I feel very fortunate to have known Joseph Simpkins (CEO of Virscidian) for close to a decade now, meeting him first when he joined Eli Lilly to develop their compound QC informatics solution. Back then the focus, which is still a major part of early drug discovery, was to be able to determine which compounds had been chemically synthesized, which ones hadn’t and how pure the synthesized product was. Sounds simple? Certainly the technologies to acquire the data are easy and routine to use however as each company and group want something different in how they treat their data, what looks on paper to be easy, often turns into something more with extras needs and expectations from different stakeholders?
One of the things that always impressed me with the solutions that Joe created, including Analytical Studio Professional 1.1 that is available from Virscidian Inc., was that they were born from a fundamental need for a company or colleague to solve some time consuming and often repetitive process, both quickly and accurately. His solutions to these problems have been developed typically alongside the person or the activity and thus mimic closely the workflows and functionalities required. The solutions that he created were typically done quickly using a rapid prototyping approach whilst sitting with the chemist, scientist or end user and getting their direct feedback on what developments had been made. Joseph later in his career started Opans LLC, with his friend and colleague Kenneth Lewis back in 2002 and in the year’s in-between has worked tirelessly to produce a commercial software platform for processing LC/MS data for a number of different workflows. I’d like to explore aspects of this in a future blog. At the end of 2008 Joe spun out from Opans to create Virscidian which now is a commercial company promoting and selling its software solutions and customization services for the software.
So when Joseph approached me and asked if I’d be interested in joining Virscidian, it was really a very quick decision process that led me to the conclusion that this would be an exciting opportunity and a great match of skills and shared aspirations of both Joseph and myself.
One things that I have personally found very attractive in talking with Joseph has been the company willingness to be open to new possibilities, new directions and to deliver to our customers not just an off-the shelf product that does x, y or z, but a solution that can be adapted to meet the needs and workflows of chemists, scientists in drug discovery companies, synthetic and analytical chemists in other industries such as agrochemical, forensic, sports, food and so on. At this time Virscidan is able offer solutions in the areas of routine Compound QC, Quantitation and Biomarker Validation. This philosophy of delivering to the needs of scientists and analytical chemists forms part of the company motto of aiming to deliver “100% of what you want”.
Posted By Mark Bayliss