Director, Biology Integration

Facility: Business Development & Strategy

Lexington, MA, US

Our Research & Development organization brings together the best minds in life science innovation. The teams located in facilities in Lexington, Watertown, Cambridge and Seattle reflect the full R&D continuum, from early research through late-stage clinical development. Here, we are building for the future, creating a distinct R&D community based on collaboration, partnerships, and cutting‑edge research across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas.

We recognize that improving human health starts here and that patients rely on us. Our R&D hub merges biotech speed and agility with large pharmaceutical company quality, resources, and stability, uniting the best of both worlds to develop new medicines for patients.

Diabetes & Obesity Therapeutic Area (DOTA) is engaged in accelerating the path of novel diabetes and obesity therapies for clinical development within Novo Nordisk. A main focus is discovery and evaluation of novel targets that can modulate cardiometabolic disease and advance the projects to deliver to the NN pipeline. The therapeutic area (TA) teams collaborate closely with the teams in R&D (Research & Development) in Novo Nordisk sites around the globe.

The TA will drive a high level of scientific innovation in the scientific and therapy area of diabetes & obesity to assure the key and most important scientific topics and areas are being pursued to support Novo Nordisk's pipeline aspirations.

The Scientific Director Biology Integration actualizes Novo Nordisk's externalization agenda by driving pipeline impact from alliances, research collaborations and business development activities in Diabetes & Obesity. The position contributes to our drug pipeline by using comprehensive knowledge of early drug discovery and development, R&D's strategic priorities, and external collaborations. In addition, the Scientific Director will use their expertise to determine the most impactful areas in which external collaborations can be used to develop novel insights to enhance the early project portfolio or accelerate our path to project maturation.

This position is an independent contributor and will initiate collaborations and establish high‑impact partnerships fully independently.

Reports to the Head of Metabolic Research; will be a part of and key contributor to Metabolic Research’s leadership team.

Internal relationships include working with research employees, project managers, therapy area heads, as well as colleagues across DOTA. External relationships include collaborations, partnerships, and academic collaborators.

• Take project leadership and oversight for drug programs run in external alliances or originating from external discovery efforts; integrate with internal efforts
• Integrate external resources to accelerate drug discovery; work with project leads to identify capability or bandwidth gaps and present them to internal governance
• Conduct due diligence and ensure scientific drive and value generation for ongoing and new external collaborations
• Collaborate with data science and genomics teams to realize the impact of big data and machine learning
• Drive new collaborations across Diabetes & Obesity to support the therapeutic area strategy
• Own, initiate, and drive key external collaborations and partnerships with global, cross‑organizational impact
• Lead activities that set direction for innovation scouting
• Secure global, cross‑organizational collaboration
• Drive change management within own area and make recommendations to influence broader change
• Collaborate across R&D and across therapy areas at all levels in R&D
• Act as a role model with joint responsibility for target progression and pipeline support across R&D
• Drive state‑of‑the‑art drug discovery with external partners
• Integrate and apply the newest technologies
• Integrate data science with biology
• Continuously advance scientific concepts and models toward the latest thinking
• Challenge scientific rationale, hypotheses, and interpretation of pipeline project results
• Proactively engage key external collaborators and internal…