The Emmes Group Names Dr. Rama Kondru CEO to Accelerate AI-Driven Clinical Trial Innovation

• The Emmes Group, a clinical research organization and AI technology company founded in 1977, has appointed Dr. Rama Kondru as Chief Executive Officer — elevating him from his prior role as CEO of Veridix AI, the group’s AI, technology, and data sciences business, to lead the entire organization spanning its legacy CRO and AI platforms.

• Kondru brings 25 years of experience across pharmaceuticals, healthcare technology, data science, and academia — including a prior role as Co-CEO of Medidata Solutions, the leading cloud-based clinical development technology platform — and has been positioned to combine AI, technology, and clinical expertise to transform how trials are designed and conducted across the Emmes Group’s public and private sector client base.

The Emmes Group, a clinical research organization dedicated to advancing public health and biopharmaceutical innovation, has appointed Dr. Rama Kondru as Chief Executive Officer, announced August 24, 2026. The appointment elevates Kondru from his prior role as CEO of Veridix AI — the Emmes Group’s AI, technology, and data sciences business, launched in January 2024 — to lead the full enterprise encompassing both the group’s legacy CRO operations and its AI-driven clinical research technology platform.

Kondru joined The Emmes Group in 2024 to build and lead Veridix AI, developing AI agents and eClinical technologies designed to modernize how clinical trials are designed, managed, and executed. Under his leadership, Veridix AI introduced capabilities spanning electronic data capture, decentralized clinical trial infrastructure, biostatistics and analysis agents, data management agents, document authoring tools, and VERA — an AI reporting agent — alongside the GlobalTrace platform for clinical pipeline analytics. His appointment to Group CEO signals The Emmes Group’s intent to fully integrate its AI and technology capabilities into its core CRO operating model, rather than running them as a parallel technology business.

Prior to joining The Emmes Group, Kondru served as Co-CEO of Medidata Solutions, the global leader in cloud-based clinical development technology that is now part of Dassault Systèmes, where he helped scale one of the industry’s most influential clinical research platforms. Earlier in his career he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Janssen Pharmaceuticals Americas and Vice President and CIO for R&D and Innovation at Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices, and held leadership roles at UCB Pharma and F. Hoffmann-La Roche. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree from IIT Bombay, and has served as an Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is a named inventor on over 29 patents and has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

The appointment reinforces a deliberate strategy at The Emmes Group to build an AI-integrated CRO model grounded in nearly five decades of clinical research heritage — spanning NIH vaccine and infectious disease programs, COVID-19 pandemic response trials, and an established government and public sector client base — while investing in the AI and technology infrastructure required to compete in an increasingly platform-driven CRO sector. The Emmes Group’s Emmes CRO business provides clinical services across vaccines and infectious disease, ophthalmology, CNS, rare disease, cell and gene therapy, hematology, oncology, and medical devices for both public and private sector partners.

“It is a privilege to lead The Emmes Group at such an exciting time for our industry. For nearly five decades, Emmes has stood behind some of the most important public health efforts, from the earliest NIH vaccine and infectious disease programs to the trials that helped the world respond to COVID-19. Building on that legacy, we have a unique opportunity to combine AI, technology, and clinical expertise to transform how trials are designed and conducted.”

Dr. Rama Kondru, Chief Executive Officer, The Emmes Group