Closing Care Gaps with AI: The Next Competitive Edge in Pharma

As Vice President, Head of the Lung Cancer Franchise for US Oncology at AstraZeneca, Arun Krishna is responsible for overseeing all lung cancer US sales and commercialization. Prior to his current role, he was the Head of Oncology in the UK at AstraZeneca, leading an integrated team across Commercial, Medical, Access, Diagnostics & Business Innovation across five therapeutic areas.He has more than 15 years of experience leading teams across clinical development, market access and commercial across global, US and the UK.

Arun was born in India where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. He also received a PhD in Biostatistics and Mathematics at North Carolina StateUniversity where he focused on methodologies/classification of gene-expressing data
that can be applied to cancer detection and treatment. Currently residing in Washington, D.C., he is a proud father of two children.

Ahmed Elnawawi, prefers to be called Nawawi, is the Senior Vice President, Head of US Commercial. Nawawi has more than 23 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, started his career in 2002 as a sales representative with Schering Plough in Cairo, Egypt, moved to MSD in Saudi Arabia in 2003 and joined Novartis Oncology in 2004.

In his 18 years career run with Novartis Oncology, Nawawi worked in Sales, Marketing and General Management across the Middle East, Europe, Global and the USA. Nawawi joined Menarini Stemline in April of 2022, where he led the construction of the commercial team gearing up to launch the first oral SERD in mBC and continue the commercialization efforts in BPDCN, since then the Menarini Stemline US organization grew significantly, the commercial team multiplied in size about 5 times compared to 2022 and successfully multiplied revenue by more than 10 times.

Nawawi holds a BSc of Clinical Pharmacy from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt and a Master of Business Administration from Leicester University, UK.

Dr. Gary Grad is a highly experienced medical oncologist, who joined Tempus in 2019, and currently serves as Senior Medical Oncologist on medical affairs at Tempus AI. Prior to Tempus, he did his medical and oncology training at The University of Chicago and subsequently spent 28 years in a distinguished clinical practice in the Chicago area.  Dr. Grad has focused on delivering personalized cancer care and advancing treatment through innovative solutions. He has contributed significantly to the development of real-time, data-driven approaches to cancer treatment, leveraging artificial intelligence and extensive clinical data. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Grad has served as a thought leader and strategic consultant for health care networks, as well as prominent pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Ryan Fukushima serves as Chief Operating Officer at Tempus. Prior to Tempus, Fukushima was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Vice President at Lightbank, focusing investments on enterprise software and launching businesses. Earlier he was at Hyde Park Venture Partners, where he concentrated on enterprise investments in the Midwest. Before landing in Chicago, Fukushima worked predominantly as an engineer, designing and implementing backend systems for Cisco and VMware. Fukushima has received a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from California Polytechnic University and holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at University of Michigan, where he was a Zell Scholar.