Dr. Charles L. Cywin is the Director of Small Molecule Neurotherapeutic Development in the Division of Translational Research at the Nation Insititute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) of the NIH.

For six years, Dr. Cywin has also served as the Program Director for the Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPN), a trans-NIH network of grantees, contract research organizations, and expert consultants which provides non-dilutive funding to advance promising small molecule drug discovery projects in neuroscience.

He has also served as the Contract Officer Representative for several large NIH R&D contracts and spearheaded the HEAL Initiative: Non-addictive Analgesic Therapeutics Development [Small Molecules and Biologics] to Treat Pain, leading and coordinating the portfolio of neuroscience and pain drug discovery projects ranging from early discovery to Phase I trials.

Prior to joining NIH, Dr. Cywin spent 17 years at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals where he was Director of Medicinal Chemistry and was responsible for Hit to Lead and Lead Optimization programs focused on successful clinical candidate selection in several therapeutic areas. He created the lead discovery team, the parallel synthesis group, and led the efforts to identify and implement new technologies, infrastructure and outsourcing in medicinal chemistry.

Dr. Cywin received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Providence College. He performed his doctoral training at Syracuse University where he was a University Fellow and focused on natural product synthesis. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship with Professor E. J. Corey at Harvard focusing on asymmetric catalysis.