Dr. Robert J. DeVita, Ph.D. is a Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences which he joined in 2014. He is also the Director of Medicinal Chemistry for the Drug Discovery Institute (DDI). Dr. DeVita is developing small molecule drug discovery projects in collaboration with principal investigator biology labs in the Mt. Sinai research community. Current NIH funded projects include research directed toward discovering new therapeutics for diabetes, cardiovascular, cancer and orphan disease indications. He has over 25 years of experience including work in biotech (VP of Chemistry at Agios, 2012-2013) and the pharmaceutical industry at Merck Research Laboratories, where he was a Director of medicinal chemistry from 2004-2012. Dr. DeVita’s work has spanned the drug discovery paradigm from target identification to FDA approval, including leadership of drug development teams. Dr. DeVita has drug discovery experience within a broad range of therapeutic areas including: CNS, pain/inflammation, diabetes, cardiovascular, hypertension, obesity, endocrinology, urology and oncology. He has over 100 patent and peer reviewed publications.
Dr. DeVita has served the medicinal chemistry community by performing per review for many scientific journals and has been an active member of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. He has served on the ACS MEDI Long Range Planning Committee and as ACS MEDI alternate academic councilor. He has been the member of the organizing committees for national and international medicinal chemistry meetings including the EFMC-ACS Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry. He has served as an Ad Hoc Reviewer for many National Institutes of Health Study Sections. Dr. DeVita also consults for academic, biotech, legal, pharma and venture capital clients and serves on scientific advisory boards of several biotech companies.