Professor Scott C. Bailey-Hartsel received his B.S. degree from Ohio University and then went on to earn his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 1985. He worked as an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellow under David Cafiso from 1985-1987 at UVa and was an NSF/CNRS research fellow at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie and Institut Curie in Paris in 1995 and 96. Scott is currently Professor and immediate past Chair of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, a  member of the ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) and was a past member of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). He has received over $1,000,000 of external research funding in drug delivery and peptide research and has published numerous research articles with over 35 different undergraduate co-authors. He was named CASE Professor of the Year for the State of Wisconsin in 2001.

After earning his Ph.D. with Sidney Hecht at the University of Virginia in 2003, Dr. Christopher Claeboe joined the laboratory of David R. Williams at Indiana University for a post-doctoral fellowship that was focused upon the total synthesis of Peloruside A.  In 2005, Dr. Claeboe began his industrial career as a process chemist with Albemarle Corporation, working at their Baton Rouge, LA facility. He then transferred to their South Haven, MI facility in 2008 where he currently resides.  While responsible for the completion of a variety of interesting side projects for the company including the pursuit of his MBA through Indiana University, his work is centered upon the process development and scale-up of custom active pharmaceutical ingredients ().

Dr. Collins earned a B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Virginia in 1970 (mentor Carl Trindle). He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. He then  enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning there an M.D. in 1977. From 1978 to 1981, Dr. Collins served a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He then returned to Yale, where he was named a Fellow in Human Genetics at the medical school from 1981 to 1984. During that time, he developed innovative methods of crossing large stretches of DNA to identify disease genes. In 1984, Dr. Collins joined the University of Michigan in a position that would eventually lead to a Professorship of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics. Dr. Collins accepted an invitation in 1993 to succeed James Watson as Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which became NHGRI in 1997. As Director, he oversaw the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. Dr. Collins’ accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards and honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On July 8, 2009, President Barack Obama announced he will nominate Dr. Collins to lead the National Institutes of Health. On August 17, 20019, he was sworn in as the 16th Director of the NIH and was asked to continue by both Presidents Trump and Biden. The NIH Biographical Sketch of Dr. Collins can be found here. 

Professor Dowd earned her B.A. degree from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University (working with Richard Glennon). Following postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania (with Irwin Chaiken), she joined the NIH where she directed a synthetic chemistry group finding novel small molecules against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2007, she joined the Chemistry Department of George Washington University as an assistant professor.  Her research interests broadly include anti-infective drug discovery, structure-based ligand design, and the development of chemical tools to understand important biological processes.

After graduating from UVa with a B.S in Chemistry, Christopher Ferenc received his law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law, in Newark, NJ. His background in chemistry motivated him to pursue a career in the field of intellectual property law. His professional experience in this field includes interning with a U.S. Magistrate Judge and serving as legal support staff for a U.S. Congressional Committee. Currently, he is employed as a Patent Attorney in Washington, D.C. His practice focuses on the preparation and prosecution of U.S. and foreign patent applications in the chemical arts, as well as providing counsel to clients on issues relating to invalidity, infringement and patentability of U.S. patents.

Professor Love is an assistant professor in chemical engineering at MIT. He is also an associate member at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute, and associate faculty at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. He was named a Dana Scholar for Human Immunology and a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research in 2009.

Professor Love graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1999 (conducted research with Cassandra Fraser). He received his Ph.D. in 2004 in physical chemistry at Harvard University under the supervision of George Whitesides. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he extended his research into immunology at Harvard Medical School with Hidde Ploegh from 2004-2005, and at the Immune Disease Institute from 2005-2007. His current research uses microsystems to characterize heterogeneity among single cells with specific studies in HIV/AIDS, autoimmunity, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. He was selected as on  of a Brilliant 10 for 2010 in PopSci.

Dr. McWhorter earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry (with Brooks H. Pate) from the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Chemistry from Washington and Lee University. 

After a postdoctoral appointment at The National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST), Dr. McWhorter spent over seven years at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center.  There, in addition to several Department of Defense projects, he served as the Deputy Project Leader for IDA on the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) SAFETY Act (the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002).  In this position he led the technical evaluations of anti-terrorism products and services across a broad spectrum of countermeasures for chemical, biological, explosive, nuclear, cyber and human threats, including services. 

In 2007, Dr. McWhorter joined Catalyst Partners, a DC-based homeland security consulting and government relations firm. In his role as a Principal, he began Catalyst’s SAFETY Act Practice and Technology Evaluation Practice. He represented clients in front of DHS, private sector companies, and other potential customers, spearheading dozens of successful SAFETY Act applications.

