Biography

Dr. McDermott is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and the Senior Medicinal Chemist at the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute.  Dr. McDermott has completed postdoctoral work at Columbia University and holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Brown University and an MBA in finance from Rutgers University.  Prior to his current role, Dr. McDermott was a Life Sciences Director for a consulting firm in Manhattan NY.  In that capacity, Dr. McDermott led and participated in interdisciplinary teams that advised pharmaceutical industry clients.  Prior to that, Dr. McDermott was a Principal and then a Senior Principal Scientist at the Department of Discovery Chemistry of Roche Pharmaceuticals where he was involved in the discovery and preclinical development of small molecule therapeutics for cancer and metabolic diseases.  Dr. McDermott is inventor in 25 patents and patent applications, author in 21 research articles and presentations and the author of one book chapter in the book series Frontiers of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals.