Purdue welcomes Lilly leader to increase life-sciences dialogue with faculty

Eli Lilly and Co. is reaching out to Purdue faculty to inform them about company programs that nurture and support academic research.

Every week since mid-2013. Scott Sheehan, Lilly's Midwest academic research liaison, has visited Purdue's West Lafayette campus to increase the dialogue with researchers in academia. Sheehan is also the company's senior director of discovery chemistry and research technologies.

"We have a long history of excellent research collaborations with Purdue, Notre Dame and IU, primarily, but those collaborations tend to come from already established relationships; oftentimes we have scientists at Lilly who had attended college or graduate school with faculty members," says Sheehan, who's been given office space on the third floor of Hovde Hall. "My role is to augment those excellent communications we already have and enable faculty who don't have a built-in relationship with Lilly to understand where the opportunities lie."

Sheehan has visited Purdue to meet with faculty, gathering details on their work and informing them about Lilly programs that nurture and support academic research. One of those is the Open Innovation Drug Discovery Program, which enables academic researchers from around the world to send compounds to Lilly for biological testing. In vitro biochemical testing is provided in-kind, and the academic researcher retains all IP rights to their work.

"Lilly scientists are unable to see the structures of the compounds that have been submitted," he says. "By providing this value, we know we can help advance academic science and build relationships."

Other programs include the Lilly Research Awards Program (LRAP), an internal Lilly program in which Lilly scientists can submit a proposal in connection with external scientists. Some of these competitive Lilly awards support collaborations with Purdue investigators.

Another program, the Lilly Innovation Fellowship Award (LIFA), teams a postdoctoral scientist with their academic mentor and a Lilly scientist to advance an innovative research proposal developed by the fellow. LIFA applications are by invitation only, and Purdue has received this honor of invitation to participate in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Sheehan notes, however, that he is visiting Purdue not only to raise awareness of existing programs. "I also want to look for additional novel ways we can interact through sharing of capabilities or experience to advance research on the academic campus," he says. "When scientists get together and talk, great things happen. My goal is to forge relationships from which new creative approaches come to help both institutions meet their research goals."

Sheehan's appointments at Purdue are currently being coordinated by Geanie Umberger, assistant vice president for corporate and foundation relations. Umberger may be reached at 49-63723 or gumberger@purdue.edu.