The UTRF Health Science Center Office Innovation Awards ceremony was held in Memphis on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. Congratulations to all of the awardees!
Innovator of the Year
With great pride, we recognize Dr. Wei Li as this year’s Innovator of the Year Award recipient!
Dr. Li is currently a UTHSC Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), the Director of the UTHSC College of Pharmacy Drug Discovery Center, and a co-leader of the Chemical Biology Program of the UTHSC Cancer Center. He is also the Founder and CSO of SEAK Therapeutics LLC, a UTHSC spin-off startup company focusing on developing small molecule therapeutic agents originally invented in his lab.
Dr. Li obtained his BS degree in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992. After a two-year graduate study at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he went to Columbia University and obtained his PhD degree in chemistry in 1999.
He has been working at UTHSC College of Pharmacy since 1999. His research focus is medicinal chemistry and small-molecule drug discovery. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, 6 book chapters, and is an inventor of 14 issued U.S. patents and a larger number of related patents in other countries.
Dr. Li has been actively serving as a grant reviewer for several US government, state, and international funding agencies, and currently serves as the secretary/treasurer-elect of the Drug Discovery and Development (DDD) division of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). He is also a frequent reviewer of journal articles and is serving as an editorial board member for several journals.
Please join us in celebrating Dr. Wei Li, a visionary researcher, collaborative leader, and true innovator, as UTRF’s 2024 Innovator of the Year!
Licensed Technologies
Acadia Pharmaceutical – Wei Li, Jianxiong Jiang, Zhongzhi Wu
AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical – Michael Whitt
ModernaTX, Inc. – Michael Whitt
Tavo Biotherapeutics – Monica Jablonski, Mohamed Moustafa
San Rocco Therapeutics – Frank Park
U.S. Patents Issued
11,826,467 – Monica Jablonski, Mohamed Moustafa
11,873,282 – Ramesh Narayanan, Duane Miller, Thamarai Ponnusamy, Dong-Jin (Daniel) Hwang, Yali He
11,896,916 – Anne Zachry