10 Years in the World of Commercial Cheminformatics Software Development – Time for Something New.
Posted by: Antony Williams in UncategorizedCopyright©2007 Antony Williams
For those of you who know me you are likely aware of the fact that I have worked at Advanced Chemistry Development, ACD/Labs, for over a decade, with the past few years as their Chief Science Officer. During that time I have had the privilege of working with a group of incredibly productive colleagues and have participated in producing some of the most innovative chemistry software in the industry (in my opinion). The scientific intellect within ACD/Labs is simply excellent.
After 10 years of helping ACD/Labs shift from being a start-up in the industry to one of the leading players in the industry I have made a decision to have a change in my career. As a result I have stepped down from my role, have left ACD/labs, and have chosen to take a “personal sabbatical”.
For the next few weeks/months I’m going to take some downtime with my family and focus on some personal projects prior to deciding what to do next with my career. Over the next few months I’m going to finish up a number of publications and probably start writing a couple of books which I have the privilege of co-authoring with colleagues from ACD/Labs and especially with my friend Gary Martin (well-known for his NMR skills as well as his photography). I’m going to apply some more time to ChemSpider and initiate a series of collaborations around the system. I am especially intending to dedicate some more time to what I’ll generically refer to as “family time”…giving back some of the time to my wife and our young twins that a dedicated and busy career has taken away during the long hours of the job.
My departure from ACD/Labs is very amicable. Some of my best friends still work at the company. It is simply time for me to do something different. I am still trying to determine what the next few years hold for me and I still have some specific visions in mind to execute on.
Meanwhile, in my “downtime”, I am interested in participating in any interesting ventures which might keep me connected to the world of chemistry and utilize my skills. My background is outlined in my LinkedIn profile. You know where to contact me…you’re on the right site! Excuse the shameless self-advertising but hey…isn’t it a great use of a blog?
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August 8th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Antony J. Williams
Over at the ChemSpider Blog, Antony Williams has gone public with his decision to leave ACD/Labs in pursuit of something new. This marks a very sad event for our company as over the years Tony has contributed immensely to the
August 16th, 2007 at 10:54 am
[...] of you who frequent the blog will know that I have recently started a “personal sabbatical“. The daily workouts, reading the stack of books waiting for me and starting on the honey-do [...]
August 21st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
[...] yet another investment in hardware and that is simply not feasible at this time due to “employment status” and insufficient availability of funds. Unlike the majority (or all) of the similar systems [...]
August 21st, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[...] a number of changes around the support of Nomenclature on the ChemSpider website. With my recent departure from ACD/Labs the relationship, though very amicable, has changed in terms of ACD/Labs tools [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
[...] quite surprising is the low number of visitors from Germany, China and India. Based on my previous experiences in the chemoinformatics world I would expect Germany to be much HIGHER and certainly there should [...]
September 13th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
[...] an overly “litigious society”.Recently I chose a period of personal sabbatical so now I am the non-revenue generating member of the household (but a great chauffeur for the [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] a product manager and CSO at ACD/Labs I managed the Name to Structure functionality in their nomenclature software. There was a LOT of [...]
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
[...] an NMR spectroscopist by training (as evidenced by the >100 publications in this area) during my decade long tenure at ACD/Labs I learned a lot about: PhysChem parameters and their prediction, systematic nomenclature, structure [...]