2002 Meek Lecturer: Dennis P. Riley, Ph.D.
   Senior Vice President of Research and Development, MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals

   Dennis P. Riley, Ph.D., is currently the Senior VP of R&D at MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a research-based pharmaceutical company focused on the role of metals in biological systems, the exploitation of this in the areas of chelation therapy, and the use of metal complexes as pharmaceuticals, especially, small molecule functional enzyme mimetics.

   Dr. Riley joined MetaPhore in 1999 as VP of Research, following a career at Monsanto, where he was a Senior Science Fellow and manager of Metal-Mediated Chemistry in Monsanto's Corporate Research Division. He completed his undergraduate education with majors in chemistry and mathematics (cum laude) at Heidelberg College and earned his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University in inorganic chemistry in 1975 under Professor Daryle Busch.

   Following post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago in the laboratories of of Professor Jack Halpern (where he initiated work on the mechanism of asymmetric hydrogenation catalysts) and several years at Procter & Gamble (as Section Head in process research), he joined Monsanto's Corporate Research center in St. Louis in 1984, as Senior Research Group leader in Homogeneous Catalysis.

   He is an Adjunct Professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was elected Chairperson and organizer of the 1998 Gordon Research Conference on Inorganic Chemistry, and received the ACS St. Louis Section's "Chemist of the Year" Award for 1999.

   Dr. Riley has been an invited lecturer at numerous techincal meetings, Gordon Research Conferences, and universities. His primary research interests include bioinorganic chemistry (Synzymes--small molecule functional mimics of enzymes), activation of small molecules (i.e., O2 and CO2), catalytic oxidations, and asymmetric catalytic conversions. He has been granted more than 30 US patents and more than 200 foreign patents, as well as having published more than 90 papers and several review articles and book chapters.

   When he is not occupied with the issues of science and development in a small company, he enjoys biking, golf, jogging, as well as more sedentary activities, such as astronomy and writing.

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