Jaap Venema

Jaap Venema, Ph.D., is Executive Vice President and Chief Science Officer (CSO) for USP. He leads USP’s scientific and standards-setting activities around the world. He also serves as Chair of the Council of Experts, USP's scientific standards-setting body, which continuously revises standards in the United States Pharmacopeia–National Formulary, USP Compounding Compendium, Herbal Medicines Compendium, Dietary Supplements Compendium, and Food Chemicals Codex.

Dr. Venema brings a combination of global research and drug development experience spanning more than twenty-five years to USP’s top scientific post. Prior to joining USP, Dr. Venema served in a variety of scientific leadership positions at AbbVie (formerly Abbott Laboratories). Most recently, he was Therapeutic Area Lead Biotherapeutics, Global Medical Affairs, Biologics Strategic Development, where he developed and implemented a global scientific and medical strategy for biotherapeutics across all therapeutic areas, including biosimilars and immunogenicity. In this post, he served as an invited speaker and panelist at numerous conferences on scientific and policy issues related to biologics. Dr. Venema has also worked extensively on vaccines, target biology, clinical development, and bioinformatics while holding various leadership roles at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in the Netherlands. Before his transition to industry, Dr. Venema was a post-doctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and a Fellow of the Netherlands Academy of Sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam.

A native of the Netherlands, Dr. Venema earned his Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Free University of Amsterdam, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Leiden University in the Netherlands.