Randall Smith

Randall received his B.A.  in chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College in 1990, and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under Dr. Tarek Sammakia at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1994. He studied as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Pennsylvania State University from 1994 through 1996 under Dr. Ken Feldman. Randall’s industrial experience began with an internship in process chemistry at Merck Sharp & Dohme in 1990. After his postdoctoral appointment, he joined NeXstar Pharmaceuticals in Boulder, CO, continuing on with NeXstar’s spin-off, Proligo LLC. In early 2000, he joined the consortium research company SIDDCO in Tucson, AZ. In 2001 he joined Discovery Partners Int., Inc. with their acquisition of SIDDCO. During his career with Discovery Partners Int. and their subsidiary ChemRx he spent almost 2 years in Kolkata, India, collaborating with Chembiotek Research International, Pvt. Ltd., before relocating to South San Francisco, CA in 2005. He moved to San Diego in 2006 to work with Discovery Partners, BioFocus DPI, and ChemVentures as a group leader and Director for custom library synthesis through April of 2009. He also served in the ACS San Diego Section on the organizing committee for the 41st Western Regional Meeting as a Co-Chair, Advertising and Publicity. He is currently working as a Sr. Scientist at Illumina, Inc.

Bill Szabo                                                         

Bill received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Lehigh University, worked for two years as a discovery chemist at a J&J subsidiary near Philadelphia, and earned his Ph.D. in heterocyclic and medicinal chemistry from the University of Florida.  He held a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in natural product synthesis at Wesleyan University under the direction of Max Tishler, former president of Merck Research Laboratories and a past ACS president.

Bill was recruited by Alfred Bader, co-founder of the Aldrich Chemical Company, and worked for 18 years at Aldrich in Milwaukee in management positions in R&D, production and advertising.  He then relocated to St. Louis and spent four years in the sales and marketing of pharmaceutical intermediates for Sigma-Aldrich, positions which included sales director for North America and vice president of international sales.

In 1998 Bill took an early retirement and moved to San Diego.  He has since been consulting in drug and business development in the U.S. and Japan.

Bill is a 42-year ACS member.  He served on the 2007 ACS Western Regional Meeting organizing committee, working on the vendor exposition, on the WRM website as an editor, and briefly as acting general chair.  He is currently an alternate councilor on the San Diego Section’s executive board, chair of its Public Relations Committee, and coordinator of the 2009 San Diego Science Festival Committee for the Local Section.

Dr. Hui Cai

Dr. Hui Cai is President & CEO of Inflexion BioPartners, a professional consultancy that offers management and consulting services to help optimizing key resources along the biotech and pharmaceutical R&D value chain. Dr. Cai has a broad portfolio of expertise and solid track record in strategic initiatives aimed at maximizing organizational efficiency and efficacy. She is also a recognized leader in fostering government, academia, and industry relations, both locally and internationally. 

Prior to Inflexion BioPartners, she was Vice President of Corporate Development at HUYA Bioscience International, where she was involved in strategic planning, strategic partnership, cross-Pacific operation, international sourcing of drug candidates, and portfolio management.  Dr. Hui Cai was appointed by the Mayor of San Diego in 2002 and has served as a Commissioner at City of San Diego Science and Technology Commission. She is past Chairwoman of the San Diego Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS San Diego, www.sandiegoacs.org) and Chairwoman of the Board at the Sino-American Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SABPA, www.sabpa.org). Dr. Cai received her BS and MS from Peking University, PhD in Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute, and MBA from UCSD Rady School of Management as a recipient of the distinguished DLA Piper - Athena FlexMBA Scholarship.

William K. Tolley

Bill is a research scientist at Seacoast Science, Inc., in Carlsbad. He is responsible for the design of analytical instruments employing Seacoast’s novel chemiselective sensors. He is experienced in inorganic polymers, supercritical fluid chemistry, and electrochemistry.  He currently serves on the Executive Board as Secretary and served one term as Member-at-Large. He has 27 U.S. patents and has authored over 50 technical publications and presentations. He earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Brigham Young University, and M.S. and B.S. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Utah.

THOMAS R. BEATTIE - COUNCILOR

Tom is currently a Councilor in the San Diego Section and has served for 6 years in that capacity. Previously, he was Chair in 1999 and was an Alternate Councilor (2000-3).

He serves as a member of the ACS National Local Section Activities Committee (2004-).
Also, he is a member of the ACS National Senior Chemists Task Force (2009-) and formerly was Chair of the ACS National Silver Circle (Seniors) Working Group (2005-9).

In San Diego he is Chair of the Annual ACS Distinguished Scientist Selection Committee (12 years), organizer of the Annual San Diego Medchem Symposium (since 1999) and manages the section’s educational programs for schools (since 2001, initially grants for high school science teachers and currently Mad Science science shows for 4th/5th graders which >30,000 elementary children have viewed).

Additionally, he is a member of the San Diego Section’s Seniors Committee and last year initiated the quarterly seniors/retires/consultants/part-timers breakfasts. Tom was the Program Chair of the San Diego Section sponsored ACS 1995 Western Regional Meeting (which still holds the record as the largest ACS regional meeting ever) and was a Technical Program Advisor and Session Chair for the Western Regional Meeting in 2007. He received the San Diego Section’s Outstanding Service Award in 1996 and again in 2005.

