Scangos

Behind every successful drug are key ingredients not listed on the label: impeccable science, healthy patients and happy investors.

On Oct. 27 at 5:30 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium, George Scangos ’70, CEO and board member of Biogen, will discuss how innovative biopharmaceutical companies are developing transformative therapies and working to ensure patients’ access to them while meeting the demands of shareholders.

The talk, “Shareholder Value and Drug Discovery – Balancing Science, Patients and Wall Street,” is the highlight of the campus visit by Scangos as the 34th Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education. He will be introduced by Cornell Interim President Hunter Rawlings, who will moderate a Q&A after the talk. The event is free and open to the public and will be live-streamed on CornellCast.

In addition to Biogen, Scangos has been at the helm of other biotech companies, including Exelixis, Bayer Biotechnology and Anadys Pharmaceuticals. He chairs the board of directors of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, serves as a trustee of the Boston Museum of Science and the Biomedical Science Careers Program, and is a member of the National Board of Visitors of the University of California Davis School of Medicine. He is also on the board of directors of Agilent Technologies.

Before entering the corporate sector, Scangos was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a B.A. in biology from Cornell and a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Massachusetts. He was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in Frank Ruddle’s laboratory at Yale University.

The Hatfield fellowship is one of the highest honors Cornell gives to industry leaders, promoting an exchange of ideas between the academic and corporate communities. Every year, on the invitation of the Cornell president, the Hatfield fellow spends a day on campus to interact with faculty and students, and delivers a public lecture. The fellowship is funded by the Robert S. Hatfield Fund for Economic Education, which was established in 1980 by the Continental Group Foundation to honor its then chairman, president and CEO, Robert S. Hatfield ’37.

Read a Q&A with George Scangos on alumni.cornell.edu.