Winning Grants

Sean Ekins is founder and CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. which is focused on using machine learning approaches for rare and neglected disease drug discovery. Sean graduated from the University of Aberdeen; receiving his M.Sc., Ph.D. in Clinical Pharmacology and D.Sc. in Science. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lilly Research Laboratories, before working as a senior scientist at Pfizer and then Eli Lilly. He went on to join several startup companies at increasingly senior levels. Since 2005 he has been awarded numerous grants and since 2016 alone has won over 20 from NIH and DOD (STTR/SBIR grants, R21, UH2 and R01) totaling over $16.7M, as well as performing as a consultant on others. He has a passion for advancing new technologies for drug discovery and is a prolific collaborator. He has authored or co-authored >345 peer reviewed papers, book chapters, edited 5 books on different aspects of drug discovery research and use (and misuse) of AI. Coverage of such researchhas also appeared in the Economist, Financial Times and Washington Post.