance.

Rob Gill

Rob is a seasoned Data Architect and Business Consultant with over 30 years of experience driving AI and data innovation across the pharmaceutical financial and biotech sectors. With a career spanning leadership roles at GlaxoSmithKline and entrepreneurial ventures like RedWrasse Ltd and Content Capital Ltd, Rob has consistently delivered transformative solutions that enhance operational efficiency and unlock business value.

He specializes in GenAI, data architecture, and strategic innovation, with a track record of pioneering work in knowledge graphs, unsupervised learning and AI/ML-ready applications. Rob currently leads the Agentic AI initiative at the Pistoia Alliance.

Thierry Escudier

Thierry is a leader in Clinical Research, with more than 30 year’s experience in Corporate R&D pharma organizations in Clinical Operations. He is now acting as an independent consultant providing strategic consulting and is very much convinced that digital innovation and patient engagement are the key success factors in the drug development phase and will impact positively the medicinal product lifecycle.
Thierry acts as a Portfolio Lead for the Pistoia Alliance with a focus on Clinical Development, RWD and sustainability and leads the Clinical Trial Environmental Impact project.

Veronique Francois

Veronique leads key initiatives at the Pistoia Alliance focused on advancing data standards and enabling more effective in vitro science across the life sciences. She manages the In Vitro NAM Data Standards project, which develops open standards to improve how non-animal method data are captured and shared, and the In Vitro Pharmacology project, driving alignment of terminologies and workflows to support reproducible and interoperable in vitro pharmacology research. Veronique brings deep expertise in scientific data strategy, collaborative standards development, and cross-sector industry engagement.

Vladimir Makarov

Vladimir is a consultant with the Pistoia Alliance leading the Datafairy Bioassy Annotation and Large Language Models projects, and heading the AI & ML Community. Dr. Makarov works in biological informatics and strategic planning for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Previously Dr. Makarov was a consultant at Exelixis, Baxter, Pfizer, and multiple start-ups. Earlier in his career Dr. Makarov was a Director of Bioinformatics at Monsanto, and also worked at Amgen and Celera Genomics.