James Black

Education

PhD in Medical Science, 2015
Cambridge University

MPhil in Epidemiology, 2012
Cambridge University

Masters in Public Health, 2010
Otago University

BBioMedSci in Infection & Immunity, 2008
Otago University

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Executive Director, Advanced Quantatitive Sciences
Novartis
Nov 2024 – Present Basel, Switzerland

Responsibilities include:

  • Lead technology platform strategy
  • Product Owner for Scientific Computing Environment
 
 
 
 
 
Insights Engineering People and Product Family Lead
Roche / Genentech
Apr 2021 – Present Basel, Switzerland

Responsibilities include:

  • Leading a dedicated team of data scientists, developers and engineers that build R/SAS/Python and other language data products for insights
  • Business responsible for our Scientific Computing Environment development
  • Promote a collaborative codebase, and develop tools, frameworks and mechanisms to support around 1,000 data scientists productionising their code
  • Core member of Roche's Corporate Executive Committee sponsored effort to evaluate our platform and tools across Roche Pharma
  • Promote, facilitate and track our internal open source code base
  • Represent Pharma Development in Roche's Inner and Open Source office
 
 
 
 
 
Associate Director, Personalised Healthcare Analytics
Roche / Genentech
Aug 2018 – Mar 2021 Basel, Switzerland

Responsibilities include:

  • Leading a team of 10 data scientists and 4 engineers
  • Partnering with collaborations group to better understand real world data
  • Leading an engineering team responsible for enterprise level dashboards and tools used by >700 internal users
  • Driving the insight engineering roadmap, partnering closely with informatics
  • Managing data scientists working across the organisation to deliver real world evidence to benefit patients
 
 
 
 
 
Data Scientist, Personalised Healthcare Analytics
Roche / Genentech
Oct 2015 – Jul 2018 Basel, Switzerland
Delivering on molecule needs and supporting development of more robust data science workflows.
 
 
 
 
 
Grad Student
MRC Epidemiology Unit | Jesus College, University of Cambridge
Oct 2011 – Sep 2015 Cambridge, England
Completed MPhil in Epidemiology followed by a PhD exploring individualised care in populations with screen-detected diabetes, with a focus on preventing tertiary outcomes like cardiovascular disease. During my PhD I also undertook teaching opportunities. This included MPhil students, as well as teaching my own one-month course on medical science at a summer school held at Jesus College.
 
 
 
 
 
Research Assistant
Health Services Research Centre, Victoria University
Jan 2010 – Aug 2010 Wellington, New Zealand
I analysed the relationship between health-related quality of life and waiting lists for elective surgery. I approached this by using a multi-level mixed effects model to assess the ability of the health system to minimise the burden the waiting list population represents. After completing this project before the end of my contract this was expanded to explore the existence of different health trajectories present after referral using a group-based approach to finite mixture modelling.
 
 
 
 
 
Undergrad | Grad Student
School of Medicine, University of Otago
Jan 2008 – Apr 2010 Wellington, New Zealand
Completed a BBioMedSci in Infection and Immunity, and a research MPH. My thesis was an individual patient data meta-analysis of patients health related quality of life after injury for a thesis only Masters in Public Health. This thesis aimed to provide a descriptive benchmark of quality of life norms after injury and has since been included as a data source for injury estimates in the GBD-2010 project.