Da Silva Lima to join IMI Scientific Committee
Professor Maria Beatriz da Silva Lima of the University of Lisbon will be the new Chair of the Innovative Medicines Initiative Scientific Committee, the PPP has announced. A new vice chair has also been appointed, with Professor Markus Perola of Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare taking this role.
The pair were elected by the committee, which is made up of experts in diverse areas of medical research from across Europe. An expert in pharmacology and pharmacotoxicology, da Silva Lima commented: “To be appointed chair is a great honour. From the start, IMI has been for me an enormously exciting project for countless reasons. Thanks to IMI, we have seen an enormous reformulation of the European research environment as well as researchers attitude.
“This re-thinking of the full drug development process is the most challenging and exciting exercise that I have experienced during my entire working life. Finally, there is huge potential to expand the principles underlying IMI to the rest of the world,” she added.
Adding his thoughts, IMI executive director Michel Goldman said: “The Scientific Committee represents the voice of the scientific community within IMI and their input is vital to our success. I am looking forward to working with Maria Beatriz da Silva Lima and Markus Perola, and the rest of the committee, to foster open collaboration in pharmaceutical research.”
The Scientific Committee provides the IMI governing board and executive office with strategic scientific advice, for example on the IMI research agenda and the annual scientific priorities (which form the basis of the call topics). In addition, the Scientific Committee participates in the consultations on new topics for calls for proposals and plays an active role in reviews of ongoing IMI projects. Members are nominated by IMI’s states representatives group and appointed by the governing board.
