Steve Thomas is a Scientific Investigator in the DMPK department at GSK Ware. Steve is responsible for structural identification of in-vivo and in-vitro metabolites. It is essential that GSK scientists have access to one another’s findings in order to prevent error, repetition or inefficiency. He has implemented a Spectrus database of metabolic knowledge that helps GSK store, share and search data from around the globe.

1. What message are you most looking forward to getting across to your webinar audience?

The efficiency of re-using data in a corporate environment. We are generating knowledge too fast to stay in one person’s head. I hope to show the audience one way to create a repository of knowledge that doesn’t forget, doesn’t go senile, doesn’t retire and doesn’t leave the company for a competitor.

2. Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

Any shallow tropical sea bed. As an avid scuba diver I love investigating the undersea world and its fantastic inhabitants.

3. How did you become a Scientific Investigator?

I have always loved puzzles and science. Structural identification is a straight combination of the two. I was lucky enough to train in both NMR and Mass Spec, flatteringly described as analytically bilingual. Initially this was geared towards Medicinal Chemistry support, but eventually the lure of more challenging samples and close proximity to the development compounds that would change people’s quality of life proved too strong. I have been a Scientific Investigator, studying metabolic transformations in man for 7 years.

4. What has been the best moment in your career?

Curiously, site closure. I was at Merck when Terlings Park closed. The camaraderie and skill sharing that helped the scientists there branch out and move on was human nature close to its best.

5. What are you hoping to achieve from doing the webinar?

I hope to give participants an overview of what can be done with linked up data so colleagues within an organization don’t have to reinvent the wheel and can steer away from known problems