Melissa M. Fitzgerald, Ph.D. is a Senior Director, Global Scouting-San Diego for Pfizer’s External Research & Development Innovation (ERDI) group. In this role, Melissa leads scouting efforts in the Southwest region of North America, and helps expand and manage partnerships with key academic institutes and start-up companies in areas of scientific interest to Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development and the Pfizer Emerging Science Fund.

Melissa brings to ERDI’s Global Scouting team her enthusiasm for promoting innovation, gained through fifteen years of research and corporate development experience in the San Diego Life Sciences eco-system. Following her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University, Melissa was a post-doc in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. She then held positions of increasing responsibility at Dura Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Elan Pharmaceuticals), Derm Tech International, and UC San Diego’s Technology Transfer office. From 2004-2008, Melissa was an Associate Director-Business Development at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, where she led the search and evaluation team for early stage technologies, and completed a number of acquisitions, licenses and collaboration agreements. In 2009, Melissa returned to UC San Diego to help found and launch UC San Diego’s new Institute for Genomic Medicine, and then moved to the UCSD Technology Transfer Office for a second term prior to joining Pfizer in 2011.