Dan Chapman

Director, Product Line Leader, Merck

Dan Chapman is a software product manager and product line leader within Merck IT based in the Boston, MA area. He currently leads an internally facing product team providing products to support research and development scientists.

Prior to this, he has spent time on the vendor side working with data management and analytics products and time at the lab bench in late-stage development. He was drawn to the intersection of software and science as an Analytical Chemist in the early 2000s and didn’t look back. Dan has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in International Business Management, both from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, and has over 20 years’ experience in and around the pharmaceutical industry.

Dinesh Agaram

Principal Consultant, Digital Transformation, Zifo

Dinesh started his career as an Innovation Lead in Bioinformatics with IBM Software Labs, following which he gained over two decades of experience in Life Sciences Digital Transformation Consulting and Change Leadership. Through this time, Dinesh has led and supported a variety of strategic initiatives in reputable organizations in the Life Sciences (Syngenta, AstraZeneca, Pfizer) and in consultancies (Cognizant, Thomson-Reuters), and has set up Data and IT teams in start-ups.

Starting recently with Zifo, Dinesh leads Consulting Practice development in Europe and is involved in pre-sales and delivery activities across the company’s client base in scientific industries.

His professional interests include reimagining the future of Automation and Data in their application to Scientific R&D, and championing robust change management principles in strategic transformation programs.

Dinesh has obtained a master’s degree in computer science from Anna University and an MBA from Cranfield.

Loren Perelman

Solutions Excellence Consultant, Benchling

Loren Perelman is a Solutions Excellence Consultant at Benchling. His career has been focused on helping organizations make better use of their primary asset, data, by improving methods of collection and utilization. Prior to Benchling, Loren was Vice President of Scientific Solutions at Riffyn, working with various customers in the Biotech and Biopharma spaces. Before Riffyn, he spent over a decade leading R&D, Process Development, and Manufacturing teams in those same spaces, with a focus on quality, analytical chemistry, and stats/modeling. His education includes a PhD in Materials Science from UCSD and a B.S. in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College.