|
|
||||
| Home | Services | CDISC | Software | About us |
 |
Jozef (Jos) Aerts is the founder of XML4Pharma and Computer Chemistry Consultancy.. |
Jozef Aerts received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry and Crystallography at the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1983. After his military service he joined Akzo Corporate Research in Arnhem (the Netherlands) in 1984, where he was section leader of the X-Ray and Crystallography group. During this time he developed a large number of methods for the structure elucidation of crystalline fibers (see publications). |
 |
 |
In 1991 he joined the newly formed Computational Chemistry Group of Akzo Nobel Central Research, first as co-worker and later as section leader. He became a world-wide recognised expert in the area of molecular modeling, and in this position developed a number of new methods and the required software. Within Akzo Nobel, he became the company's major internal consultant for computer chemistry and molecular modeling, helping many business units in setting up computer chemistry applications and infrastructure. |
In 1998, he started developing web-applications to make computational chemistry software better available through the company's world wide intranet. This made the use of computational chemistry software much more cost-efficient. In order to achieve this, he started learning Java in his spare time, and soon became the Java and web applications expert within Akzo Nobel. |
 |
 |
After Akzo Nobel Central Research ceased to exist, he became coordinator for Scientific Applications at ISD, the Information Services Department of Organon, Netherlands largest pharmaceutical company, and at that time, Europe's fastest growing. In this position he was also responsible for software technology innovation. He introduced Object Orientation and XML in this company, and also initiated the use of Java (especially in conjuction with Oracle databases - JDeveloper), and of application servers for intranet applications. |
In the first half of 2001, he emigrated to Switzerland and started his own companies:
During the startup time of his company, he also worked parttime in the "Computational & Systems Biology" group of prof. Schwede at the University of Basel (Biozentrum), helping setting up the software infrastructure of the group, and writing many bioinformatics programs for use in the group.
Jozef was also professor in Medical Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum, in the Institute for e-Health, from 2011 to 2020.
In the last 20 years, he gained an enormous amount of experience
in the development, use and implementation of (XML- and JSON-based) standards for healthcare in general, and particularly for clinical research.
Since 2002, he is an extremely active CDISC volunteer, having made major contributions to the CDISC ODM standard
the Define-XML standard, CDASH,
and very recently, the Dataset-JSON standard, which will replace SAS Transport as the format for electronic submissions to regulatory authorities such as the FDA.
Furthermore, he is a specialist in LOINC, the international standard for coding of especially lab tests (and far superior to CDISC Controlled Terminology), and in UCUM, the "Unified Code for Units of Measure", created by Gunther Schadow and Clem McDonald in 1999, and now used as THE standard for units of measure in healthcare. In his time at the University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum, together with a few students, he developed a RESTful Web Service for automated unit conversions using UCUM, which was later donated to the US National Library of Medicine, where it is further developed and maintained.
Overall, Jozef Aerts has over 35 years of experience in development of technical and scientific software, especially in the area of organic and physical chemistry, and in healthcare and clinical research.
