Vicki Nienaber, PhD, is well known for her pioneering work in the field of drug discovery using fragment-based screening and structure-based drug design. At Zenobia, Dr. Nienaber is focused on applying these methods to identify compounds with the right properties to cross the blood-brain-barrier, a major obstacle in central nervous system drug discovery.

Dr. Nienaber was most recently chief scientific officer at ActiveSight, a division of Rigaku Americas Corporation, where she built a diverse team of protein biochemistry, X-ray crystallography and drug discovery experts. Before that, she was senior director of lead discovery and crystallography at SGX Pharmaceuticals, where she oversaw strategic drug discovery and structural biology alliances with Novartis and Eli Lilly and initiated their internal kinase lead discovery project. While at Abbott Laboratories, Dr. Nienaber was the lead inventor of crystallographic fragment-based screening, co-inventor of the ACTORTM robotic system for automated crystal sample handling and a leader in structure-based drug design methods.