Corinne E.
Augelli-Szafran, Ph.D.

Vice President of Scientific Platforms

Dr. Augelli-Szafran has more than 35 years of drug discovery and leadership experience in pharma, academia and not-for-profit organizations. After 17 years at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, where she held a number of leadership roles mainly in the neurodegenerative field of study, she spent 8 years at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she built a drug discovery laboratory from ground zero with a focus on novel Alzheimer disease therapies. Currently her responsibilities in her role as Vice President of Scientific Platforms, the Drug Discovery division at Southern Research, include the leadership and management of synthetic, medicinal and bioanalytical chemistry, high throughput screening, oncology and structural biology and computer-aided drug design, which includes more than fifty professional employees focused on the identification of new therapies in several therapeutic areas. Other duties include the support and contribution of the overall strategic roadmap of Southern Research, management of budget and resources, and the strengthening, identification and development of key collaborators and partnerships.

Some of the current key research programs that involves Dr. Augelli-Szafran’s strategic oversight include new therapies for Cystic Fibrosis, antivirals, oncology, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dermatology, and kidney disease. She is responsible for and funded by multiple grants, including 3 R01s, UG3, U19, DoD and DTRA awards, NIAID Task Orders and a NIAID BAA as well as Foundation and commercial funding. She is an Affiliated Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a faculty member in the Department of Clinical and Diagnostic Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health, a member of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and a member of the Gregory Fleming James Cystic Fibrosis Research Center. Dr. Augelli-Szafran has been a standing member on NIH grant review panels (NINDS) for 15 years, a reviewer for several journals and a mentor to several graduate and undergraduate students. Her scientific record includes more than 65 publications, 165 presentations, and 35 issued and published patents. She received her BA in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and her MS and PhD in Organic Chemistry from New York University.