Robyn A. Rourick currently holds a position as Director, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kalypsys, Inc.  Her primary responsibilities involve analytical and pharmaceutical development activities in support of nonclinical and clinical activities.  In addition, she is keen on connecting drug discovery and development needs with innovative technologies and solutions.  These applications emphasize efficiency and throughput and are driven by a common theme which is earlier availability of quality information leads to faster decision making.  Her team focuses in the areas of in vitro ADME profiling of chemical leads, analytical method development, technology transfer, formulation development, impurity and degradant identification as well as design and monitor of stability programs and support of cGMP API campaigns.  Prior to Kalypsys, Robyn was Associate Director of DuPont Pharmaceuticals Research Labs and previous to that was Group Leader, Analytical Technologies at CombiChem, Inc. where she was involved in building an ensemble of analytical assays to assess performance of discovery compounds against the development milestones faced by a pharmaceutical agent.  With an emphasis on automation and throughput various ADME assays including solubility, protein binding, CYP inhibition and microsomal stability were established as front-line discovery assays.  She championed the infrastructure to enable the development of proprietary hardware and software to support timely data interpretation and decision-making.  In addition, she was responsible for several external collaborations with the aim of developing software to streamline the structural assignment of LC/MS/MS data associated with biotransformations. Prior to CombiChem, Robyn held the positions of Associate Research Scientist, Research Scientist and Sr. Research Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. During her 10-year tenure, she contributed to the integration of LC/MS in different phases of drug development for research in drug metabolites, impurities, degradants and natural products.  Another key area of focus involved early development support by directed and coordinated method development activities dealing with drug substance/drug product assay, validation and documentation.  A key component of these activities involved the technology transfer of databases for preclinical leads to Early Development teams for the acceleration of INDs. 

Robyn A. Rourick received her B.S. in Chemistry at Fairfield University and her MS in Forensic Chemistry under the direction of Dr. Henry Lee at the University of New Haven.  Robyn has co-authored peer-reviewed manuscripts and more than 100 abstracts, principally in the area of LC/MS, serves as a reviewer for several journals, has served as chairperson for multiple conferences and has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences both nationally and internationally.