Pain and suffering are said to be part of life. As a scientist, I work to invent therapeutics to ease pain and suffering. I received a BA in Chemistry from Bard College and a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of California Los Angeles, under the tutelage of Ken Houk. I won a postdoctoral fellowship, which was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at Columbia University, where I worked jointly under the mentorship of Koji Nakanishi and Nick Turro, in the fields of Natural Products and Photochemistry. From initial conception to bedside is an arduous process (10 plus years) requiring dedicated and diverse teams of people. Over the past 12 years, I have been lucky to be a part of, worked with, and lead such teams. Patents, publications, contracts, and companies: published those, entered into many, and founded a few. FDA filings and clinical trial protocols: check. Mistakes, I have made many. In addition to private funding, I have raised over 10 million dollars in federal funding. My work has been chronicled in the Wall Street Journal, Nature Magazine, The Boston Globe and on FOX News. I have received several awards for my contributions to Medicine and Science and have been invited on numerous occasions as a speaker to discuss the development of novel small molecule therapeutics. Currently, I run a private research lab called biOOrg3.14. I am also a Chief Scientist and consult for several spin-off biotech companies that are developing products I invented. I am currently developing therapeutics for age-related macular degeneration, diabetes, and chronic pain.
Ilyas Washington
Founder & CEO, biOOrg3.14