Donald P. Taylor, MBA, PhD
Donald P. Taylor, MBA, PhD
Dr. Donald Taylor is assistant vice chancellor for commercial translation in the health sciences; co-director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Healthcare Data and of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute; associate director of the Center for Medical Innovation; associate professor of biomedical informatics and of plastic surgery, School of Medicine; and associate professor of bioengineering, Swanson School of Engineering. His responsibilities include working across the six health sciences schools to accelerate commercial translation of Pitt’s discoveries and inventions, grow academic and industry partnerships, secure commercial translation grant opportunities, and help train the next generation of world-class translational development students, staff, and faculty.
A longtime life sciences entrepreneur, Dr. Taylor previously served as CEO of healthStratica LLC and as an executive-in-residence at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse. He was vice president of corporate development for Cellumen Inc., a bio-tools company, and for its predecessor company, Cernostics Inc., a cancer molecular diagnostics company. Prior to these positions, Dr. Taylor was the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology market segment manager for Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., where he led product marketing campaigns involving a sales team of more than 500 people and $400 million in revenue. He has also led health care business development initiatives for companies providing Big Data software and information technologies and has served on the board of directors of several biotechnology companies.
Dr. Taylor’s basic research investigates mechanisms of breast cancer metastatic latency through computational models and human, 3D-perfused micro-scale tissue bioreactors. He explores different approaches for diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of quiescent lesions, and his research has helped suggest that targeting therapeutics to adjacent noncarcinoma cells is a viable strategy to treat metastatic disease.
Dr. Taylor received his BS in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University and his MS and PhD degrees in bioengineering from the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned an MBA at Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business and conducted postdoctoral research in pathology at Pitt’s School of Medicine.
Dr. Taylor’s research interests include:
- Mechanisms of breast cancer metastatic latency through computational models and human
- 3D-perfused micro-scale tissue bioreactors