Dr. McWhorter started his own firm in 2014: The Homeland Security Consulting Group (HSCG). Working with industry partners, The HSCG continues serving clients across the Homeland Security space. He constantly scouts the anti-terrorism and security marketplaces to identify relevant technology, performs independent evaluations, and helps his clients assemble quantitative evidence of the effectiveness of the technologies. The HSCG also provides business development services for its clients. Leveraging his vast network of security professionals, Dr. McWhorter brings his clients’ technology directly to potential end users and to potential industry partners. In the years since The HSCG was founded, Dr. McWhorter has prepared several more dozen successful SAFETY Act applications for his clients. Representative clientele includes Fortune 500 companies, start-up tech companies, and everything in between.

Brian Pollok, Ph.D., is Life Technologies’ Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Global Science & Innovation based in Carlsbad, CA. He oversees the allocation of more than $350M in R&D funds annually, which has yielded innovative new products in the areas of DNA sequencing, cell analysis, and molecular biology. Dr. Pollok has been with Life Tech since 2003, previously serving as CSO and Head of Global R&D for Invitrogen, and as VP of R&D for the company’s Discovery Sciences unit in Madison, WI. Prior to joining Life Tech, Dr. Pollok served as Sr. VP of R&D and Co-Founder at Ansata Therapeutics in La Jolla (2002-03), as VP of Discovery Biology at Aurora Biosciences/Vertex Pharmaceuticals in San Diego (1997-2002), as Sr. Research Investigator at Pfizer Central Research in Groton, CT (1993-97), and as Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. (1987-93). Dr. Pollok received his B.A. in biology and chemistry from UVa, and his Ph.D. from UAB.  Dr. Pollok held a Damon Runyon Cancer Fund postdoctoral fellowship at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal ASSAY, and is an advisor for several non-profit disease organizations. Dr. Pollok is also a past recipient of an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award and an Arthritis Foundation Investigator Award.

Dr. Rohlfing is the division director of the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. He joined BES in 1997 and served as program manager for the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences program from 2000 to 2003 and as team leader for Fundamental Interactions from 2003 until October 2006, when he became division director. Dr. Rohlfing received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Princeton University in 1982. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Exxon Research and Engineering Company and Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the staff at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in 1986.

His research interests include the experimental characterization of transient molecules relevant to combustion processes, linear and nonlinear laser spectroscopies, trace detection of pollutants, molecular beam and mass spectrometric studies of carbon and metal clusters, and vibrational relaxation dynamics. He is the author of approximately 50 peer-reviewed articles, holds membership in the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor Santos earned his B.S. degree from the University of Virginia and continued at UVA for his Ph.D. studies with Timothy Macdonald. After graduating in 2002, he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology with Professor Gregory L. Verdine. He is now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

After Robert Sell earned his B.S. in Chemisty with High Distinctions from UVA in 1975, he worked for four years in the U.S. Navy as an instructor at the Naval Nuclear Power School teaching Chemistry, Radiological Fundamentals, and Materials Science. From 1979 to 2009, he worked with Corning Incorporated in a wide variety of positions in manufacturing, process engineering, product and market development, strategy development, intellectual property, product line management. During his time at Corning, he obtained a Masters in Business Administration from West Virginia University in 1987. Over the 30 years he worked at Corning , he participated in the areas of glass products for the pharmaceutical industry, environmental laboratory analysis, and semiconductor manufacturing. He is now retired from Corning and instructing at Corning Community College.

Dr. Toney’s career has spanned both the pharmaceutical industry and academia. His academic training is in Chemistry (B.S., University of Virginia; M.S. and Ph.D., Northwestern University) and included research experience as a postdoctoral fellow in Molecular Biology (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School) and in Chemical Biology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

While at UVA, Dr. Toney conducted research with James Demas, which resulted in a publication (Toney, J.H., Demas, J.N. “Low frequency computerized lock-in amplifier”, Rev. Sci. Inst., 53: 1082-1085 (1982)).

His current scholarship is focused on drug discovery using an interdisciplinary approach. As a Senior Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories, he studied a variety of therapeutic targets for which high throughput biochemical assays were developed. He has held the Herman and Margaret Sokol Professorship in Chemistry at Montclair State University and served as Department Chairperson of Chemistry and Biochemistry. During this time, he developed a new graduate course, “Biomolecular Assay Development” that emphasizes teaching of the drug development process, including laboratory and in silico molecular modeling techniques. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Assay and Drug Development Technologies and is a Section Editor of Current Opinion in Investigational Drugs. He has served ten times as a member of the review panel, “Assay Development for High Throughput Molecular Screening” (R03, R21) of the National Institutes of Health, Molecular Libraries and Imaging Initiative. He has published 51 peer reviewed articles and holds six U.S. patents. Dr. Toney joined Kean University in 2008 as Dean of the College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences. Dr. Toney is Vice President for Academic Affairs (2011- present) at Kean University.   He is currently serving as the Chief Academic Officer (since 2011) and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kean University and is continuing interdisciplinary research in drug discovery and has been appointed as Visiting Professor at MIT in the Department of Linguistic and Philosophy for Summer 2019..