About · Darmstadt, by way of Coimbra and Lisbon
Nuno Valério
I build AI systems that reach production in environments where being wrong is not an inconvenience.
The short version
Pharmacist first, then the machines
I trained as a clinical pharmacist in Coimbra and spent twelve years in Portugal: behind a pharmacy counter, auditing two hundred pharmacies, then running the office of the national pharmacy body. In 2014 I moved to Merck in Darmstadt and into R&D Quality, the part of the industry whose job is to ask what could go wrong.
Today I lead Digital Innovation for R&D Quality at Merck Healthcare. The practice I founded takes AI from use case to a product people actually use, and that still holds up when an inspector asks how it was allowed to act. Most of what we run there started as something I prototyped in code myself.
Outside the day job I write The Trust Architecture, co-write in public at Two-Body Problem, and publish books and games through Multiverse Forge. The thread through all of it: who governs a shared intelligence, inside a company, inside a person.
Twenty-four years, one direction
The path
- 2002 Community pharmacist Ygeia Pharmacy, Soure · built its quality system
- 2004 Pharmaceutical advisor Associação Nacional das Farmácias, Lisbon · 200 pharmacies, quality audits
- 2008 Chief of Staff Ordem dos Farmacêuticos, Lisbon · the national pharmacy body
- 2014 R&D Quality Merck Healthcare, Darmstadt · clinical QA, then quality compliance
- 2020 Digital quality eQMS, data quality and analytics for global R&D Quality
- 2025 Digital Innovation Founded the practice that takes AI to production in R&D Quality
- 2026 Multiverse Forge An imprint for books and games
Beyond the job title
Where else I show up
Off duty
Also true
- Benfica, no negotiations on this.
- Picard is the greatest fictional leader. Will debate.
- Strong opinions about board games, and forty-odd designs to back them.
- Three kids. The most complex leadership problem I have.
Speaking, writing, or a good argument about Picard.