This year the FAU Alumni Association held the Hall of Fame and Distinguished alumni awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 3, 2017 to recognize extraordinary alumni who demonstrate exceptional service and commitment to their profession or the community. This year one of the recipient's of the Distinguished Alumni Awards was Dr. M. Phillip DeYoung, Ph.D.
Dr. Phil DeYoung was mentored by Dr. Ram Narayanan of the Department of Biological Sciences. He focused his research on bioinformatics-based discovery of novel cancer genes. Together, they published six peer-reviewed papers and established the first microarray core facility in the state of Florida. After graduating from FAU, Dr. DeYoung took a position as a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and worked in the lab of Dr. Leif Ellisen at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. There he studied the molecular tumorigenesis of head and neck cancers and discovered a novel molecular mechanism for hypoxia signaling.
After his postdoctoral training, Dr. DeYoung joined the Oncology Research & Development group at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) where currently he is a Scientific Leader in the Immuno-Oncology and Combinations Discovery Performance Unit. In more than nine years at GSK, Dr. DeYoung has been involved and has led multiple drug discovery efforts which have progressed into early clinical studies. Dr. DeYoung is an active member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society for Clinical Oncology, and the European Society for Medical Oncology. He has received numerous awards throughout his tenure at GlaxoSmithKline including multiple Bronze, Silver and Gold Level Recognition Awards.
Dr. DeYoung has 18 years of experience in cancer research and is knowledgeable in multiple areas of cancer biology, thanks to the fantastic instruction and research opportunities he received while at FAU. When asked what his FAU experience has done for him, he said "My FAU experience has been invaluable to my professional career and has helped to mold me into the man that I am today. The faculty and staff at FAU were 100% invested in my growth and development from a graduate student to a scientist, and I am proud to call many of them my colleagues.”
