Drug Development Project Director (IAMI)

Department:

SOM EVC Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI)

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Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation

Position Title:

Drug Development Project Director (IAMI)

Job Family Group:

Professional Staff

Job Description Summary:

The Drug Development Project Director position is responsible for developing and implementing Drug Discovery and Early Drug Development project plans. This position reports directly to the Director, Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI). This position will be located on both Lawrence and Kansas City Medical Center campuses.

Job Description:

Key Roles and Responsibilities:

• This position will assemble Drug Discovery and Early Development project teams comprised of researchers from KU, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, and collaborators outside the University of Kansas (other universities, contract drug development organizations) to implement project plans from target identification and validation through clinical proof of concept, maintaining a cohesive and highly effective project team during all phases of the drug project.

• This position will serve as the primary point of contact for the team and will ensure that open lines of communication are established and maintained throughout the project lifecycle.

• The Drug Development Project Director will play a leadership role in implementing the strategic plan for KU Drug Discovery integrating functions such as Medicinal Chemistry, Combinatorial Chemistry, High Throughput Screening, Imaging, the Product Development Core, and Animal Resources.

• This position will work directly with the Technology Transfer offices on both Lawrence and Kansas City campuses in support of intellectual property and commercialization activities.

In addition to demonstrated expertise in Drug Discovery or Drug Development, this position must demonstrate project management competencies. These competencies are described as follows:

• Understand project goals and manage project strategy to achieve those goals.

• Lead the performance of the project tasks per the agreed upon scope of work.

• Act as a focal point for all internal and external project communication.

• Schedule, monitor and communicate the status of the project tasks to the project team.

• Conduct project team meetings.

• Generate and distribute concise meeting minutes, action items and status reports.

• Prepare the overall project and communication plan with the assistance of the project team.

• Monitor the compliance to the project plan and update the plan as needed.

• Ensure the project team members are focused on a common set of objectives.

• Ensure that the project objectives and deliverables have been met on time, The drug development project director will work with either the Drug Discovery, Delivery, and Experimental Therapeutic (D3ET) or Investigator Initiated Trials (IIT) steering committees to advance new cancer therapeutic strategies. Inspired by the KUCC strategic initiative D3ET and IIT steering committees are working to leverage unique regional scientific assets to build a nationally significant cancer research center that is a leading institution for transforming laboratory and bedside discoveries into new therapeutic approaches.

• The drug development project director will work with the Cancer Center Lead Development and Optimization shared resource (LDO SR) Director and team members to organize, manage, and advance cancer researcher’s early drug discovery projects in using High Throughput Screening (HTS), Medicinal Chemistry (MDCM), and Biotechnology Innovation and Optimization Center (BIOC) services. Resource activities that are coordinated and monitored for the team include: target selection, development and validation of HTS methods (cell or biochemical based), primary and secondary compound screening, hit compound selection/confirmation/ prioritization, structure-activity and structure-property optimization, lead optimization, hit-to-probe, probe-to-lead and lead-to-preclinical candidate progression synthesis chemistry, novel drug delivery, bioanalytical method development, and in vivo pharmacokinetics.

Required Qualifications

• Education: BS degree in pharmacology, toxicology, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, pharmaceutics, analytical chemistry, or related field(s). Education may be substituted for experience on a year for year basis. Experience used to substitute education is in addition to any required work experience.         

Work Experience: