Frank Lennox Douglas (born April 30, 1943) is a

Guyanese-American Guyanese Americans are an ethnic group of Americans who can trace their ancestry back to Guyana. As of 2019, there are 231,649 Guyanese Americans currently living in the United States. The majority of Guyanese live in New York City – some 140,00 ...

biomedical researcher and business executive.

Education and career

Douglas was born April 30, 1943, in

Georgetown, Guyana Georgetown is the capital (political), capital and largest city of Guyana. It is situated in Demerara-Mahaica, region 4, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, at the mouth of the Demerara River. It is nicknamed the "Garden City of the Caribbean." It is t ...

. He graduated with a BS in Engineering from Lehigh University in 1966. He went on to a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University, which he received at the beginning of 1973, with a thesis on chlorophyll-a. After a brief stint working at Xerox, Douglas moved to New York City to pursue a medical degree from the Cornell University Medical School. After finishing the MD, Douglas completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, and a fellowship in neuroendocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. Following his fellowship, Douglas took a position as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, in which role he remained for 5 years. At this time, he also began work at the pharmaceutical company Ciba-Geigy. In 1992, he moved as an executive vice president to Marion Merrell Dow, where he remained as it was acquired and changed names to

Hoechst Marion Roussel Hoechst AG () was a German chemicals then life-sciences company that became Aventis Deutschland after its merger with France's Rhône-Poulenc S.A. in 1999. With the new company's 2004 merger with Sanofi-Synthélabo, it became a subsidiary of the ...

, and later to Aventis. In 2005, Douglas left Aventis and took a position as a professor of the practice at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was involved in founding the Center for Biomedical Innovation. After 2 years at MIT, he resigned over concerns about institutional racism, particularly regarding the tenure-denial of

James Sherley James Sherley is a bioengineering, biological engineer and the founder of Asymmetrex, an adult stem cell research center. He has also conducted research at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Sh ...

. In 2009, Douglas moved to Akron, Ohio, to serve as president and CEO of the Austen BioInnovation Institute. He left the institute at the beginning of 2015. Douglas published an autobiography in 2018, titled ''Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream''.

Books

Honors and awards

* Geoffrey Beene Foundation and '' GQ'' Magazine Rock Star of Science, 2010 *Black History Makers Award, 2007 * (Medal of the Faculty of Medicine),

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

, 2004

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1943 births Living people People from Georgetown, Guyana Lehigh University alumni Weill Cornell Medical College alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni University of Chicago faculty MIT School of Engineering faculty MIT Sloan School of Management faculty American chief executives