Dr. Subha Madhavan is leading amazingly talented cross-functional teams in Oncology R&D, Strategy and Competitive Intelligence at AstraZeneca to help bring life-changing medicines to patients.
Subha is is a dynamic and results-driven leader with a strong track record of excellence in organizations that operate in the nexus of science, technology, and business. As an industry advisor, she helps biopharma, federal, academic clients develop organization-wide R&D, data science and digital health strategy.
Especially for the WomenTech Network, Subha agreed to give an interview and share her story.
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Congratulations on winning a WomenTech Network Special Recognition Award! How did it feel when you found out you had won?
It was a great honor to be nominated for this award alongside peers who are doing phenomenal work at tech giants such as Google and Microsoft. When the email about winning the Women in ICT award arrived on December 2nd, I was ecstatic beyond belief. The first thought to cross my mind was that of immense excitement, happiness and gratitude towards the committee and other finalists. As the excitement settled down, this evolved into a feeling that I had been given an opportunity to share my successes and challenges with other women in technology so they can advance the field to greater levels than I have in my career.
Just the week before, I spoke at a global forum of women data scientists at AstraZeneca who were not only eager to learn about opportunities in data and technology in the Pharma and Life sciences industry but also wanted to hear about ways to make a bigger impact in the world. At that moment, I felt that showcasing each other’s success stories is critical to empowering women around the globe and this award was timely. Thank you, WomenTech Network for providing a platform for all of us to share our ideas!
Tell us about your background, journey in tech, and what inspired you to develop your career in this direction.
I come from humble beginnings in India. Over two decades ago, I arrived in the US as a poor graduate student dreamy-eyed about the “land of opportunities”. Since my childhood, I was always fascinated by science and data. My curiosity in the applications of science and technology to medicine prompted me to develop a career in this direction. After completing my Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, I worked as a research fellow at Johns Hopkins University, a world-class medical research center in Baltimore, Maryland in the US. There, I collaborated with medical and scientific colleagues to analyze the human genome when there was a lot of energy and excitement around this. A lot of smart people were beginning to look at these DNA sequences to better understand the disease, its progression, and potential cure. To achieve this, we had to organize gigabytes of data (which was considered very big data at that time) and apply innovative technology to derive insights from all the biological data that was being generated rapidly. That was the beginning of my journey into health tech.
The Hopkins experience made me realize that while I have a passion and interest for applying technology to healthcare, I have to upskill to be successful. That prompted me to get an advanced degree in computer information sciences, following which I ventured into the startup world, which for the very first time, was launching software products in bioinformatics to allow end-users to understand human genome data. From there I moved to the National Cancer Institute at NIH where I could apply the knowledge of science, software technology, and informatics processes to build large clinical databases to improve outcomes for patients with cancer. We collaborated with clinicians, software engineers, and data curators on this exemplar nationally-run informatics program. Our team was honored with the Service to America award (a high honor in the US federal government) for this cancer database and applications of health technologies such as federated databases, data harmonization, URI resolution in real-time at scale, had a large part to play in this recognition.
Since then, my journey in tech has always been about creating meaningful impact in healthcare, be it in improving R&D that leads to better treatments, or in implementing digital health to drive precision medicine. My team has collaborated with several federal agencies, healthcare providers, and life sciences organizations to rapidly apply data-driven technologies for early to late-stage drug and diagnostic development in Oncology and neurological diseases. We partnered with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, to launch the Cloud-First initiative for machine learning-driven drug discovery. I have helped develop digital health strategies at small and large organizations and worked in the C-Suite to launch go-to-market strategies for health technology products such as Virtual Tumor Boards and real-time clinical trials to empower patients in their healthcare journey.
The unprecedented opportunity that we face today is that data and tech are enabling people and organizations to achieve much more than what they already do! As Women in Tech, we have a large role to play in realizing this opportunity to make the world a better place for all of us.
Any advice you would like to give to girls in STEM on pursuing their dreams?
- Find the right people to collaborate with who inspire and encourage you
- Find the right sponsors (not just mentors) who will get you that next opportunity
- Solve important/pressing problems that many people care about and let the business models meet you there
- Promote others in your field
- Spend at least one hour each week to think strategically about shaping the next steps in your career
- Have a reliable/productive morning routine that sets you up for success during the day (e.g., reading, yoga, meditation)
