Wes Trotter BS, MPhil, PhD

Wes joined Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, PA, in 1999 and moved to the Merck Boston site in 2009. He and his teams have been involved in the design and synthesis of six molecules entering clinical development and have worked on successful programs in a variety of therapeutic areas spanning oncology, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience, and immunology. In his current position as Director, Discovery Chemistry, he leads a drug discovery program focused on a novel immuno-oncology target. Wes has led multi-disciplinary drug discovery teams and has managed chemistry teams of >25 people including internal chemists and chemists at external CROs.
Wes graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1993 with highest honors in chemistry. He then moved to the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar, completing an M.Phil. degree focused on NMR studies of protein folding. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1999 from Harvard University, where he completed the total syntheses of both Spongistatin and Vancomycin aglycon in the research group of Professor David Evans.