Judith Schweimer

Title

Fos­ter­ing inno­va­tion in men­tal health: Bridg­ing the gap between acad­e­mia and industry 

Abstract

At Boehringer, via our Open Sci­ence plat­form opn​Me​.com, we fos­ter an envi­ron­ment that accel­er­ates inde­pen­dent inno­va­tion and dis­cov­ery by pro­vid­ing sci­en­tists access to select­ed, well-char­ac­terised, best-in-class mol­e­cules. Fur­ther, we also invite sci­en­tists to pro­pose inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for a chance to obtain research fund­ing either in rela­tion to a spe­cif­ic mol­e­cule or for pre­cise­ly for­mu­lat­ed sci­en­tif­ic questions.

Since estab­lish­ing the opn­Me inno­va­tion por­tal, in excess of 2.400 col­lab­o­ra­tive research pro­pos­als have been sub­mit­ted and this enabled more than 140 part­ner­ships with sci­en­tists world­wide and col­leagues at Boehringer. With­in the Dis­cov­ery Research Neu­ro­science & Men­tal Health Depart­ment, we reg­u­lar­ly host stu­dents for place­ments and intern­ships to work on spe­cif­ic projects and pro­vide new gen­er­a­tions of young, tal­ent­ed sci­en­tists insight into research in the indus­try setting. 

Fur­ther, through opn​Me​.com and oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tions, we offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port tal­ent­ed sci­en­tists to con­duct their research either at one of our dis­cov­ery research sites or anoth­er host research institution. 

Biog­ra­phy

I stud­ied Biol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen, soon I dis­cov­ered neu­ro­science as a pos­si­bil­i­ty with­in my degree and fin­ished this first degree with a research the­sis about the role of the BNST, a part of the extend­ed amyg­dala and its involve­ment in fear and anx­i­ety pro­cess­ing. After that I moved to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Stuttgart to pur­sue my PhD, by inves­ti­gat­ing how the ante­ri­or cin­gu­late and its dopamin­er­gic inner­va­tion are essen­tial in spe­cif­ic tasks of deci­sion mak­ing and instru­men­tal learning. 

For my first post­doc, I moved to Lon­don to look into poten­tial nov­el treat­ments of mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis at King’s Col­lege Lon­don. From there, I moved to Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don to study how sero­tonin neu­rons process neg­a­tive stim­uli in vivo. With this exper­tise in in vivo elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, I went on to Oxford, to fur­ther inves­ti­gate how sero­tonin and dopamine neu­rons may reg­u­late mood dis­or­ders, and specif­i­cal­ly in rela­tion to treatment. 

Besides the research, I held lec­ture­ships at an Oxford col­lege and lat­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St Andrews to teach the next gen­er­a­tions of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and med­ical students. 

In 2022, I moved back to Ger­many to work in the CNS research depart­ment (now DR N&MH) at Boehringer Ingel­heim as a Sci­en­tif­ic Coör­di­na­tor for exter­nal col­lab­o­ra­tions, where I sup­port projects with sci­en­tif­ic part­ners at uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er research insti­tu­tions. Fur­ther, I still lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ulm and super­vise project stu­dents with­in the company.