Alfred Steinhardt received a PhD from the University of Freiburg, Germany, with a thesis in mathematical biophysics. He has 14 years of working experience in the pharmaceutical industry; specifically in information management oriented areas within preclinical and clinical research and, since 1995 in drug development. After working for six years in academia as a researcher, Alfred joined the preclinical research of, then Sandoz, in Basel, Switzerland, with a focus on artificial intelligence applications supporting the biotechnology research process.
Following this, he joined Hoffmann-La Roche's Clinical Research Informatics department in Basel. There, his activities covered a broad spectrum ranging from projects in alternative medicine, to the development of information management systems. In the latter area, Alfred's focus was on document management, publishing and imaging and he created a group which on the one hand supported the NDA publishing process worldwide, and, on the other, developed new applications to support document workflow, archival and retrieval in clinical research and beyond.
In 1995 Alfred became the Basel site head of a group called Plans and Projects in the new Drug Development Informatics organisation. In parallel, he took over the responsibility for the intranet and developed a Global Intranet Team into a Global Team for Knowledge Sharing Systems, which he is currently heading. Alfred's main focus is on supporting virtual teams by collaborative environments, building systems for information access across functions, ie, portals, and knowledge sharing and management applications.