Senior Vice President, Discovery Research & Chief Scientific Officer Schering-Plough Research Institute
Dr. Kola joined Schering Plough Corporation as Senior Vice-President, Discovery Research and Chief Scientific Officer in March 2007. At SP Dr Kola is Worldwide Head of Discovery Research and Early Clinical Research and Experimental Medicine (ECREM).
Ismail joined Merck in January 2003 as Senior Vice President, Basic Research & Site Head for Basic Research, Rahway with responsibility for the following therapeutic areas: Atherosclerosis and Cardiovascular Diseases, Diabetes, Obesity, Infectious Diseases, Immunology and Rheumatology, Animal Pharmacology, and Basic and Medicinal Chemistry. Further, he also headed the Madrid and the Montreal Sites.
He was previously Professor of Human Molecular Genetics and also Director of the Centre for Functional Genomics and Human Disease at Monash Medical School, Australia (where he worked for 15 years). He was recruited to Merck from his position as Vice President of Research, and Global Head of Genomics and Biotechnology at Pharmacia.
He currently holds several prominent academic appointments: He is Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Washington University, St Louis, MO; Foreign Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and Professor of Medicine at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has also been appointed a William Pitt Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.
He is the author of 157 publications and is or has served as member of the editorial board of numerous journals. He has been an invited speaker at over 200 International Scientific Meetings and the recipient of numerous international research prizes. He is also a named inventor on 12 patents. Under his approx 8 years leadership in big pharma, 104 preclinical candidates have been delivered with four of these compounds being approved as drugs; one NDA filed and 11 in late stage development (Phase IIB and Phase III). Others are in earlier development.
