Dr. Peitsch is Chief Scientific Officer and VP of Research and Development at Philip Morris International. He has extensive experience in tobacco harm reduction, smoking-related diseases, systems biology, toxicology, bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, high-performance computing, and knowledge management. An innovation-focused results-driven biomedical research leader, Dr. Peitsch has many years of experience managing large multi-cultural teams across several countries. He holds several patents related to proteomics, genomics, and computer science and has published over 200 book chapters, technical reports, and articles in top ranking scientific journals (cited over 22000 times). He has done pioneering work in the area of molecular modeling, cell biology, computational text analytics, and systems biology/toxicology and is a founder of several initiatives, including two start-up companies, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and the [BC]2 conference (http://www.bc2.ch). He is Chairman of the Executive Board of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and an active scientific advisor to several academic and commercial entities. He has also served on the Swiss National Research Council. Dr. Peitsch is a Computerworld Honors Laureate and a recipient of several awards including the New England Business and Technology Award and the United Devices Grid Visionary Award. He holds a BSc in life sciences, MSc in physical chemistry, and PhD in biochemistry. He is also Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Basel.