Marty Johnson, Eli Lilly
Martin D. Johnson is VP Engineering at Eli Lilly and Company in Synthetic Molecule Design and Development. He received his dual doctorate in chemical engineering and environmental engineering from the University of Michigan in 2000, and his undergraduate in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Prior to joining Eli Lilly in 2005, he worked as a process research engineer at Union Carbide and The Dow Chemical Company in the Engineering Sciences and Market Development department. At Eli Lilly, Dr. Johnson’s group has used continuous reactions in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients for highly exothermic and hazardous reactions, high pressure reactions with hazardous gas reagent like hydrogenations, chemistries at extreme temperatures and pressures, and process separations including distillation, extraction, crystallization, and filtration. When the portfolio shifted in 2017 and in 2020 to include peptides and oligonucleotides respectively, Dr. Johnson led his team to immediately apply their continuous processing tools, automation, and expertise to improve tides syntheses. He received the 2016 ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry for work with continuous aerobic oxidations, the 2016 AIChE Award for Outstanding Contribution to QbD for Drug Substance for implementation of continuous processes, and the 2021 Practice Award in the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE for design and application of new continuous reactors.