Michael Williams

Michael Williams, Ph.D., D.Sc. is currently Vice President of Worldwide Discovery Research at Cephalon, Inc., in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Williams received his Ph.D. (1974) from the Institute of Psychiatry and his Doctor of Science degree in Pharmacology (1987), both from the University of London. 

Dr. Williams has worked for over 30 years in the US-based pharmaceutical industry sequentially at Merck, Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories, Nova Pharmaceutical, CIBA-Geigy and Abbott Laboratories.  He retired from the latter in 2000 as Divisional VP for Neurological and Urological Research and then worked as a consultant with several biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe including Genset, Elan, Targacept, Acetlion and Newron. He also worked with universities and private investor groups in the areas of strategic and portfolio/pipeline planning, competitive assessment, business development, compound and company assessment and acquisition and IND/IB preparation. From October, 2001 until September 2002, he was VP of Drug Discovery and General Manager at Molecumetics in Seattle. He joined Cephalon, Inc. in 2003.

Dr. Williams is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologium (CINP) and the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP).

He is Editor-in-Chief of Drug Development Research and Current Opinions in Investigational Drugs, Commentaries Editor for Biochemical Pharmacology and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry.  He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Williams is the author or co-author of more than 300 research publications, book chapters and reviews and has edited nine monographs.