Drug development is often compressed into two photographs: a molecule on a screen and a medicine in a box. The years between them disappear. That missing space is where Tahamtan Ahmadi has spent his career. It is a place of imperfect evidence and consequential choices, where the scientist's question - does this mechanism work? - meets the physician's question - will it matter? - and the operator's question - can a large team prove it?
Ahmadi, known to colleagues as Tahi, now carries all three questions at Genmab. He is the Danish-founded biotechnology company's Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Head of Experimental Medicines. The title is long because the bridge is long. His remit runs across research, discovery, regulatory, and medical activity. In practical terms, he works across the institutional handoffs that can either preserve a scientific idea or slowly sand away its meaning.
His route there began with two kinds of training. Ahmadi earned an M.D. from the University of Cologne and a Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Freiburg. He is Iranian-German and a U.S. citizen, a biography that crosses the same Atlantic map as his work. Medicine taught him to look at the person in front of him. Immunology taught him to look underneath, at a system of signals, cells, and responses. The combination became a professional grammar.
Chapter oneThe bedside and the bench
Before industry, there was academic medicine. Ahmadi served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Hematology and Oncology. It was a useful vantage point for a translational scientist: the laboratory and clinic were close enough to argue with each other. A biological theory could be elegant and still fail to answer the problem a clinician saw. A clinical observation could look anecdotal and still contain the beginning of a research question.
Moving into industry expanded the scale of that argument. At Janssen, where he led experimental medicine and early development oncology from 2012 to 2017, Ahmadi joined the senior leadership team for oncology. His work stretched beyond interpreting results. It included deciding which signals justified another study, shaping a global clinical program, and aligning research with medical and regulatory strategy.
Two programs define this chapter in the public record. Ahmadi led global development of daratumumab, including clinical R&D and medical affairs strategy across indications. He was also instrumental in the clinical development and initial FDA submission for ibrutinib. The compounds are different, but the operator's problem rhymes: evidence arrives in pieces, specialties see those pieces differently, and someone has to make the pieces cohere into a development path.
“I entered oncology because I believe science can change what is possible.”Tahamtan Ahmadi, 2026
That sentence is less a declaration of optimism than a statement about agency. Science changes possibility only after people convert it into a sequence of decisions. A 2016 paper with Ahmadi among its authors captured this at an almost tactile level. Daratumumab, itself an antibody, could interfere with the laboratory tests used to monitor the disease it was intended to address. The team described an assay designed to distinguish the therapeutic antibody from a patient's own protein. Translation, here, meant making sure the medicine did not confuse the measuring stick.
Chapter twoBuilding the bridge, then widening it
Ahmadi joined Genmab in 2017 as the company was moving beyond its identity as an antibody-technology partner. He became Senior Vice President, Head of Oncology. Four years later, Genmab created a broader position for him: Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Head of Experimental Medicines. The promotion, effective March 1, 2021, placed research, discovery, regulatory, and medical work within his remit.
The timing matters. Genmab had built antibody technologies and a record of partnered medicines. Its next organizational task was to own more of the route: more development choices, more late-stage programs, more commercial responsibility. A company designed to invent and collaborate was learning to act as an integrated biotechnology business. Ahmadi's job widened with that ambition.
- University of Pennsylvania faculty in hematology and oncology.
- Experimental medicine and early oncology development at Janssen.
- Joined Genmab and led oncology.
- Became CMO and Head of Experimental Medicines.
- Helped articulate an integrated model built around owned programs, acquired capabilities, and a more digital R&D engine.
The acquisitions of ProfoundBio in 2024 and Merus in 2025 made the change concrete. Ahmadi's public remarks about both focused on combinations: complementary antibody expertise in the first case, scientific talent and a diversified owned pipeline in the second. Deal language tends to favor assets. His language made room for the people expected to carry knowledge across the new organizational seams.
That detail is revealing because acquisitions create fresh handoffs. A molecule arrives with a history. The team that developed it holds context that cannot be captured fully in a data room. Integration becomes a knowledge-transfer problem as much as a financial one. Ahmadi's repeated emphasis on collaboration fits the practical need: protect the reasoning behind the program while subjecting it to a new institution's questions.
Chapter threeCuriosity as operating infrastructure
In early 2026, Ahmadi joined an internal conversation with Genmab colleagues about leadership, strategy, and the experiences that shaped his path. Their questions prompted a compact list of lessons: remain open, ask questions, build new relationships, and stay grounded in shared purpose. These are familiar words. Their usefulness comes from where he applies them - inside programs where expertise is deep, uncertainty is expensive, and hierarchy can make a weak assumption sound settled.
Curiosity, in that setting, is infrastructure. It creates permission for the discovery scientist to complicate the clinical plan, for the regulator to expose an evidentiary gap, and for a newer colleague to ask why a team keeps doing something the old way. Relationships are the channels that let those questions travel before the data force the issue. Shared purpose helps the organization choose when reasonable experts disagree.
Ahmadi also talks about resilience. Drug development supplies repeated lessons in it: a study runs longer than planned, a promising signal softens, a portfolio choice closes one door to keep another open. Resilience here is not motivational theater. It is the ability to update without losing momentum, and to preserve a team's capacity to think after an answer disappoints.
“Remain open, ask questions, take advantage of the opportunity to build new relationships.”A career lesson shared with Genmab colleagues
His public voice often turns the spotlight toward the people around the work. After medical meetings, he thanks the researchers and colleagues behind the abstracts. When discussing progress, he points to late nights, difficult tradeoffs, persistence, and integrity. This is not evidence of a private personality; it is evidence of what he chooses to reward in public. Leaders teach an organization partly through the behavior they notice.
The next handoffA digital R&D engine with human judgment
The next version of Genmab's R&D system includes artificial intelligence. In late 2025, the company announced a partnership with Anthropic to bring agentic AI capabilities into research and clinical development. Ahmadi described the goal as a more scalable, efficient, digitally enabled R&D engine. The immediate promise is workmanlike: reduce manual burden so scientific teams can spend more time on higher-value work.
The distinction between assistance and judgment matters. Drug development produces large volumes of protocols, reports, datasets, literature, and operational detail. Machines can help move and synthesize that material. They do not remove the need to decide which uncertainty matters, whether a signal is coherent, or when evidence is sufficient to expose people and capital to the next test. Ahmadi's career has been built around those decisions. Digital scale makes their design more important.
This is the practical idea another technical organization can borrow: integrate judgment early. Do not treat discovery, development, regulation, and medicine as stations on a conveyor belt. Let each discipline shape the question before the next expensive answer. Preserve context during an acquisition. Reward the person who asks what the room has assumed. Use automation to clear cognitive space, then spend that space on the decision only humans are accountable for.
Ahmadi's story has no single eureka scene. Its shape is cumulative: German medical and scientific training, Philadelphia academic medicine, global oncology development at Janssen, then a widening role at Genmab. Each chapter increased the distance between the initial experiment and his field of responsibility. Each also made translation more central.
From the outside, a biotechnology company can look like a portfolio of molecules. From Ahmadi's seat, it is also a portfolio of questions, commitments, and handoffs. The long middle is where those elements either align or drift apart. His work is to keep them in conversation long enough for the science to earn its next step.