Lisa J. Keefe

Lisa J. Keefe is a biophysicist leveraging synchrotron-based structural biology and x-ray crystallography to accelerate drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry.

Keefe has worked with researchers at more than fifty pharmaceutical and biotech companies, facilitating the advancement of a vast portfolio of structure-based drug design projects which has resulted in the development of numerous drugs now on the market.

Keefe is Vice President for Advancing Therapeutics at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) in Buffalo, NY, and Executive Director of the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association – Collaborative Access Team (IMCA-CAT), a world-class research facility for the pharmaceutical industry.

At the IMCA-CAT research facility and synchrotron beamline located at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, Keefe leads a talented team in implementing state-of-the-art technologies and developing innovative approaches for emerging challenges in pharmaceutical structure-based drug development.

A graduate of Vassar College, Keefe earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She holds a doctoral degree in Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Upon completing her doctorate, she was awarded a Department of Energy Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship, working jointly with Argonne National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

A Fellow of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA), Keefe has served as both secretary and president of the council and as ad interim CEO. She is vice-chair of the US National Committee for Crystallography, serves on the International Union of Crystallography Commission on Synchrotron and XFEL Radiation, and is past-chair of the executive board of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents.