John Tallarico is the Head, Chemical Biology and Therapeutics department at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. In this role, John’s mission is focused on the early stages of therapeutic discovery, including target identification, target validation, and moving early discoveries into the drug discovery pipeline. This work covers all therapeutic areas of interest to Novartis. Prior to Novartis, John served as Head of Chemical Technologies at the Harvard Institute for Chemistry and Cell Biology where he was an Instructor in the Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School from 2000 to 2004. At that time, John’s research was focused on the nascent field of Chemical Genetics. John received in PhD in Chemistry from Boston College and a B.A. in Chemistry from Miami University.