Dr. Joseph Armstrong - Senior Director, Process Research Merck & Co. Inc., USA

Speaking on Innovation as the Driver of Green Chemistry Advances in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Dr. Joseph D. Armstrong, III graduated from Pfeiffer College in 1982 from Misenheimer, NC with a double major in Mathematics and Chemistry. He then went on to obtain his Ph. D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1988 and did his post-doctoral work at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

He joined the Process Research Department at Merck & Co. Inc. in Rahway, N.J in 1990. In August 2005, he took on an international rotation in the UK for 2 years with Merck in the Pharmaceutical Research and Development Department focusing on formulation research. Currently he is Senior Director of Process Research in the Process Research Department in Rahway, NJ, managing the sites in Canada, UK and Japan.

His interests have been in the design and implementation of efficient synthesis of drug candidates amenable to large scale production via transition-metal catalyzed reactions, asymmetric hydrogenations, crystallization induced asymmetric transformations, chiral auxilliary based and ligand accelerated tandem asymmetric transformations. From 2001-2004, Dr. Armstrong lead the Development Team that designed, developed and implemented the manufacturing process for the new treatment for Type II diabetes, Januvia TM. This team was been awarded the Solvias Prize in 2004 (Basel, Switzerland), the IChemE Aztra-Zeneca Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering in 2005 (London, UK), The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in 2006 (Washington D.C.) and the Prix Galien Award in 2007 (NY C, NY). The Prix Galien, often considered the industry's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, is the highest accolade for pharmaceutical research and development.

Dr. Armstrong has more than 40 publications and greater than 65 invited lectures and 10 patents.