Apart from ACS, Tom spent a 27 year career at the Merck Research Labs in Rahway, NJ working in early stage drug discovery. After retiring early from Merck in 1993, he came to San Diego and worked at Amylin and IRORI/ChemRx/Discovery Partners. Since 2001 he has been consulting for many organizations within and outside San Diego, has taught at UCSD and University of Kansas, and serves on several advisory boards. He has a B.S. (University of Pennsylvania), Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin), and was a postdoctoral fellow at M.I.T.

Dr. David M. Wallace

Dr. Wallace is an experienced medicinal chemist with over 17 years experience in pharmaceutical industry.  He currently consults for early and clinical stage biotech companies, providing synthetic and medicinal chemistry expertise in the area of small molecule drug discovery. Current and past companies include Mpex Pharmaceuticals, Allylix and Mirable. Dr. Wallace is also a co-founder of Amalyte, Inc, a Bay area biotech company focusing on the treatment of immune and inflammatory diseases. Dr. Wallace was previously Principal Scientist at Senomyx, Inc., where he served as chemistry group leader of a team focused on the discovery of agonists to G-protein coupled taste receptors. Prior to Senomyx, Dr. Wallace held senior scientific and leadership positions at Chugai Pharma, USA, where he contributed to several multidisciplinary research programs directed toward discovery of novel therapies for cancer, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and metabolic diseases. He is an inventor or co-inventor on numerous issued or pending patents. Dr. Wallace holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of California, Davis and a B.S. in Chemistry from Wright State University. He has been a member of the ACS for 25 years and is currently 2008 chair and treasurer of the San Diego section

Julann Miller

Julann is an Executive Account Representative for San Diego with Waters Corporation. She has been in field sales with Waters for the past 18 years. In January of 2007, Julann began serving the San Diego Section of the American Chemical Society. She has provided seminars for the Young Chemist Society and served as a volunteer for the 41st Western Regional Meeting, ACS Earthfair and ChemExpo. She has served as a board member of the Chromatography discussion group in Virginia, organized monthly speakers for meetings, the annual chromatography fair, and Chemistry Week for the ACS. Julann received her BS from Memphis State University with a Botany major/Chemistry minor. During her academic studies, she conducted clinical research in the Departments of Medicine at the Mayo clinic, Vanderbilt University, and UT at Memphis. She performed pharmaceutical research after graduation at Hoffman La-Roche and Allergan Pharmaceuticals.

Stephen Gwaltney, PhD

Stephen began his work in synthetic organic chemistry as an undergraduate at Indiana University under the direction of Ted Widlanski.  After graduation, Stephen began working in the labs of Ken Shea at the University of California, Irvine and obtained his PhD in 1996.  His dissertation focused on the development of methodology for the synthesis of fused cycloheptane and cyclooctane ring systems.  This methodology was applied to the total syntheses of three natural products.  This was followed by a postdoc with Bill Roush where Stephen designed and synthesized peptidic and peptidomimetic inhibitors of the cysteine protease, cruzain.  In 1997, Stephen joined Abbott Laboratories and developed potential cancer chemotherapeutics including antimitotic agents and inhibitors of farnesyltransferase, CAAX endoprotease, isoprenylcysteine carboxyl methyltransferase and Chk-1.  In 2002, Stephen joined Syrrx, Inc. as Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry.  He served as chemistry team leader and project leader for the DPP4 inhibition program for the treatment of diabetes.  Multiple DPP4 inhibitors from this program entered clinical trials.  The most advanced of these compounds, alogliptin, presently awaits FDA approval.  In early 2005, Syrrx was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals.  Stephen is currently Director of Chemistry at Takeda San Diego (TSD) and continues to conduct and direct research in metabolic diseases and cancer.  He also participates in the TSD Metabolic Diseases New Targets Group and serves as a member of the TSD Research and Management Committees.  In January of 2007, Stephen began serving the San Diego Section of the American Chemical Society, first as Member-at-Large and then as Alternate Councilor.

Desiree Grubisha, PhD

Desiree received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. She conducted postdoctoral research at Iowa State University and the DOE Ames Laboratory developing immunoassays with a surface-enhanced Raman scattering detection platform in the Microanalytical Instrumentation Center. She is currently teaching Chemistry at Cal State San Marcos. Most recently, she was a scientist in Analytical R&D at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, supporting development of therapies for diabetes and obesity. Desiree has one patent, 20 journal publications, and has contributed to several presentations at national and international conferences. As an active volunteer in your San Diego ACS Section since 2004, she has participated in WCC and YCC events, the annual ChemExpo, and planning for the 41st Western Regional ACS Meeting. Currently, Desiree is a member of the Public Relations Committee.

Renate Valois

Renate Valois retired from the University of San Diego, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry after 37 years in August 2007.  She has been editor for The San Diego Chemist for 12 years.

She may be contacted at: renate@sandiegoacs.org