Dr. Peter Farina

Dr. Peter Farina served as senior vice president of development at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, CT, where he was responsible for North American preclinical development of drugs in the therapeutic areas of immunology/inflammation, virology and cardio-metabolic diseases. His career spanned 28 years, and he retired from the company in 2008. During his tenure as SVP, his interdisciplinary team worked on the development and successful registration of Aptivus, an HIV protease inhibitor; Viramune XR, for HIV; Atrovent HFA, for COPD/emphysema; and Jardiance, for diabetes. Prior to this position, he served as vice president of research at the Ridgefield Center. He has also held positions as director of inflammatory diseases and director of biochemistry. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim, Dr. Farina spent six years in the Corporate Research Laboratories and Medical Products Division of Union Carbide Corporation in Tarrytown, NY, where he worked on immunodiagnostics. Dr. Farina’s research interests have been focused on chemical and biological mechanisms impacting human disease. He has worked to develop drugs to modulate inflammatory and immunological processes and was also engaged in HIV virology research, which led to the discovery and successful registration of one of the first non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, Viramune (nevirapine).

Dr. Farina is an executive in residence at Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm located in Westport, CT. He is also the managing partner of Salient Science & Technology, LLC, which advises several U.S. and Asian biotech firms on strategic and technical matters in pharmaceutical R&D. Dr. Farina serves as the co-chair and a board member of BioCT; on the advisory board of the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy (Emeritus); as a member of the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPN) Executive Oversight Committee; and on the State of Connecticut Bioscience Innovation Fund Advisory Board. He was a founder and CEO of Developing World Cures, a nonprofit company focused on neglected diseases.

Dr. Farina has a PhD in organic chemistry from SUNY Buffalo and did postdoctoral work in bioorganic chemistry at Pennsylvania State University. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Connecticut.