INDUSTRY

United Devices today conferred its second annual Grid Visionary Award on Jeff Mathers, director of technology office strategy and delivery at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (PRD) LLC based in New Jersey. Under Mathers' direction, Johnson & Johnson PRD has led the pharmaceutical industry with research innovation through grid computing applications, evolving from independent clusters in the United States and Belgium to a single global enterprise grid today, and in the near future, possibly offering grid computing power as a service offering throughout Johnson & Johnson. "The United Devices Grid Visionary Award honors those who have led the way in understanding, implementing, and advocating grid computing as an enterprise platform," said Ben Rouse, chief executive officer at United Devices. "That certainly describes Jeff Mathers." In 2002, when most people had barely heard of grid computing, Mathers was already investigating its value in reducing hardware maintenance cost, Rouse said. By 2003, Mathers and his team were deploying grids both in the United States and Europe, well ahead of the rest of his industry. By 2004, J&J PRD under Mathers' direction had developed and deployed the first clinical development system to run on the grid, which allowed Johnson & Johnson to advance several drugs through the FDA approval process. And last year Mathers led a multidisciplinary team that developed and deployed the most advanced pharmaceutical grid in production today anywhere in the world. "Not only has his leadership saved millions of dollars for the bottom line of J&J PRD," Rouse said, "He has helped speed the drug approval process." United Devices presented the honor to Mathers at its annual grid computing conference in Austin, where Mathers delivered a keynote address on "Driving Innovation With Enterprise Grids."