Willem van Hoorn gained an MEng in chemical engineering and a PhD in computational chemistry at the University of Twente, the Netherlands followed by a postdoc at Yale with Bill Jorgensen. He subsequently spent a decade at Pfizer Sandwich focusing on computational techniques for HTS triage and combinatorial library design. This was followed by a position as an IT consultant at Accelrys (now Biovia) assisting a range of clients from small biotech to big pharma. Since 2013, he is pursuing his long term interest of applying computer algorithms to drug discovery at Exscientia.