Associate Director
Novartis
Weston, Massachusetts, United States
Dr. Anna Katharina Wilkins serves as an Associate Director in the PK Sciences and Translational Medicine group at Novartis, where she collaborates within a multidisciplinary team to apply advanced modeling and simulation strategies. Her work spans both emerging and established therapeutic modalities, supporting drug candidates from selection and first-in-human studies through later stages of development.
Katharina has been an enthusiast of Quantitative Systems Biology and Pharmacology (QSP) modeling since the earliest days of this rapidly evolving field. She brings particular expertise in antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), helping guide their journeys from design and preclinical development to clinical application.
She joined Novartis in 2025 after serving as Principal Scientist and Group Leader of the QSP team at Metrum Research Group, where she led project teams in designing and implementing QSP modeling strategies to inform critical decisions throughout drug development. Prior to Metrum, Katharina spent seven years at Applied BioMath, specializing in mechanistic QSP models to support pharmaceutical collaborators, focusing frequently on ADCs.
Katharina’s academic journey began with a Diplôme d’Ingénieur de Biotechnologie (equivalent to a Master’s degree in Biotechnology) from the École Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg in 2002. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, with a minor in Computational Systems Biology, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008. Her doctoral research advanced mathematical methods for oscillatory dynamical systems, which she applied to circadian rhythm molecular networks in the human internal clock. This work revealed novel structure-function relationships within complex biological systems, exemplifying her ability to merge engineering and biology with innovative solutions.
Throughout her career, Katharina has demonstrated unwavering dedication to advancing biomedical science through cutting-edge modeling approaches.
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12 years of modeling ADCs in oncology: lessons learned, insights gleaned, creativity unleashed
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
11:45 AM - 12:00 PM MDT