Mene Pangalos, PhD, joined AstraZeneca on 1 May 2010 as EVP, Innovative Medicines, to lead Discovery Research and Early Development activities. He is a member of the Company’s Portfolio Investment Board and represents the interests of Innovative Medicines in the Senior Executive Team. Mene, who is a UK citizen with a Greek heritage, has spent much of his career in the US and is now based in Alderley Park, UK. Mene came to AstraZeneca from Pfizer, where he was appointed Senior VP and Chief Scientific Officer in Neuroscience Research at the end of 2009, following the acquisition of Wyeth. Prior to this, he was EVP and Head of Discovery Research at Wyeth and a member of the R&D Executive Committee there. Previously, Mene was VP Neuroscience Research at Wyeth, and he served as Group Director and Head of Neurodegenerative Research at GSK in the UK. Earlier in his career, he worked in applied molecular biology at Janssen Pharmaceutica (J&J) and, as a post-doctoral scientist, in CNS Drug Discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He also was a visiting research fellow at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he investigated the mechanisms and molecular neurobiology of Alzheimer's disease. Mene completed his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology and earned a PhD in Neurochemistry from the Institute of Neurology, both at the University of London. He is an Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases (King’s College London). He has edited the book “Understanding G-protein coupled receptors in the CNS” and a number of journal issues focused on drug discovery in the CNS. He has also published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in well-known scientific journals, such as the Journal of Neuroscience, Nature Neuroscience and The Lancet.