Mark Namchuk PhD is a professor of the practice of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology and the executive director of therapeutics translation at Harvard Medical School. In this later role, Namchuk works with HMS scientists to identify and harness basic insights and move them towards clinical therapies, while training the next generation of therapeutics investigators. He has overall responsibility for the HMS therapeutics initiative which includes an on-campus Biotech incubator (the Blavatnik LifeLab Longwood), a scientific core dedicated to supporting therapeutics discovery in faculty labs at HMS and affiliated institutions and educational programs in therapeutics at the graduate and post-doctoral level. His current research interests focus on drug discovery, in particular antivirals for the treatment of COVID-19.