Dr. Yuan-Hua Ding is an Executive Director and Head of Pfizer External Science & Innovation (ES&I) – Asia/Pacific, Pfizer Worldwide Research & Development (WRD). He is also a member of the ES&I leadership team. In this capacity, he partners with colleagues in ES&I, Pfizer Business Development Group and Pfizer Asia Country Offices to evaluate technologies and assets from Asia Pacific academic, biotech & pharma laboratories, seek opportunities to incubate early biotech companies, build and manage a research network of academic institutes, biotech & pharma companies, and venture capital groups as well as regional bioparks. He liaises with therapeutic area and technology research unit leaderships in accessing the sciences, technologies and products needed to support Pfizer R&D mission. 

Prior to his current job, Dr. Ding served a variety of roles in the Pfizer R&D division, including Head of Asia External Science and Technology, Head of Structural Biology at the Research Technology Center (RTC) in Cambridge, MA, Associate Research Fellow and Senior Research Scientist. As the Head of the RTC Structural Biology, he oversaw a group of scientists responsible for protein production, characterization, crystallization, crystallography and structure-based drug design. His group supported structural based drug design portfolio of 10+ programs, through collaborative efforts with RTC, Pfizer global structural biology groups and therapeutic area project teams, covering oncology, diabetes, inflammation and CNS. He also served as project leaders for several drug discovery programs with some into the clinics.

Dr. Ding received a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from Peking University in 1987 and a master’s degree in Biophysics from Tsinghua University in 1990. In 1996, after completion of doctoral studies in Biochemistry with Prof. John Rosenberg and Roger Hendrix at the University of Pittsburgh, he moved to Harvard University to become a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Don Wiley. Dr. Ding’s postdoctoral work focused on structural and biophysical aspects of molecular interactions among T-cell receptor (TCR), major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and peptide antigens. While in Dr. Wiley’s Lab, Dr Ding also collaborated with Dr. Judah Folkman of Boston Children’s Hospital on structural studies of endostatin, a protein shown to be a potent angiogenesis inhibitor in mouse model.