Chris McWilliams is currently a Director of Process Chemistry within the Chemical Research and Development organization at Pfizer. Chris received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry after completing the total synthesis of (+)-Octalactin A at Cornell University in 1994, and following post-doctoral research in the field of asymmetric synthetic methodology in Professor Gary Molander’s lab, he began a career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1995.
Over the last 21 years, Chris has enjoyed many roles as a lab scientist and manager that span process development and scale up, catalysis, high-throughput reaction screening, technology development and implementation, and automation at Merck, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Wyeth, and Pfizer. His current role includes serving as the Pfizer lead for the Non-Precious Metal Catalysis Alliance, a collaboration between Pfizer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and AbbVie whose goal is to advance the development of abundant metal catalysts and replace precious metal catalysts in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients.