R/Pharma Summit

In-person event β€’ Monday, October 5, 2026 β€’ Basel, Switzerland

Background

In 2018 and 2019, R in Pharma was in-person at Harvard University and focused on opportunities for direct interaction with speakers and guests.
These relationships and connections have grown into many exciting areas of Open Source drug development.

  • In 2023 we partnered with Posit, hosting an in-person session at posit::conf(2023) in Chicago.
  • In 2024, the session continued at posit::conf(2024) in Seattle.
  • In 2025, we hosted a summit at posit::conf(2025) in Atlanta.
Important

We’re thrilled to bring this to Basel in 2026 at the Novartis Pavilion! πŸŽ‰

Purpose

Over the last five years we’ve seen an explosive growth in the use of R and other open source technologies across drug development, with an increasing focus on pan-company collaboration.

The R/Pharma Roundtable Summit provides an open, collaborative, and inclusive environment to:

  • Share learnings
  • Understand common themes across our industry
  • Establish collaboration opportunities

The focus is to foster in-person discussions about key items such as reproducibility and submissions, much like the original Harvard events.

πŸ”— Review the 2023–2025 roundtable summaries here:
rinpharma.github.io/roundtables

Call for Input

Note

You can contribute to the discussion about the final agenda!
Join the GitHub discussions here:
πŸ‘‰ rinpharma-summit-2026 Discussions

Location

Important

Novartis Pavilion
Novartis Campus
Basel, Switzerland
Meeting Room: TBC

Novartis Pavillon, Basel β€” Photo: Alexandre Prevot (CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Agenda

Time Chair Description
9:00am Satish Murthy (J&J) Intro to day
9:15–10:00am Gregory Chen (MSD) The Analysis Results Standard Revolution β€” From Static Tables to Living, Machine-Readable Submissions
10:00–11:00am James Black (Novartis) Validation and QC Reimagined β€” Trust, Testing, and the AI-Augmented Programmer
11:00–11:15am Bio-break
11:15–12:15pm Aga Rasinksa (Atorus) AI fireside chat: current status and workflow challenges, operational reality in regulated practice, and the operating model
12:15–1:30pm Lunch
🍴 Lunch & Learn sessions TBC
1:30–4:00pm Shannon Haughton (GSK) Round tables
Split into 2 Γ— 1hr sessions with short break between. Attendance at each table is flexible.
4:00–4:45pm Mahmoud Hallal (Roche) & Round table chairs Chairs report back notes, and any planned follow up
4:45–5:00pm Phil Bowsher (Posit) Wrap up
6:00–8:00pm Posit Team Social event β€” Posit Sponsored Apero on-site

Roundtables

Round table topics will be confirmed one month out. You can view, propose and vote on the round table topics here: https://github.com/rinpharma/rinpharma-summit-2026/discussions/categories/round-table-idea

Audience

These round tables are for you if:

  • You are an active contributor to the adoption of data science best practices across drug development
  • You sponsor data science codebases
  • You are an informatics professional designing and implementing GxP-conforming data science platforms
  • You are interested in cross-pharma collaboration

Round Table Advisory Board

A mix of 50 people from various pharmaceutical companies, CRO and organization supporting the advancement of open source for drug development and clinical reporting.

Signup

Note

COMING IN AUGUST

Organising Committee

  • Michael Mayer (Posit)
  • Aga Rasinksa (Atorus)
  • Gregory Chen (MSD)
  • Shannon Haughton (GSK)
  • James Black (Novartis)
  • Orla Doyle (Novartis)
  • Satish Murthy (J&J)
  • Phil Bowsher (Posit)
  • Mahmoud Hallal (Roche)

Endorsement

This summit is under the umbrella of R/Pharma and Open Source in Pharma. The event is hosted by Novartis and Posit.

R/Pharma logo

Open Source in Pharma logo