Dr. LaVoie is Professor and Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University. He founded TAXIS in 2009, following more than 30 years of experience, during which he invented 30 issued, 27 filed and eight provisional U.S. patents and authored 220 peer-reviewed scientific publications. Prior to TAXIS, Dr. LaVoie co-founded Prodaptics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he addressed an early stage antiviral drug discovery concern targeting influenza viral polymerase. His many accomplishments as a synthetic organic chemist have attained him international recognition as a leader in the advancement of drug design and discovery. Dr. LaVoie has earned both an NIH MERIT Award and a Johnson and Johnson Discovery Fellowship Award. Additionally, he held the role of Associate Editor of Letters in Drug Design and Discovery and has been a member of several scientific review panels, including the NIH, NIEHS, DOE, EPA, American Cancer Society, and the American Institute for Cancer Research.
Dr. LaVoie received a B.S. in Chemistry from Fordham University. He earned a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at SUNY Buffalo.