Gebhard Thoma is an associate director at Novartis Biomedical Research in Basel. He studied chemistry at the universities of Darmstadt (Germany) and Basel and received his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Bernd Giese. Following his doctoral studies, he spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, working with Prof. Dennis P. Curran. In 1993, Gebhard joined the central Research Laboratories of Ciba-Geigy. After the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz in 1996, which led to the creation of Novartis, he transitioned to the pharmaceutical research division of the new company. In 1999, he was awarded a one-year research sabbatical stay at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. Gebhard's specialization lies in medicinal chemistry, and he has been involved in diverse projects targeting various drug targets. Some of these include GPCRs, kinases, proteases, and ion channels.
