Derek O'hagan PhD

Derek O’Hagan is a Vice President and the Global Head of Vaccine Delivery Research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, a position he has held for the past three years. He is currently based in the company Headquarters in Cambridge, MA, but was previously based at the research center in Siena, Italy for two and a half years. He is a trained formulation scientist and originally qualified as a pharmacist in the UK, before starting a research career by undertaking a Ph.D. entitled ‘Pharmaceutical formulations as immunological adjuvants’ at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Nottingham.

Subsequently, he started an academic career in Nottingham, by establishing and managing a group focusing on vaccine delivery research, which received funding from WHO, MRC, and Wellcome Trust and the industry. Subsequently, he moved to the US to work in the industry and previously worked in positions of increasing responsibility for Chiron Vaccines in California, before it was acquired by Novartis.