Symposium Co Chairs

David Chenoweth

David was born in Indiana and received his B.S. degree from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, IUPUI, in 1999. During his time at IUPUI, he performed undergraduate research with Professor David Nurok working on a new chromatographic instrument for planar electrochromatography. After graduation, he completed an internship in organic chemistry at Dow AgroSciences prior to joining the Discovery Chemistry Research department at Eli Lilly in 2000. While working with Dr. Thomas Britton at Eli Lilly, David developed a passion for organic chemistry and headed to Caltech in 2003 to pursue a Ph.D. degree.

In Professor Peter B. Dervan’s group, he worked on synthetic, biological, and structural studies of DNA minor-groove binding polyamides. David received the Caltech Chemistry Department’s Herbert Newby McCoy Ph.D. thesis award for outstanding contribution to the science of chemistry. After graduation in 2009, he moved to MIT to work with Professor Timothy Swager as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow focusing on the synthesis of new materials for chemical sensing. David was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Group in the Perelman School of Medicine in 2013, and in the Bioengineering Graduate Group in the School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2013. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2017.

Robert Garbaccio

Rob Garbaccio received his B.A. in chemistry from Boston University, his Ph.D. from The Scripps Research Institute and was a National Institutes of Health, NIH, postdoctoral fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Rob joined Merck Discovery Chemistry, West Point, in 2001 where he made scientific contributions and provided leadership to programs that span several therapeutic areas and modalities. His initial focus was within small molecule discovery for targets in oncology and neuroscience. Subsequently, Rob led a group that developed polymer- and antibody-mediated delivery of siRNA.

Rob also served as chemistry lead for the Merck-Ambrx collaboration for the development of antibody drug conjugates beyond oncology as well as the Merck-Peptidream collaboration for the application of macrocyclic peptides to challenging targets. In 2016, Rob built and led the Discovery Chemistry Modalities group in the position of Executive Director. From 2018-2020, Rob led the Chemistry Capabilities for Accelerating Therapeutics, CCAT, which aims to accelerate the Discovery Chemistry pipeline through the integration of innovative capabilities and therapeutic modalities. In late October 2020, Rob was named Head of Discovery Chemistry.