Richard Gessner is a Senior Investigator at the H3D Drug Discovery and Development Centre at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Since taking up the position at H3D in 2014, Richard has been responsible for overseeing tuberculosis (TB) and malaria drug discovery projects that involve multidisciplinary teams (chemistry/biology/ADME/PK) at H3D, with external partners and collaborators (including IDRI, Lilly, GSK, DDU, TAMU, WCMC, Evotec and NIAID) within the TB Drug Accelerator (TBDA – a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative) and Celgene Global Health (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2019). In 2021, Richard took on the additional responsibility of developing H3D’s anti-viral portfolio which initiated from a BRICS collaboration SARS-CoV-2 AI drug discovery programme. Furthermore, he has also played a major role in implementing research project management across H3D after a sabbatical at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2016.
