Gregory M. Banik, Ph.D. is the Managing Director of STMatics LLC. Dr. Banik has decades of executive experience working in the analytical chemistry, pharmaceutical, and informatics industries and is known as a visionary thought leader in these fields. His managerial purview has included strategic planning, market research, sales, marketing, business development, product management, software development, editorial, customer support, production, IT, and finance functions.
Prior to founding STMatics, Dr. Banik was General Manager of Bio-Rad Laboratories’ Informatics Division, where in addition to having full P&L responsibility for the global informatics enterprise, he conceived and launched the award-winning KnowItAll spectral database and software product line as well as the groundbreaking SpectraBase online spectral repository. Dr. Banik joined Bio-Rad from the molecular modeling software company Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI, now part of BIOVIA Dassault Systèmes), where he was Director of Business Development. He joined MSI from the business information company UMI (now ProQuest), where he was Director of Marketing and Product Management. Prior to UMI, Dr. Banik was New Product Manager, Chemical Information Products, at Thomson Reuters’ Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), where he conceived and launched the innovative Reaction Citation Index product that was the inspiration for the Web of Science, now part of Clarivate Analytics. He began his career with Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) as Scientific Information Manager in the Pharmaceutical Products Division where he managed the team responsible for the Division's chemical information databases and physical inventory of drug samples.
Dr. Banik earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University, one of the top chemistry departments in the world, working for Dr. Richard B. Silverman, inventor of the blockbuster fibromyalgia drug Lyrica (pregabalin). He also received his M.S. in Chemistry from Northwestern and was a lecturer in the chemistry department after receiving his doctorate. Dr. Banik earned his B.A. in Chemistry and Computer Studies from Grinnell College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States. He has also attended the MBA programs at the University of Chicago and Temple University.
Dr. Banik is a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), a former chair of the ACS Division of Chemical Information (CINF), a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Committee on Publications and Cheminformatics Data Standards (CPCDS), a member of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS), a member of the Coblentz Society, and a member of the Vidocq Society.
Dr. Banik's STM publishing experience also includes recent work as co-editor of the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication publication of the American Chemical Society that provides guidance to researchers and students on mastering the art of scholarly communication. Among the chapters for which he selected authors and which he personally edited were the chapters in the “Data in the Google Era” part. This part outlines many critical aspects of scholarly publishing in a digital realm, including an entire chapter on data that are “FAIR” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Dr. Banik also authored the introductory chapter for this part as well as the “Chemical Structures in the Google Era” chapter that outlines the unique challenges of sharing chemical structure data in digital environments.
