Daniel H. Robertson, a proven and experienced technical leader in information technology (IT), computational science and research, is a research fellow and vice president for digital technology at the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute (IBRI). Dr. Robertson also is director of the IBRI’s Applied Data Sciences Center. The Center is driving collaborations to:
- Improve understanding of Type 2 Diabetes from electronic health records
- Better predict small molecule safety from transcriptomic data
- Develop platforms for collecting digital or biological data from patients
- Design diabetes-related public health initiatives
His collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company and Corteva Agriscience won an Agrow Award in the category of “Best Industry Collaboration” in November 2018 and his “DigiBiomarkers” collaboration with MavenSphere, LLC. to collect patient-centered data was the runner-up of BioCrossroad’s Inaugural Inject Tech Challenge in October 2018. Finally, he was recently a co-author on a multi-organization manuscript on predictive modeling of disease in the special “Medicine in the Digital Age” January 2019 issue of Nature Medicine.
Prior to joining the IBRI, Dr. Robertson worked at Eli Lilly and Company and most recently served as senior director of research IT at Lilly. In this role he led the IT team supporting discovery systems and processes across six global research sites and nine functional/therapeutic areas. In his leadership role, Dr. Robertson was instrumental in delivering emerging technology and analyses through informatics resources, and enhancing support for big data storage and analysis.
He also transformed IT support for Lilly’s Open Innovation Drug Discovery program to a high-performing Development Operations team, which was recognized with an InformationWeek 500 award in 2011. And, the Multi-Dimensional Drug Discovery application developed by his team was recognized with a CIO 100 Award in 2015. His other roles at Lilly were first as a research scientist within Lilly Research Laboratories, then as a group leader and director of scientific informatics and global computational drug discovery.
He earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Florida State University and his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, graduating Summa Cum Laude, from Florida Southern College. After earning his Ph.D., Dr. Robertson served as an NRC/NRL postdoctoral research associate at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
He then held several positions at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) from 1993 through 2000. He last served as associate scientist and director of technical and administrative services and manager of the Facility for Computational Molecular Science at IUPUI before joining Eli Lilly and Company in 2000.
Dr. Robertson has published 74 papers in refereed journals, authored three invited book chapters, and conducted more than 70 professional/technical presentations. He has been honored with multiple awards from Eli Lilly and Company and IUPUI, and is a member of the American Chemical Society and American Physical Society.
