Derek McPhee
Dr. McPhee is currently the Director of Chemistry at Amyris Biotechnologies, an Emeryville, CA biotechnology company that in partnership with the non-profit Institute for OneWorld Health and the University of California, Berkeley, and with funding from a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is using synthetic biology to help reduce the cost of the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinin. The company is also applying its platform technologies to the engineering of microbes capable of producing high-value compounds useful as renewable fuels and chemical feedstocks, areas for which it has received over $100M in VC funding. He has a Lic.C. (Chemistry) degree from the Universidad de Málaga (Spain).
After working for two years as a RA at this institution, he moved to Canada to pursue graduate studies, obtaining his PhD in Organic Chemistry under Prof. Tom Back at the University of Calgary in 1986. From 1986-88 he was a NSERC Postdoctoral Research Associate studying the chemistry of free radicals and carbenes with Dr. David Griller at the Division of Chemistry of the Canadian National Research Council in Ottawa.
The remainder of his career has been in industry. He first spent 14 years with Uniroyal Chemical (now part of Chemtura Corporation) working on discovery, process development and manufacture of agricultural, rubber and specialty chemicals. He has subsequently worked in the generic pharmaceutical manufacturing field as a Senior Scientist at Brantford Chemicals (now Apotex Pharmachem), as well as at contract chemistry companies and startups in the U.S. and Canada as Director of Chemistry and VP. Immediately prior to joining Amyris in 2005 he was self-employed as a consultant to various chemical and pharmaceutical startups. From 2000-2005 he was the Managing Editor of the online chemistry journal Molecules, and since 2005 he has served as its Editor-in-Chief. He has been active in Science magazine’s career-related activities since the days of Next Wave, for which he contributed several articles.
