Who we are
Management Team
Ian J. Tarr
Prior to joining Current BioData Ltd as its Chief Executive Officer, Ian Tarr was Executive Vice President of Thomson Scientific, where he was responsible for their full range of products and services for the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and Chemical industries. These included leading international brands such as the Investigational Drugs database (IDdb), Derwent World Patents Index, Derwent Drug File, Web of Science, Liquent and Thomson Pharma, amongst others. Ian joined the Thomson Corporation when it acquired Current Drugs Ltd, where he had been Managing Director and a founding partner. At Current Drugs, he had been responsible for developing the leading information service on investigational drugs, IDdb, which is today used by several thousands of scientists and business leaders in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and related service companies world-wide, including every major international corporation in this sector. In successfully developing IDdb and associated products such as Patent Fast-Alert and several Current Opinion review journals, he turned Current Drugs from a small start-up company into one of the most successful ventures for the Current Science Group (now known as the Science Navigation Group - Current BioData Ltd is a member of this Group). During this first period with the Group, he also played a major role in establishing their pioneering Internet strategy, serving as Managing Director of Electronic Press Inc, BioMedNet Ltd and ChemWeb Ltd, which were subsequently sold to Elsevier. Before joining the Current Science Group, he had been Managing Editor of PharmaProjects, the R&D pipeline database, and before that spent five years with Glaxo (now GlaxoSmithKine), where he became Senior Information Scientist for the pharmaceutical company’s R&D division. He holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Bath, England.
Laura Thomson
Laura Thomson's responsibilities at Current BioData include the development of new business opportunities and partnerships. Prior to joining Current BioData, Laura worked at the British Standards Institute, developing an e-Learning program for standards makers. Before that, she served in a number of different roles at Thomson Scientific, starting in one of their London editorial departments and progressing through to Customer Training, Product Development, Strategic Marketing and Planning, and Content Development. She holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Aberdeen, a Ph.D from Queen Mary College, University of London and an MBA.
Stephanie Kappus
Prior to joining Current BioData Ltd, Stephanie worked as Project Manager at GeneBio SA, a multifaceted bioinformatics company in Geneva (Switzerland). At GeneBio, she was responsible for the development of ProXenter, a Web-based information resource and discovery platform focused on specific groups of proteins of high interest to life sciences research in general, and particularly to the pharmaceutical and drug discovery industry. Since joining GeneBio SA in 1998, she also contributed to a variety of the company’s products and services in the proteomics and bioinformatics field. Before joining GeneBio, Stephanie spent three years at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton (England) as a member of the Swiss-Prot Database Group. She holds a Ph.D in Biochemistry from the University of Bath, England, and a degree in Biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Jim Jacketti
Prior to joining Current BioData, Jim Jacketti held senior sales positions with the Thomson Corporation, including heading their North American sales force for the Pharmaceutical/Chemical sector and developing their Thomson Pharma Custom Services operation. Before joining Thomson, Jim ran a highly successful sales operation for Current Drugs Ltd covering North and South Americas, where he played a large part in building the market for the Investigational Drugs database (IDdb), now recognized as the leading database in this sector. He has also previously held sales positions with a number of medical research equipment suppliers. Jim holds a BSc in Biochemistry from Juniata College, PA.
Beth Wise
Prior to joining Current BioData, Beth held a senior role in Customer Support for Thomson Scientific, with responsibility for providing training and other support services to its pharmaceutical industry clients. Beth has also held a number of other customer-facing roles, including Marketing Manager for Current Drugs Ltd and, before that, was responsible for marketing a range of medical textbooks for Gower Medical Publishing, Mosby and Harcourt Brace, amongst others. She holds a BA in Communications from State University of New York, Buffalo, NY.
Ian J. Tarr
Chief Executive Officer
Laura Thomson
Chief Operating Officer
Stephanie Kappus
Chief Technology Officer
Jim Jacketti
Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Beth Wise
Vice President, Customer Support